How to run a ghc compiled binary on other machines?

Question

This post is really informative on what I'm trying to achieve. I produced a simple HelloUnix binary.

$ echo 'main = putStrLn "Hello Unix"' > HelloUnix.hs
$ ghc -static --make HelloUnix.hs

Which created a HelloUnix binary, I was hoping with the -static flag everything is bundled up inside the binary so that all is needed to run the binary was the file itself. I transferred the binary to another unix machine, made sure that the file has the correct access privilege via chmod. Ran the binary but this error showed up

bash: ./HelloUnix: cannot execute binary file

Any ideas on how to debug this?

EDIT: I'm currently trying to developing a distributed system, thus was hoping to just distribute the binary to target machines. I need a way to run the binary regardless of witch machine it's running on, that's the target anyways.

EDIT2: Source machine:

mike@mike-1215B:~/Haskell_Program/SmallApp/HelloUnix$ uname -a
Linux mike-1215B 3.0.0-13-generic #22-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 2 13:27:26 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
mike@mike-1215B:~/Haskell_Program/SmallApp/HelloUnix$ file HelloUnix
HelloUnix: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=0xa44cf0e797cd629e0add59722d51d2b20e00fad8, not stripped
mike@mike-1215B:~/Haskell_Program/SmallApp/HelloUnix$ ldd HelloUnix
linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fff8404f000)
libgmp.so.10 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgmp.so.10 (0x00007fa918584000)
libffi.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffi.so.6 (0x00007fa91837c000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007fa918081000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007fa917e79000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fa917c75000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fa9178b5000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fa917698000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fa918810000)

Remote machine 1:

[hchiao@rimmer] hchiao [1:59] uname -a
SunOS rimmer 5.9 Generic_122301-48 i86pc i386 i86pc
[hchiao@rimmer] hchiao [1:60] file HelloUnix 
HelloUnix:      ELF 64-bit LSB executable Version 1, dynamically linked, not stripped

Remote machine 2:

ubuntu@ip-10-240-88-224:~/cloud-haskell$ uname -a
Linux ip-10-240-88-224 3.2.0-36-virtual #57-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jan 8 22:21:19 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
ubuntu@ip-10-240-88-224:~/cloud-haskell$ file HelloUnix 
HelloUnix: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=0xa44cf0e797cd629e0add59722d51d2b20e00fad8, not stripped

EDIT3: I'm now compiling the code in machine 2 and trying to run the binary in machine 1. I assume because both of them are i386 so the binary should be able to run on the other machine. However I'm getting this error:

HelloUnix: Cannot find /lib/ld-linux.so.2
Killed

I think this is telling me that a library (ld-linux.so.2) the binary depend on (dynamic linking maybe?) is not in my target machine. I'm a little bit confused on what did the flag -static do? I assumed with the flag, ALL dependencies would be bundled up in the binary. What would be the best way to make Haskell code portable?

Answer 1

If you are targeting the same architecture, it should work without any fuss (so long as necessary data files are also distributed).

If you are targeting a different architecture, as in your case, you need to cross-compile for the target platform; see the GHC wiki.