Exec format error. binary file not executable.

kaz2100 · 08-17-2006, 10:50 AM

Hi, Penguins.

Question is, "Has my penguin died?" (or starting to die) or is this what my penguin has to suffer with "testing release"?

My penguin lives in: Toshiba Satellite A100 ST2311, (I uploaded full spec on HCL, but not available yet. if necessary I will provide further spec.)

My penguin is Debian, etch. several months old. has not been highly used.

Situation is:

while I was connecting to server (several X11 windows from server), xload window (local) showed very high load, (no local jobs).

on local xterm, I tried "top" to see what is going on. (shell responded, but "top" did not kick in for several minutes.)

after several minutes,

Code:

>top
/usr/bin/top: Exec format error. Binary file not executable.

I restarted, (init 6 by root)

at boot, numerous problems at fsck, I had to run fsck manually on two partitions I said yes to all prompts. and many lost+found files..

After all, system kicked in. "top" runs fine, while several things don't run. (some panel function of xfce.)

What happened?

One of the things I do not understand is:
whatever "lost+found" on /dev/sda2 looks like /root content, which is on /dev/sda1. (Both were mounted when something went.)

Has anybody had similar experience? Any comment will be appreciated.

Happy Penguins!!

pda_h4x0r · 08-18-2006, 04:13 AM

Probably just a software bug. You should upgrade to the latest packages (it may have been fixed since you used your debian box last).

If everything else is up and running, you can fix XFCE with this:

# apt-get --reinstall xfce4

If all else fails you could use a bootdisk to back up your essential data (i.e. documents, etc) and simply reinstall using a Debian Etch net-install disk. Not the most elegant solution, but it's guaranteed to work.

kaz2100 · 08-19-2006, 05:26 PM

Thanks,

I hope it is just a software bug.

At this moment, I cannot resuscitate my penguin back to full operation. (too many things are wrong.)

Reinstalling xfce does not work, either. I found the reason. Nobody can delete /usr/bin/xfrun4 directory -even root.

Code:

# ls -ld /usr/bin/xf*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root  root   89160 2006-06-17 08:49 xfce4-panel
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root  root  172208 2006-05-30 15:06 xfce4-terminal
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root  root     984 2006-05-30 15:06 xfce4-terminal.wrapper
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root  root   19716 2006-06-30 01:49 xfd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root  root   27360 2006-06-30 01:49 xfontsel
dr-xrwsrwx 2 17996 38880  49152 1970-01-03 01:36 xfrun4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root  root    4572 2006-06-11 20:08 xfsinfo
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root  root    1653 2006-05-21 16:24 xft-config
# rm -rf /usr/bin/xfrun4
rm: cannot remove directory `xfrun4': Operation not permitted
#

Anyway, so far, things go wrong once in every once in 3-4 weeks, dead eth0, dead disk-parity error, random choke while make....

I will check hardware for a while and make decision. (According to http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/)