As a followup to this question, I have discovered that this closed source programme is 32bit and I have an amd64 server. The server is gentoo that has recently been upgraded.
What do I need to install in order to make this programme work? I know it's possible because I have another gentoo amd64 server that can run this programme.
On Gentoo there is a series of packages which contain 32-bit binaries of all the common system libraries for precisely this purpose. Do a search for emul-linux using equery and you'll get the list. Usually you need at least app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-baselibs and app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-compat but there are a few others which pertain to X11 apps.
The other options are running a multilib environment or setting up an 32-bit chroot.
