How to resolve a libtinfo.so error when launching ENVI 5.6/IDL 8.8 on Linux
Due to development build changes in IDL 8.8.0 and ENVI 5.6.0, you may encounter a missing library error when launching the software on some newer distributions of Linux.
The error will look like this when launching IDL or ENVI+IDL, complaining about a missing libtinfo.so library:
$ /usr/local/harris/idl88/bin/bin.linux.x86_64/idl
/usr/local/harris/idl88/bin/bin.linux.x86_64/idl: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
If you do get this error, don’t fear as this library likely does exist on your Linux system, but it may be a newer version.
To begin resolving this issue, first locate the file libtinfo.so.
For example, on Ubuntu 20.04, this file is located here and is at version 6:
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6
On CentOS systems, the file will be here:
/usr/lib64/libtinfo.so.6
The work-around for this issue is to create a symbolic link representing version 5, pointing to whatever version your system already has installed. Continuing the Ubuntu 20.04 example, this link can be created as follows (elevated permissions required):
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6 /usr/local/harris/idl88/bin/bin.linux.x86_64/libtinfo.so.5
After creating this symbolic link, IDL will work as expected.
NOTE: If the libtinfo.so library does not exist on your system already, you can install it using the following commands (elevated permissions required).
For Ubuntu:
$ sudo apt install libtinfo5
For CentOS:
$ sudo yum install ncurses-compat-libs
Created by BCNA 2/4/2020. Reviewed by JU 9/28/2020.