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"Bad ELF interpreter"?

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2019 4:24 pm
by jwermont
I have a number of old scripts and compiled C programs. These have run with no problems since the shell server upgrade last year. But all of a sudden, today, several of my scripts have been failing with the error "Bad ELF interpreter."

I searched online for that phrase and got a lot of hits, but I'm afraid the discussions are over my head. I'm not a Unix/Linux admin, just a user. And even if I did understand them, it seems like in order to fix the problem, I'd have to have root access, which of course, I don't.

I think it's important that my old scripts and programs were working until today, so whatever broke them didn't happen during the upgrade.

Does anyone have a clue what happened? Thanks.

Re: "Bad ELF interpreter"?

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 10:12 am
by joemuller
Hi, it looks like some of your programs are still compiled as 32-bit. During the most recent round of package updates on the shell server, some of the 32-bit shared libraries were inadvertently removed. I'll see if I can get the missing compatibility libraries reinstalled, but as a short-term solution, you can re-compile as 64-bit.

Re: "Bad ELF interpreter"?

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 4:37 pm
by jwermont
Thank you! That makes a lot of sense. I've been recompiling programs as I've needed them, and those are now working, so that must be it.