“file too short” error while loading libtermcap.so / libncurses.so

Question

On my Ubuntu 11.10, I am running a version of gdb for different target other than host machine and I am getting the following error:

xxxxx-none-linux-gnu-gdb: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libtermcap.so.2: file too short

Following is the list of my libncurses and libtermcap on my host:

$ ls -l /usr/lib/libtermcap.*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 2011-09-17 00:59 /usr/lib/libtermcap.a -> libncurses.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2011-09-17 00:59 /usr/lib/libtermcap.so -> libncurses.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2011-12-05 17:32 /usr/lib/libtermcap.so.2 -> /usr/lib/libncurses.so

$ ls -l /usr/lib/libncurses* 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 221876 2011-09-17 00:59 /usr/lib/libncurses.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 113216 2011-09-17 00:59 /usr/lib/libncurses++.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     31 2011-09-17 00:59 /usr/lib/libncurses.so

$ cat /usr/lib/libncurses.so 
INPUT(libncurses.so.5 -ltinfo)

$ uname -a
Linux hostname 3.0.0-13-generic-pae #22-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 2 15:17:35 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

How to get over this issue ?

Answer 1

The libncruses library is actually in /lib/libncurses.so.5.

Just make a symlink to /lib/libncurses.so.5 (or the right version, /lib/libncurses.so.5.9 in my system) into /usr/lib/libtermcap.so.2 and it will work.