After updating the OS to the latest version of Ubuntu Foldit will not run. I get the following error message:
Foldit Error: Could not load library: libglut.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory.
This is a known issue but the recommended solution (installing freeglut3) doesn't work (Unable to locate package freeglut3).
Any suggestions?
If you're talking about 24.04 LTS Noble Numbat, then https://packages.ubuntu.com/ indicates that the libglut-dev package contains the /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglut.so file, and also depends on the libglut3.12 package, which contains the /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglut.so.3.12 file. You can try installing the libglut-dev package and see if that helps.
If not, that's likely because the packages don't contain a plain libglut.so.3 file. You may (this has not been tested) be able to get things to work by symlinking a libglut.so.3 somewhere in your library search path (e.g. /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglut.so.3 – but feel free to use another path) to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglut.so.3.12 or /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglut.so. – Again, this has not been tested and might not actually work. (Only try if you feel confident backing out the change later.)
Tx : yes it Noble Numbat (who thinks of these names?)
I tried installing the recommended libraries but the problem persists. My Unix is a little rusty to be playing around with symbolic links.
@ rmoretti
on my system
$ uname --all
6.1.0-23-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.99-1 (2024-07-15) x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
$ updatedb
$ locate glut | grep freeglut
/usr/include/GL/freeglut.h
/usr/include/GL/freeglut_ext.h
/usr/include/GL/freeglut_std.h
/usr/include/GL/freeglut_ucall.h
/usr/share/doc/freeglut3-dev
/usr/share/doc/freeglut3-dev/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/freeglut3-dev/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/freeglut3-dev/copyright
/var/cache/apt/archives/freeglut3-dev_3.4.0-1_amd64.deb
/var/lib/dpkg/info/freeglut3-dev:amd64.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/freeglut3-dev:amd64.md5sums
/lib$ ldd --version
ldd (Debian GLIBC 2.36-9+deb12u8) 2.36
$ tar -xzf Foldit-linux_x64.tar.gz
$cd Foldit
~/.../Foldit$ ls
cmp-binary-7e8019b8a8e3e71d98b580b06df824f1 Foldit version-binary.txt versions.json
cmp-database-301fa8f1694a5a3f928584afe65c4af5 inital_run version-database.txt
cmp-resources-bf4201ffeb4675a97a01820041fc5bab README version-resources.txt
~~
In the above directory we wish to:
./configure
make
sudo make install
Unfortunately there is no configure file so my Foldit installation is tbd
Thanks
Thank you for this, eromana.
This is a priority for the Foldit team, and we've been working on a fix since spvincent brought this to our attention.
Thank you both for your patience.
Fix for Linux:
Add the following to the Foldit directory (right next to the Foldit executable):
ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglut.so libglut.so.3
@eromana Note that Foldit for Linux is distributed as a pre-compiled executable which just needs to be downloaded and extracted, and doesn't need to be compiled or installed. This is why there isn't a ./configure script. (and there's no need for make/make install)
Just run it from the extracted directory. There's no need to install it centrally. (Indeed, we're really only set up for a single process running from the directory at a time – installing it for multiple users to access concurrently may result in issues.)
Add the following to the Foldit directory (right next to the Foldit executable):
ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglut.so libglut.so.3
I don't seem to have these files in that directory.
I tried installing freeglut as the readme says:
$ sudo apt install freeglut3
E: Unable to locate package freeglut3
I'm on Mint Cinnamon 22.2. Pretty new to Linux so I dunno.
You may need to ask in a Mint-specific forum to get distro-specific instructions. It looks like Mint should have the freeglut3 package. Though I'm seeing indications online that you might need to install freeglut3-dev instead of just freeglut3.
It also may be that you already have libglut installed, but it's not in the same location as on other distros. Try to run locate libglut to see if it gives you an alternate install location for the .so files for libglut.