libexpat could not be found by linux system

Question

I am developing with vddk library for ubuntu 12.10 i386. I constantly get following error:

Cannot open library: libexpat.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory.

When I run apt-file search libexpat.so it shows me following

lib64expat1: /usr/lib64/libexpat.so.1
lib64expat1: /usr/lib64/libexpat.so.1.6.0
lib64expat1-dev: /usr/lib64/libexpat.so
libexpat1: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1
libexpat1: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1.6.0
libexpat1-dev: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so

I already tried to create a symlink

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.0

but it did not work. Strange thing:

 ls -l `locate libexpat.so`
ls: cannot access /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1.6.0: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access /usr/lib/vmware-vix-disklib/lib64/libexpat.so.0: No such file or directory
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 141320 Aug 20 09:21 /home/ubuntu/vddk/lib64/libexpat.so.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root   141320 Feb  3 16:45 /usr/lib/vmware-vix-disk-lib/vmware-vix-disk-lib/lib64/libexpat.so.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root   141320 Aug 20 09:21 /usr/vmware-vix-disklib-distrib/lib64/libexpat.so.0

Answer 1

apt-file shows only the contents of a package, or in your case the package(s) by file name, but it works regardless of whether the package is installed or not.

You need to install libexpat1:

sudo apt-get install libexpat1

If you are about to compile and link custom C programs against libexpat1 you will also need:

sudo apt-get install libexpat1-dev

Answer 2

Fixed by manually downloading and installing libexpat package form here http://expat.sourceforge.net/ and look for downloading page. It should take you to sourceforge page and select stable package