"fork/exec : no such file or directory" error when running tanzu plugin install

Products

• VMware Tanzu Application Platform

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to run "tanzu plugin install" command on an alpine-based container the following error message is given.

$ tanzu plugin install --target kubernetes namespaces
[i] Installing plugin 'namespaces:v1.4.0' with target 'kubernetes'
[x] : could not describe plugin "namespaces": fork/exec /home/kube/.local/share/tanzu-cli/namespaces/v1.4.0_xyz_kubernetes: no such file or directory

The referenced plugin binary file is existing and has executable permissions.  The "no such file or directory" error does not make sense in this situation because the file is confirmed to be existing.

$ ls -l /home/kube/.local/share/tanzu-cli/namespaces/v1.4.0_xyz_kubernetes
-rwxr-xr-x    1 kube     kube      16310532 Mar  6 11:50 /home/kube/.local/share/tanzu-cli/namespaces/v1.4.0_xyz_kubernetes

Environment

VMware Tanzu Application Platform

Tanzu CLI

Cause

The particular plugin binary was compiled in a Linux machine that has the GNU libc library.  That made the binary dependent on the said library that is not available in a standard Alpine machine, which is using the musl libc library instead.

Resolution

Install and use the tanzu CLI in a supported Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, Debian, or RHEL.  See the doc on "Installing and Using VMware Tanzu CLI v1.5.x".