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I've been trying to solve this for a few hours now. I am compiling some c files using gcc. The files require libpbc, so I am using the -L flag to point gcc at the directory which contains libpbc.so.1. The code compiles without error yet when I attempt to run it I get the following error message:

./example.out: error while loading shared libraries: libpbc.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Looking at similar questions this error message seems to indicate that gcc can't find libpbc.so.1. I know gcc sees libpbc.so.1 because when I rename libpbc.so.1 to something else it fails to compile.

I am using -L to point to the directory which contains libpbc.so.1.

Not sure what next steps I can take to figure this out. Would appreciate any ideas. What does this error message mean exactly?

EDIT

Running ldd example.out results in:

linux-gate.so.1 => (0xb7fe3000) libpbc.so.1 => not found libgmp.so.3 => /usr/lib/libgmp.so.3 (0xb7f87000)
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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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ldd example.out

That will give a lot of useful information about dynamic linking. More specifically though, your problem most likely lies with the path of the library not being in.

/etc/ld.so.conf

Note, that if you update that file, you must then run

ldconfig -v
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5 Comments

Do I need root to update that file? I want to static link this library.
ls -l /etc/ld.so.conf to see its permission. It's usually only writable by root. If you want to statically link the library, that's a completely different topic. Everything in my post was about dynamic linking. If you want to go static, use the -static argument to gcc. There are numerous gotchas that come along with static linking as it doesn't always do what you think it's doing. :)
Yes, static linking seems to have broken everything =(
Is there anything else (other than -L and -I) I should be providing to 'gcc -static' so that is can find the libraries?
stackoverflow.com/questions/725472/… He said it better than I would have.
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Provide rpath flag while compiling.

g++ -Wall -o example.out -I ./include/ -L ./examplelibPath -Wl,-rpath ./libPath -l examplelibrary example.cpp
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I used -Wl,-rpath . and it solved my problem. Short, sweet, easy. Simpler than editing the /etc/ld.so.conf file.

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