How do I run an extensionless (maybe ELF) file on Ubuntu?

Question

I was given a "binary" file on linux and a seperate file for windows for a particular task. The programs is an exe on windows. A linux version of the file has the same function on linux as it had windows, too.

However, I've failed to be able to execute this. I tried (on the terminal) to execute it by just the file name, ./[filename] , and even tried chmod +x [filename] and then tried the second way.

For everything... I get the result: "Command not found". (The file is definitely there, by the way).

What am I supposed to do? The file command on it yields:

ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=e805f746e65c09cc8b0c037d8a8c27ee0a6a051c

Answer 1

My guess is that this is 32 bit compile on a 64 bit system. I cross compiled a small c file into a binary using the -m32 option on gcc. This also needed a few extra packages. The resulting a.out looks like this.

% file a.out
a.out: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=be02470c8337b96e7deaaff323bc53865991c3ab, not stripped

Compare this to a native system binary

% file /bin/ls
/bin/ls: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=a0823e17cafbe5b2296346216445566840fdfd88, stripped

Running the a.out shows me this.

% ./a.out
zsh: no such file or directory: ./a.out

The specific "Command not found" message is something, I think, bash prints. I use zsh myself.

To get this to work, you can install the multilib packages. I didn't narrow it down to the exact package but installing gcc-multilib on Debian pulls in everything you need. After installing that, here's what I get.

% ./a.out
3.140523

(the program is supposed to estimate the value of PI).

Note: I actually needed to install gcc-multilib just to compile the file. I then uninstalled the packages to mimic a 64 bit system that doesn't have the 32 bit runtime libraries that the thing needs.

Answer 2

does the a.out have executable permission?

check with ls -la cmd and if does no then add the permission using chmod a+x a.out an d then try executing