On the otherwise-idle flubber:
$ git clone git://sources.redhat.com/git/glibc.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /media/data/home/tschwinge/tmp/glibc/glibc/.git/
remote: Generating pack...
remote: Done counting 380933 objects.
remote: Deltifying 380933 objects...
remote: 100% (380933/380933) done
remote: Total 380933 (delta 294166), reused 380686 (delta 294002)
Receiving objects: 100% (380933/380933), 70.31 MiB | 27 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (294166/294166), done.
error: git-checkout-index: unable to create file iconvdata/ibm1122.c (Interrupted system call)
error: git-checkout-index: unable to create file localedata/charmaps/IBM862 (Interrupted system call)
Checking out files: 100% (10676/10676), done.
$ git status
# On branch master
# Changed but not updated:
# (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#
# modified: iconvdata/ibm1122.c
# modified: localedata/charmaps/IBM862
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
$ ls -l iconvdata/ibm1122.c localedata/charmaps/IBM862
-rw-r--r-- 1 tschwinge tschwinge 0 2008-12-15 15:49 iconvdata/ibm1122.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 tschwinge tschwinge 0 2008-12-15 15:49 localedata/charmaps/IBM862
So these files are indeed of zero-length in the checked-out tree. Is this git's fault or something else's?
Fixing this situation is easy enough:
$ git checkout -- iconvdata/ibm1122.c localedata/charmaps/IBM862
$ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)