'make menuconfig' Fails on Linux Mint 14, works fine on Ubuntu 12.04

HellesAngel · 02-12-2013, 10:20 AM

Hello everyone,

While trying to resurrect an old embedded Linux project I've run into some problems. I have installed a clean Linux Mint 14 VM, installed the required compilers & tools (a long list) and copied the usual build files I need from a .iso file used to compile an ARM cross-compiler toolchain.

The next step is the configuration, which immediately fails:

Quote:

linuxmint ~/ICnova $ make menuconfig
/bin/bash: package/config/mconf: No such file or directory

The package/config/mconf file is present, the libncurses5-dev is installed, and indeed

Quote:

make busybox-menuconfig

seems to work fine so it seems to be something odd in the makefiles associated with menuconfig - something I know nothing about.

This has worked fine on my old SuSE and Ubuntu setups, I've Googled this as much as I can now I'm stumped. Any ideas how to debug this one?

theNbomr · 02-13-2013, 09:13 AM

It may actually be a library that is missing. Run ldd against the mconf binary, and see what libraries it wants to link to. Make sure all of those are installed and locatable by the loader ld.
--- rod.

HellesAngel · 02-15-2013, 11:40 AM

Many thanks for the answer, that has pushed me in the right direction.

Quote:

linuxmint ~/ICnova $ make menuconfig
/bin/bash: package/config/mconf: No such file or directory
linuxmint ~/ICnova $ ldd package/config/mconf
not a dynamic executable
linuxmint ~/ICnova $ readelf -l package/config/mconf

Elf file type is EXEC (Executable file)
Entry point 0x8049a20
There are 7 program headers, starting at offset 52

Program Headers:
Type Offset VirtAddr PhysAddr FileSiz MemSiz Flg Align
PHDR 0x000034 0x08048034 0x08048034 0x000e0 0x000e0 R E 0x4
INTERP 0x000114 0x08048114 0x08048114 0x00013 0x00013 R 0x1
[Requesting program interpreter: /lib/ld-linux.so.2]
...

whereas there's nothing there at /lib/... it's all in /lib64/ anyway the answer seems to be pretty clear that it's a 32bit executable failing to run on a 64 bit operating system. See also here:
http://superuser.com/questions/19425...-try-to-run-it

I award a big FAIL to whoever decided that was the appropriate error message.

Anyway, the solution was to remove the existing mconf file, and all the *.o files hanging around from a previous 32 bit build, to force a recompilation. This now generates a new mconf that works.