We're making changes to the Community, so you may have received some notifications - thanks for your patience and welcome back. Learn more here.

Forum Discussion

Albert25's avatar
Albert25
Helpful | Level 5
5 years ago

Headless install on Debian: libglapi.so.0: cannot open shared object file

I tried this on support, but didn't get a useful reply, so I hope someone here knows the answer. On a Linux Debian 10 ("buster") headless server, I tried to follow the instructions at https://www...
Desktop
Error Messages
Installing
Linux OS
Setting up the apps
  • salven's avatar
    salven
    5 years ago

    Hello Albert25 ,

     I just tried and made it work today on Ubuntu Server 18.04.4 LTS. As mentioned, the requirements are not fully met by default, so here is the list of what I had to additionally install (you probably alreayd have libc6):

     

    sudo apt-get install libc6
sudo apt-get install libglapi-mesa
sudo apt-get install libxdamage1
sudo apt-get install libxfixes3
sudo apt-get install libxcb-glx0
sudo apt-get install libxcb-dri2-0
sudo apt-get install libxcb-dri3-0
sudo apt-get install libxcb-present0
sudo apt-get install libxcb-sync1
sudo apt-get install libxshmfence1
sudo apt-get install libxxf86vm1

     

    After that, I had to make sure of the following:

     

    sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME"
sudo chown -R "$USER" ~/Dropbox ~/.dropbox
sudo chattr -R -i ~/Dropbox
sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox ~/.dropbox

     

    and that seemed to do the trick. You may need to adapt few things here and there.

     

    Hope it helps.

    Salvo

Daphne's avatar
Daphne
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
5 years ago

Hey Albert25, thanks for reaching out to us here!

You've got quite a few errors there, so as a first step please try removing any traces of the desktop app if they installed with the steps outlined here, before trying to reinstall.

You can find the specifics for your set up by clicking "Linux" and under the section specifically for headless installations towards the bottom.

Just to note too, I was able to locate your open ticket with our Support team and passed along your comments from here to keep them in the loop.

Let me know how it goes and we can take it from there!

  • Albert25's avatar
    Albert25
    Helpful | Level 5
    5 years ago

    Thanks Daphne,

    I did remove everything as per the instructions. Basically, it was just "rm -rf ~/.dropbox*". The rest didn't exist and the permissions on my $HOME are right.

    Then I re-did the install commands ("wget ..." + "~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd"), but as I expected, nothing changed:

     

    ...
dropbox: load fq extension '/root/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-90.4.307/PyQt5.QtGui.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
Couldn't start Dropbox.
This is usually because of a permissions error. Storing your home folder on a network share can also cause an error.

Get more help at https://www.dropbox.com/c/help/permissions_error

Please contact Dropbox support with the following info for help:

/tmp/dropbox_errorlaiipxju.txt

# tail /tmp/dropbox_errorlaiipxju.txt
[...]
ImportError: libglapi.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    So it seems to me the problem is one of these 3:

    • Dropbox cannot be installed on a headless server without a Desktop Environment like Gnome or other
    • Dropbox is not compatible with the current Debian stable (v. 10, "buster")
    • Dropbox needs a number of shared libraries

    I hope it's the last one, and that someone can come up with the full list of required libraries.

    Has anybody had success installing on a headless server with no Desktop Environment?

     

    • Daphne's avatar
      Daphne
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
      5 years ago

      Thanks for trying that Albert25!

      Just to confirm, you mentioned that you've already installed this library on your computer, is that right? 

      Can you let me know if you have Glibc 2.19 or higher installed on your device too? This should have all the libraries that you'll need to run the desktop app.

      Keep me posted!

      • Albert25's avatar
        Albert25
        Helpful | Level 5
        5 years ago
        Can you let me know if you have Glibc 2.19 or higher installed on your device too?

        I have "libc6/stable,stable,now 2.28-10 amd64 [installed]" which is part of the base system I think.

        But it looks like this is completely irrelevant since, as I mentioned already, the server has no Dektop Environment.

        This should have all the libraries that you'll need to run the desktop app.

        And since I have no Desktop, I don't want to run a Desktop app. That is the reason why I followed the very misleading "Dropbox Headless Install via command line" instructions at https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux

        So unfortunately, it looks like my 1st hypothesis was right:

        • Dropbox cannot be installed on a headless server without a Desktop Environment like Gnome or other

         

About Apps and Installations

Have a question about a Dropbox app or installation? Reach out to the Dropbox Community and get solutions, help, and advice from members.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!