dpkg: `ldconfig' not found on PATH.

[nibsa1242]

Thank you, this seems to be fixing a problem I had on my Debian box. I installed something from unstable and my system got hosed (uninstalled Gnome and a million other things).

[rafiks]

After some trouble I had with some packages yesterday, apt-get and aptitude now only show the following when I try to install new packages, upgrade etc.

Can't exec "locale": No such file or directory at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Encoding.pm line 16.
Use of uninitialized value $Debconf::Encoding::charmap in scalar chomp at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Encoding.pm line 17.
dpkg: `ldconfig' not found on PATH.
dpkg: 1 expected program(s) not found on PATH.
NB: root's PATH should usually contain /usr/local/sbin, /usr/sbin and /sbin.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
mitja@cube:~$ printenv PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

"echo $PATH" and "sudo echo $PATH" both show me

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

How can I fix this mess?

By any chance ,you were using sudo?

there was a change in /etc/sudoers that makes it impossible for a sudoer to get access to /usr/sbin and /sbin.

What I did is I went su to root and reinstall sudo and accept YES to the prompt when it says config has change and just add myself again to the sudoers.

HTH

[harveyp]

Hi,
dpkg gives me this error when I am trying to install libc6 glibc libc-bin eglibc - all of which are supposed to install ldconfig ldconfig.real.

Unfortunately a small person has removed the twig from my wifi card ... I am working offline. I have been unable to get apt-get to do anything except gripe so I have been using dpkg. My sole success has been with tzdata which used to conflict with libc6.

I am using the Freespire distro, KDE 3.5.6, kernel 2.6.20-16-lowlatency, on AMD Athlon, i686

Thanks in advance for any help.

Harvey

[JamieKitson]

By any chance ,you were using sudo?

there was a change in /etc/sudoers that makes it impossible for a sudoer to get access to /usr/sbin and /sbin.

What I did is I went su to root and reinstall sudo and accept YES to the prompt when it says config has change and just add myself again to the sudoers.

HTH

Thanks rafiks, I think that's the correct answer

[Maelvon]

By any chance ,you were using sudo?

there was a change in /etc/sudoers that makes it impossible for a sudoer to get access to /usr/sbin and /sbin.

What I did is I went su to root and reinstall sudo and accept YES to the prompt when it says config has change and just add myself again to the sudoers.

HTH

Thanks Rafiks!

[reaper_rr]

I have encountered the same problem on Kubuntu 11.10 (Development version) and in my case the problem was not linked with the paths in the sudoers file. The ldconfig binaries were literally missing from my installation.

Arand's post helped me a lot solving the problem, but I must note that for the latest Ubuntu versions you should replace libc6 in Arand's post with libc-bin and it will work smoothly.

[loserock]

After years for the original solve, this helped me too!
My ubuntu 11.10b2 had same problem (when I tried multiarch support), and the woraround worked! (just need download libc-bin, and not libc6)

Lot of thanks for You!

[josephpmh]

I downloaded and extracted the libc deb, but there is not a folder in the extracted folder /libc6-unpacked/sbin so I cannot copy

I had a very similar problem, the cause of which was rather obvious: Trying to install Karmic packages in jaunty, which in turn pulled in libc updates which threw a fit.

N.B. this is on an amd64 (jaunty) system.

Now, to solve this, my steps were:
(0. Disable karmic repos)

1. Get hold of ldconfig & ldconfig.real from the correct version:

aptitude download libc6

unpack it:

dpkg-deb -x libc6*.deb libc6-unpacked/

copy them out:

sudo cp libc6-unpacked/sbin/ldconfig* /sbin/

At this point I did:

sudo apt-get -f install
sudo dpkg-reconfigure libc6
sudo dpkg-reconfigure libc6-i386
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libc6
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libc6-i386

Of which the reinstalls seemed to be the crucial ones. Now all errors seem to be gone.

- Arand

[Arand]

I downloaded and extracted the libc deb, but there is not a folder in the extracted folder /libc6-unpacked/sbin so I cannot copy

As has been mentioned before, ldconfig has moved to the 'libc-bin' package.

Since this seems to help every now and then...
Here is an updated version of the steps (which may or may not work) corresponding to the way the packages are structured nowadays:

Download and extract the package

apt-get download libc-bin
dpkg -x libc-bin*.deb unpackdir/

Copy the file to your system

sudo cp unpackdir/sbin/ldconfig /sbin/

Make sure the package and package system is in a good state.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libc-bin
sudo apt-get install -f

Futher errors after this indicates something else is wrong.

[ODF]

As has been mentioned before, ldconfig has moved to the 'libc-bin' package.

Since this seems to help every now and then...
Here is an updated version of the steps (which may or may not work) corresponding to the way the packages are structured nowadays:

Download and extract the package

apt-get download libc-bin
dpkg -x libc-bin*.deb unpackdir/

Copy the file to your system

sudo cp unpackdir/sbin/ldconfig /sbin/

Make sure the package and package system is in a good state.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libc-bin
sudo apt-get install -f

Futher errors after this indicates something else is wrong.

I wanted to thanks this post. It solved my problems.