Ubuntu – No such file or directory? But the file exists!

64-bitexecutablefilesgames

I've downloaded a game (Shank) but the bin file doesn't run. The error that is shown when I try to launch the executable is:

bash: ./shank-linux-120720110-1-bin: No such file or directory

Best Answer

You're probably trying to run a 32-bit binary on a 64-bit system that doesn't have 32-bit support installed.

There are three cases where you can get the message “No such file or directory”:

The file doesn't exist. I presume you've checked that the file does exist (perhaps because the shell completes it).
There is a file by that name, but it's a dangling symbolic link.
The file exists, and you can even read it (for example, the command file shank-linux-120720110-1-bin displays something like “ELF 32-bit LSB executable …”), and yet when you try to execute it you're told that the file doesn't exist.

The error message in this last case is admittedly confusing. What it's telling you is that a key component of the runtime environment necessary to run the program is missing. Unfortunately, the channel through which the error is reported only has room for the error code and not for this extra information that it's really the runtime environment that's to blame. If you want the technical version of this explanation, read Getting “Not found” message when running a 32-bit binary on a 64-bit system.

The file command will tell you just what this binary is. With a few exceptions, you can only run a binary for the processor architecture that your release of Ubuntu is for. The main exception is that you can run 32-bit (x86, a.k.a. IA32) binaries on 64-bit (amd64, a.k.a. x86_64) systems.

In Ubuntu up to 11.04, to run a 32-bit binary on a 64-bit installation, you need to install the ia32-libs package . You may need to install additional libraries (you'll get an explicit error message if you do).

Since 11.10 (oneiric) introduced multiarch support, you can still install ia32-libs, but you can choose a finer-grained approach, it's enough to get libc6-i386 (plus any other necessary library).

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Ubuntu – launching executable from /usr/local/bin needs access to local file

Instead of the symbolic link you can create a wrapper script in /usr/local/bin:

#! /bin/sh
cd /opt/octane
exec ./octane "$@"

Make the script executable with chmod +x /usr/local/bin/octane.

The "$@" are the command line arguments, so you can still run octane an_argument.

The script changes the CWD (current working directory) only inside the script, because the script is run in a whole new shell instance which ends at the end of the script. Changing the current working directory for the executable might actually be a problem if you want to give a relative pathname to the executable. E.g. if you are in your home directory and run octane a_file_in_the_home_directory, it doesn't work, because the octane executable is called with a CWD of /opt/octane, and a_file_in_the_home_directory is not in /opt/octane. If that is a concern, you can either remember to give absolute pathnames only (octane ~/a_file_in_the_home_directory) or use a more complicated version of the script.

Ubuntu – “No such file or directory”, but the file exists

varscore_pipeline is a Python script. It begins with a shebang line that points to the interpreter that must execute the script. The path to the interpreter is usr/bin/python2.6, and this file doesn't exist.

First, that line is wrong. The shebang line must have an absolute path. Change #!usr/bin/python2.6 to #!/usr/bin/python2.6.

Depending on your version of Ubuntu, you may or may not have /usr/bin/python2.6. If you only have a later version such as 2.7, change the shebang line to #!/usr/bin/python2. It is highly unlikely that the program would work with 2.6 but not 2.7. Python 2.x versions are upward compatible. (But don't change to /usr/bin/python3, there are incompatibilities between Python 2 and Python 3.)

See /bin/sh: ./check-dependencies.pl: not found — but check-dependencies.pl exists! for more explanations.

Best Answer

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