mkdir doesnt do anything

[cboldt]

I'd like to figure out if the zeroing of /bin/mkdir coincided, timing wise, with your emerge activity. I don't know your time zone, but your emerge is time coded. These are the start and end times ...

[cboldt]

If you suspect hardware failure, get a copy ofsmartmontools and check the drive. I believe sysrescuecd has this. If the drive is failing, DO NOT WRITE TO IT! You want to preserve as much of it as you can.

If the drive is okay, and you want to just restore coreutils, you can get that in binary form - might be so on the minimal install, if not, just grab a copy from https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/sys-apps/coreutils

[nobody13]

look at the time stamp on the file and then look at my emerge log could one of these packages be the cause of it ?


rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Mar 21 23:44 mkdir

[cboldt]

I'm not surprised at all at being able to create a zero byte "executable" file of any name, using "touch" and "chmod." But only root should be able to do so in /bin, /sbin, and assorted other OS directories.

[nobody13]

just noticed you a step ahead of me

[John R. Graham]

No. mkdir is part of coreutils. Also, the emerge log snippet you listed starts after the modify date of mkdir.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

[John R. Graham]

[nobody13]

there's this too, I misread the time on the other part.

[cboldt]

I just realized that the time on /bin/mkdir CAN'T be within that emerge window, no matter what. The emerge window runs from 50 minutes in one hour to 33 minutes in the next hour. The emerge activity did not run at all across any "44 minutes after the hour" line.

Edit to modify, "that emerge window" was the one you presented earlier, not the one just above. The one just above squarely fits the timestamp on /bin/mkdir.

[limn]

[nobody13]

That was also the last successful emerge.
the next entry

[cboldt]

Very good point that zeroing a file is not going to happen on account of failing hardware. In my defense, I made the "failing hardware" remark before I was told that /bin/mkdir was a zero byte file.

As for xf86-input-mouse being the culprit, I last emerged that a week ago, and checking the emerge logs for reference to "mkdir" I see nothing out of the ordinary.

[nobody13]

i know what could have happened. I was using putty and went to copy/paste something and it pasted a whole bunch of stuff im going to have to go back and figure out what it did

[nobody13]

So what i found out was in putty if you use the right mouse button its like the middle button in linux for pasting selected stuff.
If you hit the middle button out of habit it gos haywire.
so im betting something happened here

[cboldt]

I don't see anything in lines 209-344 that I would suspect of making a zero-byte /bin/mkdir

Do you have any other zero-byte files in /bin or in /sbin?

[nobody13]

just that one was 0 bytes. i copied mkdir from this pc to it. I can make directories now but emerge cant

[cboldt]

That sounds like a permissions issue with /bin/mkdir.

[nobody13]

i end up with this :

[cboldt]

Could be a mess of blind alleys, but you might try changing PORTAGE_TMPDIR to another location (make sure that directory exists), and you might try "FEATURES=-sandbox emerge coreutils"

Assuming of course that /bin/mkdir is root:root 0755

[nobody13]

[cboldt]

Are you running the emerge command as root? or as "user" of some other identity?

[nobody13]

no luck with that. I have to do to work. will try again when i get home - Thanks for all your help

[Goverp]

I wonder if there was a typo in a command entered at root, along the lines of

[cboldt]

I didn't try as root, but as a user, both "./mkdir --help" and "mkdir --help" produced the help message, and neither one of those commands resulted in zero-byting ~/mkdir or /bin/mkdir

[nobody13]

I'm thinking I might just cut my losses and reinstall from scratch instead of fighting with it.