16

Clearly my file exists in /usr/bin

$ ls /usr/bin/ngrok
/usr/bin/ngrok

However, when I attempt to chown it I receive an error

$ sudo chown my_user:users /usr/bin/ngrok
chown: cannot dereference '/usr/bin/ngrok': No such file or directory

Further attempts to run it also fail!

$ ngrok
bash: ngrok: command not found
$ sudo /usr/bin/ngrok
sudo: /usr/bin/ngrok: command not found

What is happening here?

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1
  • The third point could happen as well if '/usr/bin/' is not in your PATH. You should have tested with /usr/bin/ngrok to be a complete symmetry of the following case with sudo.
    – Patrick Mevzek
    Feb 5, 2018 at 16:47

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
52

/usr/bin/ngrok will be a symlink that points nowhere (or rather to a non-existing file). Check with ls -l.

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3
  • 13
    The "cannot dereference" error is the dead giveaway here. You don't "dereference" a normal file, you open it.
    – Kevin
    Feb 5, 2018 at 7:13
  • 1
    Or readlink -f /usr/bin/ngrok to find where the link should point to.
    – Eric Duminil
    Feb 5, 2018 at 13:19
  • or namei -l /usr/bin/ngrok
    – hanshenrik
    Feb 6, 2018 at 16:09
5

Given the chown error, the most likely possibility is that it's a symlink, as answered by Sven. However, just for reference in case somebody ends up here for cases where the file exists and is not a link, but gives a command-not-found/file-not-found error, one more possibility is that the executable is dynamically linked and for some reason it's not able to load libraries:

  • missing library (run ldd on the binary to see those)
  • missing loader
  • apparmor denying access to a library or loader
  • ...

Also, for a script, if the interpreter in the shebang could not be executed for similar reasons, you'd get the same error.

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1
  • Even more confusing, this can indeed result in an enigmatic "no such file or directory.".
    – rackandboneman
    Feb 6, 2018 at 10:11
0

You also have the option of changing ownership of the symlink itself with

chown -h my_user:users /usr/bin/ngrok

if you don't wish (or have permission) to change ownership of the target file.

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12
  • 2
    I'm not certain how this answers the question - the question is "What is happening here?" and the problem is that the target file doesn't exist. This doesn't solve the problem and it doesn't answer the question.
    – wizzwizz4
    Feb 5, 2018 at 20:57
  • 1
    @wizzwizz4 I suppose you can also interpret the question as "the file does exist (the symlink is a file), why does it tell me otherwise and why can't I change its ownership?" This answer covers that interpretation. Sven's just assumes (probably correctly) the OP wants to work with the target file.
    – JoL
    Feb 5, 2018 at 22:24
  • 1
    @muru This is not applicable on a Linux system, which does not have permissions for symlinks. Actually, Linux is one of the few (is the only?) of POSIX-family OSes that does have the ability to set symlink owner/group. See the Linux chown(1) man page. Possible reasons Linux does this are discussed at unix.stackexchange.com/questions/33180/…
    – Andrew Henle
    Feb 6, 2018 at 2:53
  • 2
    @AndrewHenle and how does that help? Changing owner/group for a symlink makes no difference here since the permissions applied when executing are always of the target file. So you could have a link owned by whoever, but changing the ownership on that link makes absolutely no difference to the permissions considered when executing it.
    – muru
    Feb 6, 2018 at 2:57
  • 1
    @muru and how does that help? Read the question I already linked since it specifically asks: "In linux it's possible to change the owner or the group owner of a symbolic link (symlink). I was wondering why someone would want to do that, since permissions of a symlink are not used when accessing a file through it"
    – Andrew Henle
    Feb 6, 2018 at 8:53

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