Restore libz.so.1 – How to Guide for Ubuntu 16.04

16.04aptshared library

While trying to fix an issue with Python, I accidentally blew away my libz.so.1 binary by symlinking over it. Now a bunch of stuff, including apt-get won't work. The damage is limited to just libz.so.1 (which was pointing to libz.so.1.2.8) so I should be able to fix it by just finding the x86_64 binary and dropping it back in place, but all I can find is the source and I can't get that to compile. I'm on Xenial. Where can I find a compiled binary?

Best Answer

The correct way to fix this problem is to download needed package by hand, then install or extract it to the system. Of course you can perform such actions from LiveCD/LiveUSB.

How to solve such problems:

  1. Visit packages.ubuntu.com.

  2. Enter missed file name in Search the contents of packages (in our case libz.so.1.2.8) specifying target Distribution (xenial in our case) and CPU Architecture (amd64):

    search options

  3. Click Search, it will show the results page:

    search results

  4. Then click on the zlib1g link

  5. In Download section click amd64:

    download <code>zlib1g</code>

  6. On opened page select nearest mirror, (copy link or download deb-file by browser)

    mirror

    wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/z/zlib/zlib1g_1.2.8.dfsg-2ubuntu4_amd64.deb

  7. Try to install downloaded package to the system:

    sudo dpkg -i zlib1g_1.2.8.dfsg-2ubuntu4_amd64.deb

    If it does not work - extract it directly to filesystem:

    sudo dpkg -x zlib1g_1.2.8.dfsg-2ubuntu4_amd64.deb /

  8. And then for sure reinstall it with APT:

    sudo apt-get install --reinstall zlib1g
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