Posix: Exec format error

Michael P. Reilly arcege at shore.net
Wed Jun 2 11:02:34 EDT 1999


Rolf Wester <WESTER at ilt.fhg.de> wrote:
: Hi,

: when doing the following:

: import os
: id=os.fork()
: if id == 0:
:     os.execl("/home/wester/test/test","-d", "indata")
: else:
:     os.wait()

: I get the error message:

: OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error

: Can aybody tell me how the format should look like?

Usually Errno 8 (ENOEXEC) means that the file is executable but not a
valid, understandable format.  This could be because it is not a valid
binary executable for that machine, the binary is corrupted (eg. copied
over FTP in ASCII mode), or if a shell script does not have a proper
shebang line (#!).

Can you run /home/wester/test/test from the command line?  If it is as
script, is the first line (#!) correct?  Incidently, for OS problems,
it is usually a good idea to say what OS you are using.

  -Arcege





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