How do I fix this error I get when trying to run DS9?

Question

ds9: error while loading shared libraries: libXss.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Please help to fix the error.

My ds9 is in /usr/local/bin/ds9

Answer 1

Problem summary

This indicates that a certain file (namely, "libXss.so.1") is missing for DS9 to work.

How to solve problems like this on your own

To find out which package provides (or contains) a certain file in Ubuntu, you can use the "apt-file" command.

First, make sure "apt-file" is installed.

sudo apt-get install apt-file

Now, using "apt-file" is simple enough.

apt-file search filename-to-search.for

This outputs a list of packages that provide a file named "filename-to-search.for", thus allowing you to install the necessary package(s) using apt-get.

Real-life answer

In your case, you would need to run the following command:

apt-file search libXss.so.1

This outputs the following:

libxss1: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libXss.so.1
libxss1: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libXss.so.1.0.0
libxss1-dbg: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libXss.so.1.0.0

This indicates that the package you need to install in this specific case is most likely "libxss1".

So, to install it, run the following command:

sudo apt-get install libxss1

Now, try running DS9 again, and you should find that the error message is now gone.