diff -ur stock/linux-2.4.20-pre5/mm/shmem.c linux-2.4.20-pre5/mm/shmem.c
--- stock/linux-2.4.20-pre5/mm/shmem.c	Fri Aug  2 17:39:46 2002
+++ linux-2.4.20-pre5/mm/shmem.c	Thu Sep  5 12:49:46 2002
@@ -736,6 +736,8 @@
 			break;
 		case S_IFDIR:
 			inode->i_nlink++;
+			/* Some things misbehave if size == 0 on a directory */
+			inode->i_size = 1;
 			inode->i_op = &shmem_dir_inode_operations;
 			inode->i_fop = &dcache_dir_ops;
 			break;