What does the message ``Bad CPU type in executable'' mean in terminal window?

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Junzo_II Author

Level 1

5 points

What does the message ``Bad CPU type in executable'' mean in terminal window?

All the time I have been using TEX on my computer to handle mathematical symbols.

I have several macintosh machines.

Usually I used tex on the terminal (rather than texshop or texwork).

Quite recently when I input ``platex filename.tex,’’

I received the message ``Bad CPU type in executable.’’

On another machine, I receive the message which says “platex” failed: the

PowerPC architecture is no longer supported.

I have no idea why this happens.

Will anyone help me?

It occured when I typed ``platex foo.tex,'' in an attempt to compile a tex file.

Mac mini (Late 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Apr 25, 2014 10:14 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Frank Caggiano

Level 7

25,969 points

Apr 26, 2014 3:20 PM in response to Junzo_II

PowerPC architecture is no longer supported.

This mean you have an old executable that was compiled for a Power PC Mac (the ones before they got the Intel chips). On systems running 10.6 (Snow Leopard) there was code called Rosetta that was able to run the PPC code on the Intel CPU, That went away in 10.7

Sounds like you recently upgraded to 10.8 from 10.6 or earlier and copied the binary to the new OS.

If you compiled the code yourself you need to recompile it for the new OS. If you installed the binary you need to go to the site you got the binary from and see if there is a newer version for Intel Macs.

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Answer 2

lili5058

Level 1

0 points

Dec 21, 2014 9:37 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

I was searching for 'Bad CPU type in executable' and came across this thread.

I have been migrating my Mac from way back in 2006, so I'm running into these errors because (I presume from having read a few threads on this) the last time unix commands like 'less' or 'svn' were compiled it was against a power PC. When I execute 'file less' at the shell prompt, I see 'less: Mach-O executable ppc'.

Not being a seasoned unix user, I'm hesitant to try and recompile from source, so how do I get new unix command utilities without compiling myself from source. Or is it really straightforward to do so?

Thanks for any help.

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Answer 3

Camelot

Level 9

54,333 points

Dec 24, 2014 12:23 AM in response to lili5058

Not being a seasoned unix user, I'm hesitant to try and recompile from source, so how do I get new unix command utilities without compiling myself from source. Or is it really straightforward to do so?

Short answer - in most cases you don't need to. When you install the OS you'll get all the underlying UNIX-y things that are already compiled for your (Intel-based) machine. Apple aren't going to ship PowerPC binaries on an Intel machine that can't run them.

The only things you'll need to recompile from source are... well, things you already compiled from source in the PowerPC-era, so it's likely to be something you're already familiar with.

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