ntp cannot open shared object file: Permission denied

Question

On a server I haven't worked on, ntpd is broken:

# /etc/init.d/ntpd start
ntpd: error while loading shared libraries:
  libz.so.1: cannot open shared object file: Permission denied

but permissions look right:

# locate libz.so.1 | xargs ls -l
lrwxrwxrwx root root /usr/lib64/libz.so.1 -> libz.so.1.2.3
-rwxr-xr-x root root /usr/lib64/libz.so.1.2.3
lrwxrwxrwx root root /usr/lib/libz.so.1 -> libz.so.1.2.3
-rwxr-xr-x root root /usr/lib/libz.so.1.2.3
-rw-r--r-- root root /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32/libz.so.1/libz.so.1
-rw-r--r-- root root /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib64/libz.so.1/libz.so.1
-rw-r--r-- root root /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32/libz.so.1
-rw-r--r-- root root /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib64/libz.so.1

LD_LIBRARY_PATH is empty and the server is 64 bit:

# uname -a
Linux my.server 2.6.18-128.el5 #1 SMP [...] x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Update:

# ldd /usr/sbin/ntpd
libz.so.1 => /usr/lib64/libz.so.1

and

# ls -l /usr/lib64/libz.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx root root /usr/lib64/libz.so.1 -> libz.so.1.2.3
# ls -l /usr/lib64/libz.so.1.2.3
-rwxr-xr-x root root /usr/lib64/libz.so.1.2.3

Solution

I have seen similar issue with one of my application and it was due to selinux in enforcing state. Change : /etc/selinux/config from SELINUX=enforcing ## or permissive to SELINUX=disabled

This should fix it. http://sysadminupdates.com/blog/2015/05/11/so-cannot-open-shared-object-file-permission-denied/

Comments

[derobert]

What does ldd /usr/sbin/ntpd give? Also, are you running SELinux or similar?

[Philippe Blayo]

@derobert: I don't think it's a SELinux, but how to be sure? ldd looks right, I've updated the question.

[Gilles 'SO- stop being evil']

Weird. What distribution is this exactly (some kind of RHEL5, but official or CentOS or other, and what version)? Please post the output of strace /usr/sbin/ntpd. If that doesn't fail, post the output of bash -x /etc/init.d/ntpd start.