Re: `ls` shows file, `bash` says "No such file" ???

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com> wrote:

For background on my problem (and why I very much need to solve it), see http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=190&t=166506&p=855700#p855700

But the essence of the problem appears to be

me@it ~ $ /usr/local/share/firefox-3.6.28/firefox-bin

I'm thinking it odd that you are trying to execute a file in /usr/local/share. Maybe that's just me?

bash: /usr/local/share/firefox-3.6.28/firefox-bin: No such file or directory

My memory is that sometimes you get the file-not-found messaged when an executable tries to load a shared library which is not there. firefox depends on a lot of shared libraries, and if one is not there, the library linking loader will complain.

[127]me@it ~ $ lsalh /usr/local/share/firefox-3.6.28/firefox-bin

I assume that was supposed to be "ls -alh"?

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 44K Mar 6 2012 /usr/local/share/firefox-3.6.28/firefox-bin
me@it ~ $ sudo /usr/local/share/firefox-3.6.28/firefox-bin
sudo: unable to execute /usr/local/share/firefox-3.6.28/firefox-bin: No such file or directory
me@it ~ $ groups
me sudo staff lpadmin

Yeah, sudo is not likely to help if the problem is a missing library.

How is it possible that `ls` can list a file, but `bash` says "No such file"?

Well, actually, in addition to the missing library problem, yes, permissions issues could raise their ugly head, especially if you are using globbing somewhere and the shell can't find what you tried to glob, to pass it to the command you are trying to sudo, but that really is not likely to be the problem here.

Note that everything else seems to work on this box, which FWIW is

me@it ~ $ uname -a
Linux it 3.11-2-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.11.8-1 (2013-11-13) x86_64 GNU/Linux
me@it ~ $ cat /etc/debian_version
jessie/sid

so it's not like the box is "just broken." FWIW, /usr/local/share/firefox-3.6.28/firefox-bin is 32-bit,

See?

Did you install the 32 bit emulation layer (with its libraries)? (What was that, multiarch or ia32-libs or something? I've started to install one of those a couple of times and decided I didn't want the clutter, but if you want to run 32-bit executables on a 64-bit system, I'm pretty sure you have to have it.)

In fact, just how did you go about installing firefox?

while the rest of the box is 64-bit. I don't see how that could cause *this* problem, but that's the only thing unusual about /usr/local/share/firefox-3.6.28/firefox-bin (of which I'm aware).

desperately confused, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>

Iceweasel is not that old anymore, especially not in sid. What are you trying to do?

--
Joel Rees

Be careful where you see conspiracy.
Look first in your own heart.