prefcnt command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix prefcnt command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

prefcnt: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: prefcnt: command not found

Solutions to prefcnt: command not found

How To Fix prefcnt: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu prefcnt is provided by pahole package.

pahole is:

This package contains tools that use the DWARF debugging information inserted in ELF binaries by the compiler. This information is used by debuggers (e.g. GDB), and other tools such as systemtap.

Utilities in the dwarves suite include:

  • pahole: finds alignment holes in structs and classes in languages such as C/C++, CPU cacheline alignment. Helps repack those structures to achieve more cache hits.
  • codiff: a diff like tool to compare the effects changes in source code generate on the resulting binaries
  • pfunct: displays all sorts of information about functions, inlines, etc.
  • pdwtags: pretty-prints DWARF information
  • pglobal: lists global symbols
  • prefcnt: counts DWARF tags usage
  • syscse: system call sign extender
  • dtagnames: lists tag names

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install pahole

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install pahole.

sudo apt -y install pahole

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install pahole

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix prefcnt command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.