"No such file or directory" but it exists

Shell Problem Overview

I simply want to run an executable from the command line, ./arm-mingw32ce-g++, but then I get the error message,

bash: ./arm-mingw32ce-g++: No such file or directory

I'm running Ubuntu Linux 10.10. ls -l lists

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  433308 2010-10-16 21:32 arm-mingw32ce-g++

Using sudo (sudo ./arm-mingw32ce-g++) gives

sudo: unable to execute ./arm-mingw32ce-g++: No such file or directory

I have no idea why the OS can't even see the file when it's there. Any thoughts?

Shell Solutions

Solution 1 - Shell

This error can mean that ./arm-mingw32ce-g++ doesn't exist (but it does), or that it exists and is a dynamically linked executable recognized by the kernel but whose dynamic loader is not available. You can see what dynamic loader is required by running ldd /arm-mingw32ce-g++; anything marked not found is the dynamic loader or a library that you need to install.

If you're trying to run a 32-bit binary on an amd64 installation:

Up to Ubuntu 11.04, install the package ia32-libs.
On Ubuntu 11.10, install ia32-libs-multiarch.
Starting with 12.04, install ia32-libs-multiarch, or select a reasonable set of :i386 packages in addition to the :amd64 packages.

Solution 2 - Shell

I faced this error when I was trying to build Selenium source on Ubuntu. The simple shell script with correct shebang was not able to run even after I had all pre-requisites covered.

file file-name # helped me in understanding that CRLF ending were present in the file.

I opened the file in Vim and I could see that just because I once edited this file on a Windows machine, it was in DOS format. I converted the file to Unix format with below command:

dos2unix filename # actually helped me and things were fine.

I hope that we should take care whenever we edit files across platforms we should take care for the file formats as well.

Solution 3 - Shell

This error may also occur if trying to run a script and the shebang is misspelled. Make sure it reads #!/bin/sh, #!/bin/bash, or whichever interpreter you're using.

Solution 4 - Shell

I had the same error message when trying to run a Python script -- this was not @Warpspace's intended use case (see other comments), but this was among the top hits to my search, so maybe somebody will find it useful.

In my case it was the DOS line endings (\r\n instead of \n) that the shebang line (#!/usr/bin/env python) would trip over. A simple dos2unix myfile.py fixed it.

Solution 5 - Shell

I found my solution for my Ubuntu 18 here.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Then:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386

Solution 6 - Shell

I got the same error for a simple bash script that wouldn't have 32/64-bit issues. This is possibly because the script you are trying to run has an error in it. This ubuntu forum post indicates that with normal script files you can add sh in front and you might get some debug output from it. e.g.

$ sudo sh arm-mingw32ce-g++

and see if you get any output.

In my case the actual problem was that the file that I was trying to execute was in Windows format rather than Linux.

Solution 7 - Shell

I got this error “No such file or directory” but it exists because my file was created in Windows and I tried to run it on Ubuntu and the file contained invalid 15\r where ever a new line was there. I just created a new file truncating unwanted stuff

sleep: invalid time interval ‘15\r’
Try 'sleep --help' for more information.
script.sh: 5: script.sh: /opt/ag/cont: not found
script.sh: 6: script.sh: /opt/ag/cont: not found
root@Ubuntu14:/home/abc12/Desktop# vi script.sh 
root@Ubuntu14:/home/abc12/Desktop# od -c script.sh 
0000000   #   !   /   u   s   r   /   b   i   n   /   e   n   v       b
0000020   a   s   h  \r  \n   w   g   e   t       h   t   t   p   :   /

0000400   :   4   1   2   0   /  \r  \n
0000410
root@Ubuntu14:/home/abc12/Desktop# tr -d \\015 < script.sh > script.sh.fixed
root@Ubuntu14:/home/abc12/Desktop# od -c script.sh.fixed 
0000000   #   !   /   u   s   r   /   b   i   n   /   e   n   v       b
0000020   a   s   h  \n   w   g   e   t       h   t   t   p   :   /   /

0000400   /  \n
0000402
root@Ubuntu14:/home/abc12/Desktop# sh -x script.sh.fixed

Solution 8 - Shell

Below command worked on 16.4 Ubuntu

This issue comes when your .sh file is corrupt or not formatted as per unix protocols.

dos2unix converts the .sh file to Unix format!

sudo apt-get install dos2unix -y
dos2unix test.sh
sudo chmod u+x test.sh 
sudo ./test.sh

Solution 9 - Shell

As mentioned by others, this is because the loader can't be found, not your executable file. Unfortunately the message is not clear enough.

You can fix it by changing the loader that your executable uses, see my thorough answer in this other question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/847179/multiple-glibc-libraries-on-a-single-host/44710599#44710599

Basically you have to find which loader it's trying to use:

$ readelf -l arm-mingw32ce-g++ | grep interpreter
  [Requesting program interpreter: /lib/ld-linux.so.2]

Then find the right path for an equivalent loader, and change your executable to use the loader from the path that it really is:

$ ./patchelf --set-interpreter /path/to/newglibc/ld-linux.so.2 arm-mingw32ce-g++

You will probably need to set the path of the includes too, you will know if you want it or not after you try to run it. See all the details in that other thread.

Solution 10 - Shell

I had the same problem with a file that I've created on my mac. If I try to run it in a shell with ./filename I got the file not found error message. I think that something was wrong with the file.

what I've done:

open a ssh session to the server
cat filename
copy the output to the clipboard
rm filename
touch filename
vi filename
i for insert mode
paste the content from the clipboard
ESC to end insert mode
:wq!

This worked for me.

Solution 11 - Shell

I just had this issue in mingw32 bash. I had execuded node/npm from Program Files (x86)\nodejs and then moved them into disabled directory (essentially removing them from path). I also had Program Files\nodejs (ie. 64bit version) in path, but only after the x86 version. After restarting the bash shell, the 64bit version of npm could be found. node worked correctly all the time (checked with node -v that changed when x86 version was moved).

I think bash -r would've worked instead of restarting bash: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/5610

Solution 12 - Shell

I had this issue and the reason was EOL in some editors such as Notepad++. You can check it in Edit menu/EOL conversion. Unix(LF) should be selected. I hope it would be useful.

Solution 13 - Shell

Added here for future reference (for users who might fall into the same case): This error happens when working on Windows (which introduces extra characters because of different line separator than Linux system) and trying to run this script (with extra characters inserted) in Linux. The error message is misleading.

In Windows, the line separator is CRLF (\r\n) whereas in linux it is LF (\n). This can be usually be chosen in text editor.

In my case, this happened due to working on Windows and uploading to Unix server for execution.

Solution 14 - Shell

Hit this error trying to run terraform/terragrunt (Single go binary).

Using which terragrunt to find where executable was, got strange error when running it in local dir or with full path

bash: ./terragrunt: No such file or directory

Problem was that there was two installations of terragrunt, used brew uninstall terragrunt to remove one fixed it.

After removing the one, which terragrunt showed the new path /usr/bin/terragrunt everything worked fine.

Solution 15 - Shell

For those encountering this error when running a java program, it's possible that you're trying to run a 64-bit java program using on a 32-bit linux operating system.

I only realised when I ran ldd on 64-bit java which reported:

ldd /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_05/bin/java

'not a dynamic executable'

Whereas the old 32 bit java reported sensible results: