/bin got trashed, "Cannot execute binary file."

[David Blaszyk SOFT]

manager at a.coe.wvu.wvnet.edu (Cris Fuhrman, Systems Manager) writes:
8^> I recently had a problem with a Sun 3/60 disk-server to four 3/50's - the
8^> /bin directory got trashed - for the second time (it happened last
8^> semester too).  The 5 machines were all dead, and the /bin directory on
8^> the server was blitzed so bad that fsck demanded I run it manually from
8^> single user '#'.  Anyway, I got numerous files (all in /bin) which read as
8^> having unknown file types.  fsck just deleted them, and things looked ok
8^> from there.
8^> 
8^> I copied mini-unix to the swap partition, and reinstalled /bin (I had a
8^> tar tape from when this happened last time).  Everything works ok -except:
8^> When a user logs in to the SERVER machine, he gets the following message:

Cris,

Had a similar problem myself.  What I did was copied some binaries from a
68010 to my Sun3 (68020).  Once I tried to re-boot that error message kept
coming up.  What 'csh' is trying to do is `exec' a binary that you
possibly moved, that is not compatible with your system.  In my case, it
was 'awk', which placed that same message into the file /etc/motd. 

Look in /etc/motd. I bet you $$$ that this message is in this file.
8^> ->  Cannot exec binary file.

At boot time, the files /etc/rc & /etc/rc.local, looks at a couple files
and tries to build a string using both 'sed' and 'awk', if these binaries
are incorrect, as they were in my case, they spout out spurious
information into the pipeline to /etc/motd.

This might be a solution, look at the replaced binaries, see if there were
any name collisions, probably is one of the binaries in /bin like 'sed' or
'awk' that is used at boot time that caused this.

Hope this helps,
Dave

8^> 
8^>     Last login: Mon Feb 27 17:41:25 from annex01
8^>     Sun UNIX 4.2 Release 3.5 (SUNF) #7: Fri Oct 7 16:23:22 EDT 1988
8^> ->  Cannot exec binary file.
8^> 
8^> months, I'm wondering if someone else has had this experience.

Yes, I have, to see exactly where it is from, look at the file /etc/rc or
/etc/rc.local, and look for shell script calls to /bin/*, this is most likely
where your problem is located.

Dave Blaszyk - Eastman Kodak Company  .....rochester!kodak!elmgate!dvb
	(use uuhosts or such to find path to rochester)