undefined symbol: FAMNoExists

[Moses Moore]

lighttpd won't start.

Steps to reproduce:
$ sudo /usr/sbin/lighttpd
or
$ sudo systemctl start lighttpd

Expected outcome:
daemon starts.

Seen instead:
/usr/sbin/lighttpd: symbol lookup error: /usr/sbin/lighttpd: undefined symbol: FAMNoExists
or
Job for lighttpd.service failed. See "systemctl status lighttpd.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
$ systemctl status lighttpd.service -l
May 09 17:53:32 deunan systemd[1]: Starting Lighttpd Daemon...
May 09 17:53:32 deunan lighttpd[8229]: /usr/sbin/lighttpd: symbol lookup error: /usr/sbin/lighttpd: undefined symbol: FAMNoExists

Other info:
`ldd /usr/sbin/lighttpd` does not report any missing shared libraries.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: lighttpd 1.4.35-4ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-16.16-generic 3.19.3
Uname: Linux 3.19.0-16-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.17.2-0ubuntu1
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat May 9 17:51:52 2015
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-06-08 (700 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release i386 (20130423.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_CA:en
 TERM=screen
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: lighttpd
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to vivid on 2015-04-25 (14 days ago)
mtime.conffile..etc.lighttpd.conf.available.10.cgi.conf: 2013-08-02T23:17:55
mtime.conffile..etc.lighttpd.conf.available.10.fastcgi.conf: 2013-09-11T11:19:16

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[pwaring (launchpad-pwaring)]

I'm unable to reproduce this problem on a clean install with no configuration - installing lighttpd and then visiting http://localhost brings up the default placeholder page.

What happens if you disable all your user-defined configuration files? Can you get the basic placeholder page up?

[Travis Allen (travis-r-allen)]

I had this problem. The workaround:

sudo apt-get install gamin

It appears that the default lighttpd configuration tries to use fam (aka gamin), but there is no dependency on gamin. I would suggest either the package adds a gamin dependency, or the default configuration removes the fam dependency.

[pwaring (launchpad-pwaring)]

That workaround fixed the problem for me too - turns out the image I was working with already had gamin installed. Purging gamin also removed lighttpd, then re-installed lighttpd produced the following:

Setting up lighttpd (1.4.35-4ubuntu1) ...
Job for lighttpd.service failed. See "systemctl status lighttpd.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript lighttpd, action "start" failed.

[Hadmut Danisch (hadmut)]

Same problem here with 15.10 beta:

lighttpd[5854]: /usr/sbin/lighttpd: symbol lookup error: /usr/sbin/lighttpd: undefined symbol: FAMNoExists

Installing gamin solves the problem, but kicks libfam0 out, maybe creating other problems elsewhere...

[Christophe Meron (chris+launchpad-ielf)]

I was also affected by this issue on a quite fresh 15.10

Version: 1.4.35-4ubuntu1
Provides: httpd, httpd-cgi
Depends: libattr1 (>= 1:2.4.46-8), libbz2-1.0, libc6 (>= 2.15), libgamin0 | libfam0, libldap-2.4-2 (>= 2.4.7), libpcre3, libssl1.0.0 (>= 1.0.0), zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4), init-system-helpers (>= 1.18~), perl, lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) | systemd (>= 29.1), mime-support, libterm-readline-perl-perl

apt pulled libfam0 by default and lighttpd got the undefined symbol raised.
Installing "gamin" instead solved the issue.

[luator (anon-w)]

Still the same on Ubuntu 16.04 -- installing gamin solved it, though.

[Dmitry (dmitrymq)]

Still the same on Ubuntu 16.04

[Matthias Schuster (shalokshalom)]

Will this ever get fixed?

[Matthias Schuster (shalokshalom)]

Yep, install gamin solve this issue > it adds FAM libraries

[Thomas (t-hartwig)]

Same here: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
Installing gamin fixes the issue. Please, please update the deps.

[Marcelo Escobal (marcelo-escobal)]

Ubuntu 17.04 and the problem remains!!!

[Jarkko Hakala (roide)]

Affects Ubuntu beta 17.10, 19th.Oct.2017 and replacing (lib?)fam with Gamin fixes it. 700+ days and counting..

