<html><head></head><body>Almost certainly your disk is dying. 1) Do a "dmesg" and see what it has to say 2) Try "cat /sbin/ifconfig > /dev/null". If it fails, it means the file could not be read. 3) After seeing if you can back up any data you care about, try a reboot. Entirely possible an fsck may be forced... which *might* help things, if your issue is filesystem inconsistency, and not physical media failure. Good luck! -Ken <div class="gmail_quote">On September 24, 2017 7:10:34 AM EDT, Jay Ridgley <jridgley2@austin.rr.com> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> <pre class="k9mail">Good? Morning, On one of my systems I have started getting the following message in response to various commands: cdjsys@mateo:~$ ifconfig -bash: /sbin/ifconfig: Input/output error cdjsys@mateo:~$ vi -bash: /usr/bin/vi: Input/output error cdjsys@mateo:~$ .bashrc has not changed, other commands still work (ls, tail, etc.). This is a headless server system and is maintained via ssh. All the current updates have been applied: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.2.0-64-generic-pae i686) Any ideas??? Cheers, Jay </pre></blockquote></div> -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.</body></html>