[gentoo-user] Machine not booting properly: profile.env cannot execute binary file

[Andrew Lowe <agl@wht.com.au>]

Hi all,
	My machine went feral which resulted in me having to kill the power to 
kill it. Upon reboot everything looked good, fsck did it's job, [ok]'s 
scrolled up the screen etc and then I got the login prompt. I entered my 
username & password and then the fun began.

	I got:

-bash: .: /etc/profile.env: cannot execute binary file

If I tried any command, say ls, I got:

-bash: ls: no such file or dir

	I've now rebooted the machine using a relatively recent sysrescueCD and 
had a look at profile.env and it's binary but I thought it should have 
been text!!!! In the top line or so it mentions "ld" for some reason. I 
checked the same file on the boot disk and it's text. One or two I found 
on line are also text.

	Does anyone have any idea as to what's going on here? Should I just 
grab the profile.env from the boot disk and drop it into the /etc dir? 
Or should I go through the whole process of chroot off a gentoo disc and 
then run env-update as it says in the header of the text versions I'v seen?

	Thoughts greatly appreciated,

		Andrew