CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxmacosexecutable
Hephaes
Hephaes

Reputation: 25

Is this file unable to be executed in macOS?

Background

I have a Unix Executable File called mason_simulator. I checked its properties in macOS terminal via 

file mason_simulator

And the results is the following:

mason_simulator: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=f020e84c15ef18a541d6bce9376f58fe3e547448, not stripped

Question Does this imply that this file cannot be executed in macOS? Because when I double click it, the error message: 'cannot execute binary file' appears.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1481

Answers (1)

bk2204
bk2204

Reputation: 76459

In general, binaries that are designed for one OS cannot be executed on another. Your binary is designed for Linux, so it will not run on macOS. There are emulators that allow this in some cases, although macOS does not ship with one.

In addition, your binary, like most Linux binaries, is an ELF executable, and macOS uses Mach-O executables. The macOS kernel wouldn't even be able to parse the binary format to execute it.

If you want to run this binary on a Mac, you can try using Docker or a Linux VM to run this binary.

Upvotes: 8

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