Cant install wireshark - failed to load xcb plugin

Question

I have installed wireshark 2.2.6:

$ sudo apt install -y wireshark 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
wireshark is already the newest version (2.2.6+g32dac6a-1~xenial1).
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-headers-4.4.0-72 linux-headers-4.4.0-72-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-75 linux-headers-4.4.0-75-generic linux-image-4.4.0-72-generic
  linux-image-4.4.0-75-generic linux-image-extra-4.4.0-72-generic linux-image-extra-4.4.0-75-generic snap-confine
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 37 not upgraded.

Im running ubuntu 16.04 and when I try to launch the app I get:

$ wireshark
This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "xcb"
in "".

The only way to get around this, for me, is to

sudo QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/platforms/ wireshark

But then the UI looks awful and worse than I remember... Is there a way to permanently solve it?

Answer 1

As noted on the Qt Forums, just add the following code to your ~/.bashrc file:

export QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH=/opt/appname/libs/Qt/plugins/platforms

replacing appname with your app's name. There should be a file called libqxcb.so within the platforms folder.

Answer 2

I had a similar problem with Wireshark 2.6.10. I thought I'd post my solution in case it could help somebody else.

First, it complained about an "error while loading shared libraries: libdouble-conversion.so.1". I used apt install libdouble-conversion1 and the error went away, but was replaced with:

This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "xcb"
in "".

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Wireshark, to no avail. Finally, I uninstalled libdouble-conversion1, and then used apt autoremove. I reinstalled Wireshark (apt install wireshark), and now it works fine.

I think the libdouble library must have been corrupted or something, and when I reinstalled it manually, I used a package that was missing something important for Wireshark. Uninstalling the libdouble library meant that a fresh Wireshark install would install a package containing what it needed.