How to fix"error while loading shared libraries: libgl.so.1"

Question

After I run this command dpkg -l |grep ^rc|awk '{print $2}' |sudo xargs dpkg -P

I got the problem while opening smplayer,cairo-dock,unity-2d-shell and amdconfig ,"error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1:cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory". Maybe there are other applications would meet the same problem.

But I do have the file

locate libGL.so.1  
/usr/lib/FGL.renamed.libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/libGL.so.1
/usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libGL.so.1
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/fglrx/fglrx-libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/FGL.renamed.libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mesa/FGL.renamed.libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib32/libGL.so.1
/usr/lib32/libGL.so.1.2



ldd $(which unity-2d-shell)|grep libGL  
libGL.so.1 => not found        
ldd $(which mplayer)|grep not  
libGL.so.1 => not found

But

ldd $(which smplayer)|grep libGL  

got nothing.

Solution 1

@Braiam is spot on. You should also know that finding a file with locate does not mean it exists. locate uses a database that is refreshed every now and then. It does not search the actual file systsem but it's database. You can run updatedb to refresh the database before searching or use the -e flag:

-e, --existing
     Print only entries that refer to files existing at the time locate is run.

For example:

$ touch stupid_stupid_file.txt
$ locate stupid_stupid_file.txt   ## No results
$ sudo updatedb                   ## refresh database
$ locate stupid_stupid_file.txt
/home/terdon/stupid_stupid_file.txt  ## the file was found after updatedb
$ rm stupid_stupid_file.txt          ## delete the file
$ locate stupid_stupid_file.txt
/home/terdon/stupid_stupid_file.txt   ## the file is still in the database 
$ locate -e stupid_stupid_file.txt   ## the file is not found using -e

Solution 2

It's probably because some linked libraries got broken when you uninstalled several package at once. You should have run dpkg -l |grep ^rc|awk '{print $2}' before hand to know what will happen. Luckily this can be solved using sudo ldconfig. This recreates the linked libraries cache and will (hopefully) fix your libraries.

Of course, that will only works if you really have the /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 library installed:

ls -l /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGLU.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 sep 18 14:03 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGLU.so.1 -> libGLU.so.1.3.1
dpkg -S libGL.so.1
libgl1-mesa-glx:i386: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1
libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1
libgl1-mesa-glx:i386: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1.2.0
libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1.2.0

(mine is 64bits that's why the difference.)

Comments

[Ziu]

It's weird. I have rebooted. But it seems like didn't update the database. And after that, it turns out that that package dose not exists. But using "apt-get install" , I can't find that package. Using "apt-file search", many package include this lib, and how can i install that lib correctly?

[Ziu]

It's my fault. TI don't have the /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 actually. How can I install that lib?

[terdon]

@Ziu you need to run updatedb to update the database, rebooting is irrelevant. Anyway, check the dependencies of mplayer: apt-cache depends mplayer | grep -i libgl that will return the packages that mplayer depends on. One of them should be libgl1-mesa-glx.

[Ziu]

Finally fix it. It is libgl1-mes-glx, but when I try to install that, it reminds me have installed the latest version. Then I thought that maybe it is something wrong with the graphics drive. So i uninstall it, and it works correctly. and the libGL:libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1 (0x00007f1e83fa7000). Then i install the amd drive again, and it still works. But the dependency changes. libGL:libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 (0x00007fe24e687000) . Thanks