Hi all,

I just installed and wanted to test kmail.
Unfortunately it is not starting at all.
When invoking kmail via the console, an error message is displayed:

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kmail: error while loading shared libraries: libdb-5.3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

My LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable looks like the following:

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echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
:/usr/lib/:/usr/local/lib

Having a look at the /usr/lib/ directory turns out, that there is only a libdb-5.so and libdb_cxx-5-3.so
The dependencies and list of files in pamac show no such file for kmail 21.12.0-1, which is the current version shown to me.
Re-installing did not help, nor did remove and install again (via pamac)
I'm running Arch (Manjaro 21.2) with KDE Plasma 5.23.4 on Kernel 5.15.12-1.

Has anyone experienced a similiar issue or could help on this topic?
Thanks in advance

Bassti

Hi,

You don't specify, but is your system 32 or 64 bits?
Because i f it's 64 bits you should check on /usr/lib64, not /usr/lib.

I don't have Majaro but in an ArchLinux VM I have:

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[root@archie ~] # ll /usr/lib64/libdb-*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1824768 nov 13  2019 /usr/lib64/libdb-5.3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      12 nov 13  2019 /usr/lib64/libdb-5.so -> libdb-5.3.so

Cheers!

Hi,

I checked all the library directories again.
Yes you're right, I'm running a 64 bit system and there is a /usr/lib64/ directory.
The /usr/lib/ directory however contains the same files.
Anyway, adding the /usr/lib64/ to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable does not change anything.
The error message is still showing up and kmail refuses to start.

Cheers
Bassti

I wouldn't mess with LD_LIBRARY_PATH if I were you, unless it is to add a non-standard directory to it. One thing to try would be to unset the variable and try starting kmail again.

Another thing to check (with or without setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH) is to see if those libraries show up in:

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sudo ldconfig -v | grep libdb-5.3

Also maybe:

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ldd $(which kmail) | grep "not found"

And nevermind my comment about /ilb and /lib64, as in arch they link lib64 to lib, and I'm used to distros where /lib is 32 bits.

One more thing to try is checking your packages integrity with paccheck or similar, in case there's a corrupt file:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman ... m_packages

bassti wrote:Hi,

I checked all the library directories again.
Yes you're right, I'm running a 64 bit system and there is a /usr/lib64/ directory.
The /usr/lib/ directory however contains the same files.

I forgto to ask: But do they contain libdb-5.3.so and libdb-5.so (those exact names)?

Hi richarson,

I only started to work with the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable after ldconfig seemed not to work.
By the way the variable was empty before I changed anything which made me feel save not to mess up something.
I did a ldconfig run before installation of kmail because of another tool (pCloud CLI client).
Maybe the issue is located here and not at kmail altghough pCloud client is running properly.

There is only a "libdb-5.so" in my /usr/lib/ directory, but no 5.3. So the file is missing in fact.
There is a cxx variant of the 5.3, called "libdb_cxx-5.3.so".
This is the content of my library directory, truncated to libdb.

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ls /usr/lib/libdb*.so
/usr/lib/libdb-5.so        /usr/lib/libdb_cxx.so      /usr/lib/libdb_stl-5.so
/usr/lib/libdb_cxx-5.3.so  /usr/lib/libdb.so          /usr/lib/libdb_stl.so 
/usr/lib/libdb_cxx-5.so    /usr/lib/libdb_stl-5.3.so


Paccheck is also showing a problem with this file.
There are some further md5 mismatches, which I will ignore for now.

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sudo paccheck --md5sum --quiet
[...]
warning: db: '/usr/lib/libdb-5.3.so' read error (No such file or directory)
[...]


So for me it looks like this file is really missing and I don't know why.
I never visited the /usr/lib/ directory before the kmail starting issue.
And I can hardly imagine, that this was done by pacman or another tool.
This also correlates with the fact, that reinstalling does not solve the problem because the needed file should be provided then.
But the package is also tested by many users over quite a long time I guess.
Is it advisable to just download this file somewhere and try running kmail again?

cheers
Bassti

Yes, you should reinstall the package that provides /usr/lib/libdb-5.3.so (db?) and any other packages whith missing files.

I don't have an Arch system at hand now to guide you further, I can check tomorrow morning if you need assistance.

Hello again,

I've tried to solve this problem by reinstalling all packages via the the package manager.
This did not solve the problem at all.
Another machine running the same OS but with different packages installed does not show the same problem.
Therefore I think this is related to another package, that messed up my library.
The final solution is now a complete OS re-installation.

I think this topic can be closed, even it's not completely resolved.