EC
ELIBACC
Linux / POSIXERRORNotableProcessHIGH confidence

Cannot Access a Needed Shared Library

Production Risk

Deployment error; usually caused by incorrect file permissions after manual library installation.

What this means

ELIBACC (errno 79) is returned by execve() when the dynamic linker cannot access a shared library required by the executable — typically a permissions problem on the .so file.

Why it happens
  1. 1Shared library file has incorrect permissions (not world-readable)
  2. 2Shared library is owned by root with mode 600
How to reproduce

execve() of a binary whose .so dependency is not readable.

trigger — this will error
trigger — this will error
execve("/usr/local/bin/myapp", argv, envp);
// Returns -1, errno = ELIBACC if .so not accessible

expected output

execve: Cannot access a needed shared library (ELIBACC)

Fix

Fix shared library permissions

WHEN When ELIBACC is returned on exec

Fix shared library permissions
# Find the library and fix permissions
ldd /usr/local/bin/myapp
chmod a+r /path/to/libmylib.so.1
# Or
chmod 755 /path/to/libmylib.so.1

Why this works

Shared libraries must be readable by all users that will run programs depending on them.

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