gdb During startup program exited with code 127

Question

Wanted to use gdb as a debugger in Linux Debian. Trying to run a binary I get this:

(gdb) r
Starting program: /usr/local/sbin/test 
/bin/bash: /usr/local/sbin/test: No such file or directory
During startup program exited with code 127.
(gdb) 

I guess it's supposed to be elementary. But I googled a lot and most common answer is

$ export SHELL=/bin/bash

This doesn't help. I also tried to change PATH for binaries execution, tried to run from different directory... Still the same.

Could you please help me with that?

Solution

/bin/bash: /usr/local/sbin/test: No such file or directory

There are two common causes of this:

1. the file /usr/local/sbin/test doesn't exist
2. the file does exist, is a dynamically linked executable, and the ELF interpreter that it specifies does not exist.

For #1, the answer is obvious: you need a file to debug.

For #2, you can find out which ELF interpreter the file requires like so:

readelf -l /usr/local/sbin/test | grep interpreter

You likely have a 32-bit binary pointing to /lib/ld-linux.so.2 on a 64-bit system without 32-bit runtime support installed. Depending on the distribution you are using, something like sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 should do the trick.

---

Recent versions of the file command also print the interpreter:

file ./a.out 
./a.out: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ... interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.2, ...

Comments

[humme1]

Thanks a lot! That was really the case.64-bit system without 32-bit runtime support. Works fine now.

[PMat]

@humme1 I have the same problem, but mine is 64bit binary so the output of above command is [Requesting program interpreter: /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2]. Any idea?

[Employed Russian]

@PMat Are you running this binary on a 64-bit Linux system? Approximately nothing should work on it if ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 is missing.

[PMat]

@EmployedRussian. Yes i am on a 64-bit linux and /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 exists on my machine.

[PMat]

@EmployedRussian that was confusing, I installed the above package anyways, now gdb loads the binary but it says can't find the so files even though there are in the solib-search-path

[Employed Russian]

@PMat You should probably ask a separate question, with details of what is installed on your system, what exactly you observe, whether the program runs outside of GDB, etc. etc.

[PMat]

@EmployedRussian sure stackoverflow.com/questions/46437172/…

[Lokesh Sanapalli]

@EmployedRussian Hi, struggling with same problem, libc6:i386 is already installed, set SHELL env, build-essential is already the latest version. Tried everything, but nothing worked out. Please help

[Lokesh Sanapalli]

@PMat Hi, struggling with same problem, libc6:i386 is already installed, set SHELL env, build-essential is already the latest version. Tried everything, but nothing worked out. Please help