libffi-d78936b1.so.6.0.4: cannot open shared object file Error on AWS Lambda function

Question

I am trying to deploy a python Lambda package with watson_developer_cloud sdk. Cryptography is one of many dependencies this package have. I have build this package on Linux machine. My package includes .libffi-d78936b1.so.6.0.4 hidden file too. But it is still not accessible to my lambda function. I am still getting 'libffi-d78936b1.so.6.0.4: cannot open shared object file' Error. I have built my packages on Vagrant server, using instructions from here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/with-s3-example-deployment-pkg.html#with-s3-example-deployment-pkg-python

Exact error:

Unable to import module 'test_translation': libffi-d78936b1.so.6.0.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

On a note, as explained in this solution, I have already created my package using zip -r9 $DIR/lambda_function.zip . instead of *. But it is still not working for me.

Any direction is highly appreciable.

Answer 1

The libffi-d78936b1.so.6.0.4 is in a hidden folder named .libs_cffi_backend.

So to add this hidden folder in your lambda zip, you should do something like:

zip -r ../lambda_function.zip * .[^.]*

That will create a zip file in the directory above with the name lambda_function.zip, containing all files in the current directory (first *) and every thing starting with .* but not ..* ([^.])

Answer 2

In a situation like this, I would invest some time setting up a local SAM environment so you can:

1 - Debug your Lambda

2 - Check what is being packaged and the files hierarchy

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/test-sam-cli.html

Alternatively you can remove this import and instrument your lambda function to print some of the files and directories it "sees".

I strongly recommend you giving SAM a try though, since it will make not only this debugging way easier but any further test you need to perform down the road. Lambdas are tricky to debug.