Help! All builtin apps giving error: "cannot execute binary"

English Applications
1

I have no idea what happened but here’s the situation:

  1. If I execute any app that is installed in the root (bin or whatever), such as “tar” or “ls” it says:
 bash: /home/MyUserName/bin/ls: cannot execute binary file
          or
 bash: /home/MyUserName/bin/tar: cannot execute binary file

NOTE: the above happens when i just type “tar” at the command line or “ls” with no path.

  1. If I execute the app directly (such as “/bin/tar”) it works!

What could have happened? How do i fix this?

NOTE: If I do “echo $PATH”, I see /bin in there!

2

Hi
Sounds like your PATH variable is screwed up, have you been playing
with your ~/.profile?

What do you get if you try the following command in a terminal;


/bin/echo $PATH

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.27.29-0.1-default
up 10 days 11:15, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.03
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - CUDA Driver Version: 190.18

3

Not that I know of, that’s why this is so weird.

NOTE: I just looked for the file “~/.profile” and it says it was last modified a year ago

/home/MyUsername/downloads/java/jdk/jdk1.5.0_16/bin:/home/MyUsername/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/games:/usr/lib/mit/bin:/usr/lib/mit/sbin:.:/home/MyUsername/downloads/java/jdk/jdk1.5.0_16/bin:/home/MyUsername/apps/ant/bin:/opt/kde3/bin:/home/MyUsername/downloads/java/jdk/jdk1.5.0_16/bin

4

This is a weird question but: what is busybox and could this be the issue?

Let me explain: I found that there’s a bin folder in my home directory and all of these apps don’t run. When I view them in Dolphin, it says they’re “link to busybox”. I have no idea what that is, but could there be some issue there?

5

Hi
Looks like the java stuff has been adding in paths, which you have
multiple times?

It looks in the order of the PATH output for files to run, if you have
links in your ‘/home/MyUsername/bin’ it will look there first hence
your problem if it’s linking to busybox stuff. Did you install some
application that uses busybox? If you rename your home bin directory
temporarily eg old_bin then see how it goes (I’m guessing things will
work again).

Then if you could show the output from the command ls -la in the
old_bin directory so we can see what is linking where, to advise what
can be removed etc.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.2 RC 1 (i586) Kernel 2.6.31.3-1-desktop
up 2 days 11:52, 1 user, load average: 0.11, 0.19, 0.23
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

6

in addition to your problems, this quote would be MORE than enough
reason for me to dump BusyBox immediately:

“In late 2007, BusyBox also came to prominence for actively
prosecuting alleged, and in at least one case proven, violations of
its copyright under GPL in US-based courts of law.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox

i mean, it sounds exactly like something an anti-opensource company
(like M$) would front…

–
palladium

7

Just out of curiosity, what are the contents of /home/MyUserName/bin . It seems to me that you have copies of programs in there that are found before those in /usr/bin etc…

8

i’ve not seen his machine, but from reading about BusyBox what he
should have is NOT a copy, but rather something new…for example, if
he typed mv instead of the REAL mv (/bin/mv) the EARLIER found in the
path (/home/MyUserName/bin/mv) REPLACEMENT from BusyBox would be
executed…

no thank you!! not for me…

to me, it sounds just a user installed root kit…

–
palladium