When in conda, tmux and emacs throw "error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.6"

Question

I've installed and updated tmux and emacs via conda in my default environment, and have these versions in conda list:

# packages in environment at /home/maxghenis/miniconda3:
#
# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
tmux                      2.7                  hc78d2af_1    conda-forge
emacs                     26.1                 h3a2ea38_1    conda-forge

Yet when trying to start either tmux or emacs, I get this error:

error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Per error while loading shared libraries: libgsl.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory I have 5 libtinfo files:

(xenial)maxghenis@localhost:~$ sudo find / -name "libtinfo.so"
/home/maxghenis/miniconda3/pkgs/ncurses-5.9-10/lib/libtinfo.so
/home/maxghenis/miniconda3/pkgs/ncurses-6.1-hf484d3e_0/lib/libtinfo.so
/home/maxghenis/miniconda3/envs/tidycensus/lib/libtinfo.so
/home/maxghenis/miniconda3/lib/libtinfo.so

(xenial)maxghenis@localhost:/lib$ sudo find / -name "libtinfo.so.6"
/lib64/libtinfo.so.6

Answer 1

Same issue. The following has worked out:

$ pwd
<anaconda_installation_dir>

$ ./bin/tmux
(error)


$ find . -name "libtinfo*"
...
./lib/libtinfo.so  # this is the needed shared lib shipped deployed by  conda, just need it been found
...

$ ln -s `readlink -f ./lib/libtinfo.so` `readlink -f ./lib/libtinfo.so | sed '[email protected][email protected]@'`
$ find . -name "libtinfo*"
...
./lib/libtinfo.so  # original lib
./lib/libtinfo.so.6  # the new one which is a symlink
...

$ ./bin/tmux
(ok)

As to why this may be desired -- my case is working in a sort of administratively "hostile" environment when I don't have access to fast on-demand package deployment (as well as root/sudi as well, of course) but still need screen-like solution.

Answer 2

You may need a package libncurses6. When you search for the library, you should look for files

find / -name "libtinfo.so*" -ls

The file libtinfo.so is only used when creating an executable, and is typically a symlink to the actual library. It is not needed to run a program. The file "libtinfo.so.6" is also often a symlink to the actual library. On my system, it is

/lib64/libtinfo.so.6 -> libtinfo.so.6.1

As tmux and emacs are system utilities and it's not likely that you want to use different versions of them, why don't you install them in the base system without conda?