Cannot boot any more: "file is too large"

[sulu]

I dont know if this is a gcc-3.1 issue or a portage issue.

I did a emerge sync to update my portage tree.
Then i launched emerge -eb system because i changed the compiler options and wanted to make use of them.
After a few seconds the first ebuild failed with a "file is too long".
tried to open a new console ".bashrc: file is too long"

Since then the system is unusable. Even rebooting fails with "file is too long" when the boot-process tries to read functions.sh.

What's corrupted here, oh, besides I'm using ext3?

I can mount the partition without problems from my primary gentoo.
fsck doesn't report anything specific.

[pjp]

Are any partitions getting full?
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

[sulu]

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 3802848 2306128 1303540 64% /
tmpfs 1024 152 872 15% /mnt/.init.d
/dev/sda1 101089 3969 91901 5% /boot
/dev/hda1 10080488 1545168 8023252 17% /home
/dev/hda2 29490268 1572344 26419864 6% /work
/dev/hdb3 11499944 1915480 9228304 18% /devel
/dev/hdb2 1026136 1588 1024548 1% /dos
/dev/sdb3 3802848 1474720 2134948 41% /gentoo_test

/dev/sdb3 is the problem. It's the root-fs for the gcc-3.1 install.

Another strange issue:
emerge -eb wrote several packges within a few seconds without any noticeable compiling. -e should compile everything.

I tried to boot the system via boot-cd. chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash also yields '.bashrc :file is too large'. THe question is: "What is corrupted here ?"

[sulu]

Shhhhhhhhh.

Fixed it. Good luck i had binaries so just unpacking the rigth ones did the job. But a bad taste remains.

I just did an emerge rsync and then an emerge -eb system
result: Within seconds the emerge process wrote several binary-package files without compiling anything. I reinsstalled those packages from backup-binaries and now i'm happy again.

The lesson to learn from this:
- allways create binary packages (-b option of emerge)
- store them on a different drive so if your system doesn't boot any more you can do a manual install from another system
- i highly recommend to use two gentoo installs on separate partitions: a primary for work and a testing.gentoo to do all the emerges

mv myself /dev/bed