Trouble installing libpng12 on 19.04

Question

When trying to unpack libpng12-0_1.2.54-1ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb, I get this:

$ sudo dpkg -i libpng12-0_1.2.54-1ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb
(Reading database ... 183096 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack libpng12-0_1.2.54-1ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libpng12-0:amd64 (1.2.54-1ubuntu1.1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive libpng12-0_1.2.54-1ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb (--install):
 unable to install new version of '/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng12.so.0': No such file or directory
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.29-0ubuntu2) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 libpng12-0_1.2.54-1ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb

I am attempting this because I am trying to run Runescape and get the following error:

ryan@ryan-HP-Notebook:~$ runescape-launcher
/usr/share/games/runescape-launcher/runescape: error while loading shared libraries: libpng12.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I have also attempted installing libpng12-0_1.2.50 to no avail as well.

Solution

It's not the proper way of doing it, but you can workaround it by unpacking .deb package and copying its content into root fs.

wget http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/libp/libpng/libpng12-0_1.2.54-1ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb
dpkg -x libpng12-0_1.2.54-1ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb libpng12

You'll find libraries inside libpng12 folder. Then you just need to copy it into its destination.

But if you don't want anything static in your system you can leave this library alone, but before runing runescape-launcher export LD_LIBRARY_PATH like so:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=libpng12/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
runescape-launcher

I'm not sure about path you need to set, but also try libpng12/lib and libpng12 in case of a problem.

You can also provide custom libraries by using /etc/ld.so.conf.d/. You can read about it here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9151491/extending-default-lib-search-path-in-ubuntu

Comments

[KyMuse]

Thank you, Comar!