No such file of directory when trying to execute binary file

Help
1

Hello,

I’m trying to run the demo of Robo Instructus, which I downloaded here: https://bigabgames.itch.io/robo-instructus

After unzipping the archive I have the following files:

drwxr-xr-x    - little-dude 28 Feb  1:20 lib
.rw-r--r-- 2.3k little-dude 28 Feb  1:20 README.txt
.rwxr-xr-x 157M little-dude 28 Feb  1:20 robo_instructus
.rwxr-xr-x  151 little-dude 28 Feb  1:20 run-robo-instructus.sh

However, I cannot execute the binary:

❯ ./robo_instructus
zsh: no such file or directory: ./robo_instructus

Even using the script provided with the archive:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

dir="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$dir/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH "$dir"/robo_instructus & disown

It gives:

❯ ./run-robo-instructus.sh
./run-robo-instructus.sh: line 4: /home/little-dude/robo-instructus-demo/robo_instructus: No such file or directory

After finding this SO question I thought it could be a problem with the executable being a 32-bits binary, but it actually is 64-bits:

❯ file robo_instructus
robo_instructus: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=12054b5cbdf015dc4c94a37051e2b7fb50c1301e, with debug_info, not stripped

That sounds a bit silly, but… do you know why I’m getting this error, and how I could run this binary on my system?

1 Like
2

You typically get this error when the dynamic loader cannot be found. There are several options: package the game and use e.g. autoPatchelfHook, patch the binary manually, or run the binary in a FHS environment. For the former two, see:

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Packaging/Binaries

For running the binary in an FHS environment, trying stream-run is probably the first good try:

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Steam

2 Likes
3

Thank you, I’m going through the “packaging binaries” tutorial right now, I’ll report back later!

4

There’s a bigger thread about this topic here if you’re curious: How to make NixOS so easy that people can be productive up front, without having to first learn the nix language?

The simplest is to try steam-run ./robo_instructus as already mentioned here but there are other solutions in the thread that might interest you as well

5

So I’m able to run the binary! Now I’d like to write a default.nix for it. I tried to adapt the given one, but the unpacking phase fails:

with import <nixpkgs> { };
stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
  buildInputs = [ pkgs.unzip ];
  name = "robo-instructus-demo";
  version = "1.0";

  src = [ ./robo-instructus-linux-demo.zip ];
  sourceRoot = ".";

  dontConfigure = true;
  dontBuild = true;

  installPhase = ''
    mkdir -p $out/{bin,lib}
    mv robo-instructus $out/bin/
    mv lib/* $out/lib/
  '';
  preFixup = let
    libPath = lib.makeLibraryPath [
      pkgs.alsaLib
      pkgs.glibc
      pkgs.xlibs.libxcb
      pkgs.xlibs.libX11
      pkgs.xlibs.libXcursor
      pkgs.xlibs.libXi
      pkgs.xlibs.libXrandr
      pkgs.libglvnd
      # FIXME:
      #
      # Somehow also include the path to the lib directory of the current
      # derivation's output path.
    ];
  in ''
    patchelf \
      --set-interpreter "$(cat $NIX_CC/nix-support/dynamic-linker)" \
      --set-rpath "${libPath}" \
      $out/bin/robo-instructus
  '';

  meta = with stdenv.lib; {
    homepage = "https://code-industry.net/masterpdfeditor/";
    description = "A programming game";

    # FIXME: build fails if we set this to unfree, although in
    # /etc/nixos/configuration.nix I have:
    #
    #   nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;
    #
    # license = licenses.unfree;

    platforms = platforms.linux;
    maintainers = [ "little-dude" ];
  };
}

The error:


[nix-shell:~/robo-instructus-demo/test]$ ls
default.nix  robo-instructus-linux-demo.zip

[nix-shell:~/robo-instructus-demo/test]$ nix-build 
these derivations will be built:
  /nix/store/sd4gw8ai7jh257yara3sj8k4m27978s3-robo-instructus-demo.drv
building '/nix/store/sd4gw8ai7jh257yara3sj8k4m27978s3-robo-instructus-demo.drv'...
unpacking sources
unpacking source archive /nix/store/mlf7jja8ns59hm7rwj611pjkxjppvagv-robo-instructus-linux-demo.zip
[/nix/store/mlf7jja8ns59hm7rwj611pjkxjppvagv-robo-instructus-linux-demo.zip]
  End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not
  a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the
  latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
  the last disk(s) of this archive.
unzip:  cannot find zipfile directory in one of /nix/store/mlf7jja8ns59hm7rwj611pjkxjppvagv-robo-instructus-linux-demo.zip or
        /nix/store/mlf7jja8ns59hm7rwj611pjkxjppvagv-robo-instructus-linux-demo.zip.zip, and cannot find /nix/store/mlf7jja8ns59hm7rwj611pjkxjppvagv-robo-instructus-linux-demo.zip.ZIP, period.
do not know how to unpack source archive /nix/store/mlf7jja8ns59hm7rwj611pjkxjppvagv-robo-instructus-linux-demo.zip
builder for '/nix/store/sd4gw8ai7jh257yara3sj8k4m27978s3-robo-instructus-demo.drv' failed with exit code 1
error: build of '/nix/store/sd4gw8ai7jh257yara3sj8k4m27978s3-robo-instructus-demo.drv' failed
10

Finally! I got a working version. The tricks was to set the dontPatchELF flag (not sure why):

# with import <nixpkgs> { config = { allowUnfree = true; }; };
with import <nixpkgs> {}; with pkgs;
stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
  name = "robo-instructus-demo";
  version = "1.0";
  buildInputs = [ pkgs.unzip 
      alsaLib
      glibc
      xlibs.libxcb
      xlibs.libX11
      xlibs.libXcursor
      xlibs.libXi
      xlibs.libXrandr
      libglvnd ];
  src = ./robo-instructus-linux-demo.zip ;
  sourceRoot = ".";
  dontConfigure = true;
  dontBuild = true;
  installPhase = ''
    mkdir -p $out/{bin,lib}
    mv robo_instructus $out/bin/robo-instructus-demo
    mv lib/* $out/lib/
  '';
  dontPatchELF = true;
  preFixup = let
    libPath = lib.makeLibraryPath [
      alsaLib
      glibc
      xlibs.libxcb
      xlibs.libX11.out
      xlibs.libXcursor
      xlibs.libXi
      xlibs.libXrandr
      libglvnd
    ];
  in ''
    rPath="${libPath}:$out/lib"
    echo $rPath
    patchelf \
      --set-interpreter "$(cat $NIX_CC/nix-support/dynamic-linker)" \
      --set-rpath $rPath \
      $out/bin/robo-instructus-demo
  '';
  meta = with stdenv.lib; {
    homepage = "https://www.roboinstruct.us/";
    description = "A programming game";
    license = licenses.unfree;
    platforms = platforms.linux;
    maintainers = [ "little-dude" ];
  };
}

Does that look like a decent derivation?