Question

I am installing Python 2.7 on CentOS 5. I built and installed Python as follows

./configure --enable-shared --prefix=/usr/local
make
make install

When I try to run /usr/local/bin/python, I get this error message

/usr/local/bin/python: error while loading shared libraries: libpython2.7.so.1.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

When I run ldd on /usr/local/bin/python, I get

ldd /usr/local/bin/python
    libpython2.7.so.1.0 => not found
    libpthread.so.0 => /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x00000030e9a00000)
    libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0x00000030e9200000)
    libutil.so.1 => /lib64/libutil.so.1 (0x00000030fa200000)
    libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x00000030e9600000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00000030e8e00000)
    /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00000030e8a00000)

How do I tell Python where to find libpython?

Answer 1

Try the following:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib /usr/local/bin/python

Replace /usr/local/lib with the folder where you have installed libpython2.7.so.1.0 if it is not in /usr/local/lib.

If this works and you want to make the changes permanent, you have two options:

1. Add export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib to your .profile in your home directory (this works only if you are using a shell which loads this file when a new shell instance is started). This setting will affect your user only.

2. Add /usr/local/lib to /etc/ld.so.conf and run ldconfig. This is a system-wide setting of course.