gcc: error while loading shared libraries -> looks up wrong library version

Question

I upgraded my system (to ubuntu 13.04) and somewhere in the process gcc broke :-( I'm getting this exception when trying to compile something:

/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.7/../../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/bin/as:
error while loading shared libraries:
libopcodes-2.22-system.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Actually libopcodes-2.22-system.so does not exist, BUT libopcodes-2.23.2-system.so does. If i symlink from 2.22 to 2.23 gcc fails with just another library.

So for some reason it is looking for the wrong version. I wildly tried to solve it by reinstalling gcc, binutils, libc6 etc., but the problem still exists.

How can i tell gcc to use the correct shared library version? / Where does gcc gets the information which shared libraries to use?

Thx

gcc doesn't go and look for 2.22 on its own. Some of other library you used is linked to 2.22. — ROTOGG
Do you know any way to investigate this further? Must be a system lib.. the code i tried to compile is a one-line hello world without any dependencies. — Eugene
gcc fails execute as. There's no option to fix this. Something within your system is broken. I'm not familiar with ubuntu. Check or reinstall the gcc and binutils packages. — rtlgrmpf
Don't create symlinks between libraries. The major version of the library changed specifically because binaries linked to the new version of the library can't function with the old library because of incompatible changes. It looks like either you messed something up with your installation or whoever built the packages messed them up. Reinstall things until the problem goes away. — Art

Eugene Eugene · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-18T14:05:50

Thanks guys, your comments made me look at the right place.

This path made me suspicious:

/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.7/../../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/bin/as

I thought it must be a symlink to /usr/bin/as, but it exposed that /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu/bin was a complete copy of /usr/bin - not up to date and therefore with incorrectly linked binaries. I have no idea why a copy of the whole bin directory was there and was used by gcc in favor of /usr/bin.

The compiler is running fine after /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu ~~was removed.~~ Edit: Better check comments before doing the same.

gcc: error while loading shared libraries -> looks up wrong library version

1 Answers