[Jaap (jwstolk)]

I currently have this error in Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS (recent fresh install)
works after installing gamin.

[Li The G No Lie (helpunclejackoff)]

Same here, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and ran into this problem immediately.

[Mélodie (meets)]

Hi, using Ubuntu 18.04 updated each day, I tried to install lighttpd, but it fails. First attempt, I got the same messages as the ones described above, when trying to restart it.

Then after I removed it completely and cleaned all packages in the cache, I reinstalled to see exactly how the messages could help find what is wrong. Here is what I get after a new reinstall:

**********

$ sudo apt install lighttpd
Lecture des listes de paquets... Fait
Construction de l'arbre des dépendances
Lecture des informations d'état... Fait
Paquets suggérés :
  rrdtool php5-cgi apache2-utils lighttpd-doc
Paquets recommandés :
  spawn-fcgi
Les NOUVEAUX paquets suivants seront installés :
  lighttpd
0 mis à jour, 1 nouvellement installés, 0 à enlever et 0 non mis à jour.
Il est nécessaire de prendre 276 ko dans les archives.
Après cette opération, 979 ko d'espace disque supplémentaires seront utilisés.
Réception de:1 http://bouyguestelecom.ubuntu.lafibre.info/ubuntu bionic/universe amd64 lighttpd amd64 1.4.45-1ubuntu3 [276 kB]
276 ko réceptionnés en 0s (1 398 ko/s)
Sélection du paquet lighttpd précédemment désélectionné.
(Lecture de la base de données... 239794 fichiers et répertoires déjà installés.)
Préparation du dépaquetage de .../lighttpd_1.4.45-1ubuntu3_amd64.deb ...
Dépaquetage de lighttpd (1.4.45-1ubuntu3) ...
Traitement des actions différées (« triggers ») pour ufw (0.35-5) ...
Traitement des actions différées (« triggers ») pour ureadahead (0.100.0-20) ...
Paramétrage de lighttpd (1.4.45-1ubuntu3) ...
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/lighttpd.service → /lib/systemd/system/lighttpd.service.
Job for lighttpd.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status lighttpd.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript lighttpd, action "start" failed.
● lighttpd.service - Lighttpd Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/lighttpd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2018-05-26 18:00:41 CEST; 7ms ago
  Process: 4325 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/lighttpd -tt -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf (code=exited, status=127)
Traitement des actions différées (« triggers ») pour systemd (237-3ubuntu10.1) ...
Traitement des actions différées (« triggers ») pour man-db (2.8.3-2) ...
Traitement des actions différées (« triggers ») pour ureadahead (0.100.0-20) ...
Traitement des actions différées (« triggers ») pour ufw (0.35-5) ...

*********

thanks for fixing it!

[psl (slansky)]

Ubuntu 18.04

The same problem

# service lighttpd status
● lighttpd.service - Lighttpd Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/lighttpd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabl
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2018-06-08 17:03:43 CEST; 16s ago
  Process: 28595 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/lighttpd -tt -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf (c

Jun 08 17:03:43 desk systemd[1]: lighttpd.service: Service hold-off time over, schedul
Jun 08 17:03:43 desk systemd[1]: lighttpd.service: Scheduled restart job, restart coun
Jun 08 17:03:43 desk systemd[1]: Stopped Lighttpd Daemon.
Jun 08 17:03:43 desk systemd[1]: lighttpd.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Jun 08 17:03:43 desk systemd[1]: lighttpd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 08 17:03:43 desk systemd[1]: Failed to start Lighttpd Daemon.

# /usr/sbin/lighttpd -tt -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
/usr/sbin/lighttpd: Symbol `FamErrlist' has different size in shared object, consider re-linking
/usr/sbin/lighttpd: symbol lookup error: /usr/sbin/lighttpd: undefined symbol: FAMNoExists

FIX:
sudo apt-get install gamin

Please, add dependency of "gamin" to "lighttpd" package or remove dependency of gamin from lighttpd code.

[monochromec (monochromec)]

The issue is still present in 19.10.

RCA:

libfam0 (lighttpd) dependency contains a libfam.so which doesn't resolve the symbol in question.
Only installing gamin (as suggested above) provides a proper (in that case) libfam.so as part of its dependency libgamin0.