ARM 32-bit ELF does not execute using qemu-arm

Question

On my Ubuntu 18.04 machine, I am using qemu-arm to execute a 32-bit ELF file for ARM platform as shown below:

$ file bin
bin: ELF 32-bit LSB  executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, BuildID[sha1]=5018caf41114f911f0a0fd09c4f9a0bb1191c87a, not stripped

$ qemu-arm bin
bin: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

On another machine which has an ARM processor, I get the following output by running ldd on the binary:

$ ldd bin
    libc.so.6 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libc.so.6 (0xb6e25000)
    /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3 (0xb6f11000)

On my Linux machine, I have installed: ld-linux-armhf.so.3 and its located in the path: /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3

$ ls -l /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Feb 25  2014 /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3 -> ld-2.19.so

I created the symlink:

$ sudo ln -s /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3 /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3

However, even then the binary does not execute because it is unable to find and load the file, libc.so.6.

How do I resolve this?

Solution

Prefix the LD_LIBRARY_PATH with /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf: (or just set it to /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf if it's empty on the line invoking the executable:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf qemu-arm bin

That should allow the executable to find the file.

Comments

[LeanMan]

How did you install ld-linux-armhf.so.3? I am running into this issue right now. I'm on a x86_64 Ubuntu VM 16.04 and I'd like to run a binary with qemu-arm that has a similar file output to yours except mine is stripped: bin: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped

[Neon Flash]

Thanks, it works.