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!!!