Ubuntu 20.04 upgrade, Python missing libffi.so.6
If you are using pyenv, you should just uninstall the used python version and then reinstall it.
Example:
pyenv uninstall 3.7.4pyenv install 3.7.4
It's cleaner and safer than renaming system library from my point of view.
It seems like I fixed it. I could be wrong, but here is what I think happened:
- Ubuntu 20.04 upgraded libffi6 to libffi7
- Python is still looking for libffi6
What I did to fix it :
Locate libffi.so.7
in your system
$ find /usr/lib -name "libffi.so*"
Create a simlink named libffi.so.6
that points to libffi.so.7
:
sudo ln -s /usr/path/to/libffi.so.7 /usr/lib/path/to/libffi.so.6
UPDATE:
As noted by many users, this fix could have unintended consequences. The better way to do it is to reinstall python as @amichaud explained. This should be used as a last resort IF you're not using pyenv/virtualenv/etc in which case removing python will cause a lot of dependencies to be removed as well.
I am using Xubuntu 20.04 and recompiling the python version 3.7 did not work for me.
The way I solved this was to download the 19.10 version of the package from here:http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/libf/libffi/libffi6_3.2.1-8_amd64.deb
and then installing it
sudo apt install ./libffi6_3.2.1-8_amd64.deb
This will unpack the libffi.so.6
and libffi.so.6.0.4
files to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
. The libffi.so.6
file is just a link to libffi.so.6.0.4
in the same directory.
As far as I could see this does not overwrite any files so should be safe.
Hopefully this helps someone as well.