No such file or directory when running sublime text 3

I need some help installing sublime text 3 in Nixos 17.03. I have downloaded and unpacked the tar ball from sublime and this it was happens when I try to execute /opt/sublime_text/sublime_text:

/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text 
sh: /opt/sublime_text/sublime_text: No such file or directory

The file exist in the correct location with run permissions.

sh-4.4$ cd /opt/sublime_text/
sh-4.4$ ls -la
totalt 15944
drwxr-xr-x 4 jan users    4096 23 sep  2016 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 jan users    4096 30 apr 23.28 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 jan users   30118 23 sep  2016 changelog.txt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jan users  488672 23 sep  2016 crash_reporter
drwxr-xr-x 7 jan users    4096 23 sep  2016 Icon
drwxr-xr-x 2 jan users    4096 23 sep  2016 Packages
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jan users 7883616 23 sep  2016 plugin_host
-rw-r--r-- 1 jan users 2624408 23 sep  2016 python3.3.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 jan users   28578 23 sep  2016 sublime_plugin.py
-rw-r--r-- 1 jan users   37137 23 sep  2016 sublime.py
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jan users 5200392 23 sep  2016 sublime_text
-rw-r--r-- 1 jan users     532 23 sep  2016 sublime_text.desktop

Solution

Yes, the file does exist there and is executable! But, the error message is misleading.

Try to run file command on that ELF file: $ file ./sublime_text ./sublime_text: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=e359d67c8f71f88174135aefc069239f64f26c42, stripped You see, it refers to /lib/ld-linux.so.2 interpreter library, which doesn't exist on NixOS.

Though sublimetext3 is packaged in Nixpkgs, and we can see that it refers to another interpreter: $ file /nix/store/bv5j4qiif1h9db6qcfl9axhv7rvza2b8-sublimetext3-3114-bin/.sublime_text-wrapped /nix/store/bv5j4qiif1h9db6qcfl9axhv7rvza2b8-sublimetext3-3114-bin/.sublime_text-wrapped: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /nix/store/jm1n87rp8vr90j9ahcrfzr57nc2r8vgf-glibc-2.24/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=93b181f0f699bd88a052048070efe8ad6757a6fd, stripped

This is achieved by running patchelf on the binary, which is a common trick in Nixpkgs/NixOS to fix binaries.