binary is able to run only when run after creating a symbolic link to it

Question

I am facing a rather strange problem. I have a 32 bit qmake binary placed at a very deep path. So for ease of use I created a link using

ln -s /complicated/path/to/qmake ~/qmake

I am running a 64 bit machine. So I installed 32 bit libraries. The binary is failing to load when I run

~/qmake

it reports an error saying no such file or directory when the file is there. but runs smoothly when I use 32 bit laoder

/lib/ld-linux.so.2 ~/qmake

The more insteresting thing here is. If I run

/lib/ld-linux.so.2 /complicated/path/to/qmake

it displays an error e.g

qmake: @ɇ�: QRU�4��̀]ZY�: H: Error 18446744073564424934

but as I have already mentioned the binary gets loaded using the symbolic link

so I have 2 problems here.

Why I have to explicitly mention the loader with the application
Why error with the complete path ... when the symbolic link is running fine ?

Just my guess concerning question #2: perhaps it is a problem of the path exceeding max length in Linux? Please do a grep -e PATH_MAX -e NAME_MAX /usr/include/linux/limits.h and compare with your "very deep path" length. Not sure if this is the cause -- logically, this should also concern the symlink. — dr_, May 20 '15 at 08:03
What about the complicated path itself, are there any special characters ? — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, May 20 '15 at 08:17
@Serg yes there are ... but If that is the case should the symbolic link work or nor ? — theadnangondal, May 20 '15 at 08:20
@theadnangondal should work. What I've done is I've tried creating a TEST\DIR on my desktop and created symbolic link to it in my home directory. cd TEST\DIR took me to another directory TESTDIR, which is OK, backslash is for escapes and since i didnt escape anything there, it's ignored, right ? but cd TEST\\DIR worked as it should have, so maybe some of the characters in the path need to be escaped, perhaps — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, May 20 '15 at 08:29
Not an expert on ln so I guess that's all I could suggest for now — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, May 20 '15 at 08:30
@Serg thansk 4 ur help ... but I have tried making a new dir with all those special chars in the path. And it worked for me ... don't know why the original is not working — theadnangondal, May 20 '15 at 08:35
@theadnangondal so you've a new directory without special characters there, right ? My guess just might have been right — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, May 20 '15 at 08:38
@Serg NO. the directory I created HAS special characters and it worked. — theadnangondal, May 20 '15 at 09:53

binary is able to run only when run after creating a symbolic link to it

0 Answers0