Compiling error in Gcc

Question

I wrote a program in C.After I compiled it using

gcc -o pr prc.c

and I got the thing below

/usr/bin/ld:cannot find -lc
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

ld is the linker, seems it cannot find -lc. Not sure what that is, yet — Tony The Lion
– Tony The Lion, Commented May 27, 2012 at 18:18
You probably did not install a developer package like libc6-dev and you should compile with gcc -Wall -g pr.c -o pr — Basile Starynkevitch
– Basile Starynkevitch, Commented May 27, 2012 at 18:18
@TonyTheLion: It's trying to link against libc, and cannot find it, for some reason. — Oliver Charlesworth
– Oliver Charlesworth, Commented May 27, 2012 at 18:19
@BasileStarynkevitch.....hey ..I still get the same thing!!! — ejjyrex
– ejjyrex, Commented May 28, 2012 at 15:54
@OliCharlesworth....Thanks for editing my question... I think that's the cause probably...But I am still not able to figure out how do I get this glibc installed. I tried the sudo apt thing and still its not working!! — ejjyrex
– ejjyrex, Commented May 28, 2012 at 15:57

Abhijit · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-27 18:20:59Z

3

-lc is an abbreviation of libc which is the C run-time library. What ever your *nix distribution is, you need to install glibc and glibc-common through an appropriate installer.

man ld and that should give an insight on the error message. Messages like these indicates that the linker is looking for a missing library. The Name of the library here is libc (replace l with lib).

answered May 27, 2012 at 18:20

Abhijit

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Levon · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-28 16:26:15Z

3

The linker (ld) can't find library file libc.{a|so}, the standard C library. See the ld man page for mention of this library (and lc command line option to ld) under section OPTIONS. Quoting:

ld -o <output> /lib/crt0.o hello.o -lc

This tells ld to produce a file called output as the result of linking
the file "/lib/crt0.o" with "hello.o" and the library "libc.a"

You should check to make sure these files are actually missing from your system. On my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS system:

 ~  [88] locate libc.so
/lib/libc.so.6
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
/usr/lib/libc.so

~  [89] locate libc.a
/usr/lib/libc.a
/usr/lib/xen/libc.a

How you install this missing library will vary based on your distribution. Use your package manage to search for libc. Otherwise, you may want to consider re-installing gcc

edited May 28, 2012 at 16:26

answered May 27, 2012 at 18:20

Levon

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4 Comments

Levon Over a year ago

downvote(s) without explanation help no one. Feel free to point out errors and I'll be happy to improve/correct my answer.

ejjyrex Over a year ago

Well, the actual problem that remains is that I am not able to figure out how do I install this Libc thing. I'm using Ubuntu ultimate 2.9

ejjyrex Over a year ago

@Levon...Yes I did that. And it seems like its present in the system already. I got the following thing when I checked, ejjy@Rex:~$ locate libc.so /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so ejjy@Rex:~$ locate libc.a /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.a /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/xen/libc.a /usr/share/doc/libklibc/README.klibc.arch So why do you think, its not being found??

Levon Over a year ago

@ejjy hard to say, at this point it might be easiest to just re-install gcc and be sure to check the development packages too.

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