ldconfig error: is not a symbolic link

I ran into this issue with the Oracle 11R2 client. Not sure if the Oracle installer did this or someone did it here before i arrived. It was not 64-bit vs 32-bit, all was 64-bit.

The error was that libexpat.so.1 was not a symbolic link.

It turned out that there were two identical files, libexpat.so.1.5.2 and libexpat.so.1. Removing the offending file and making it a symlink to the 1.5.2 version caused the error to go away.

Makes sense that you'd want the well-known name to be a symlink to the current version. If you do this, it's less likely that you'll end up with a stale library.

Solved, at least at the point of the question.

I searched in the web before asking, an there were no conclusive solution, the reason why this error is: lib1.so and lib2.so are not OK, very probably where not compiled for a 64 PC, but for a 32 bits machine otherwise lib3.so is a 64 bits lib. At least that is my hipothesis.

VERY unfortunately ldconfig doesn't give a clean error message informing that it could not load the library, it only pumps:

ldconfig: /folder_where_the_wicked_lib_is/ is not a symbolic link

I solved this when I removed the libs not found by ldd over the binary. Now it's easier that I know where lies the problem.

My ld version: GNU ld version 2.20.51, and I don't know if a most recent version has a better message for its users.

Thanks.

I simply ran the command below:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/

Now it is working fine.