[SOLVED] Can't find standard headers

Michael C. · 2010-04-30 04:45:01

Hello, everyone. I think I broke something fairly badly.

Long story short, I was goofing around with ldconfig and /bin/install, and now, only root can properly compile C programs. The problem is that, on a normal user account (any account, I checked), if you try to compile anything with headers not in /usr/local, it will die. This includes such things as stdio.h and stdlib.h, meaning I can't build any of my projects under my normal account any more.

I checked the output from /bin/env, nothing out of the ordinary there. There are no new dotfiles in my home directory. I tried rebooting, but that didn't fix it. Neither did another several ldconfig invocations.

Exactly what I did prior to the breakage went something like this:

# make install
...
# ldconfig
...
# ldconfig -n /usr/local/lib
...
# exit
$ make
...
test.c:1:19: fatal error: /usr/local/include/stdio.h: Permission denied
...

test.c is nothing out of the ordinary, the line it's complaining about is "#include <stdio.h>". The gcc command line isn't weird either:

/usr/bin/gcc -Wall -Wextra -fPIC -I./include -c -o $@ $<

And the install target just called /bin/install -D ./source/<stuff> /usr/local/<place> and ldconfig.

I've tried looking up the error message on Google, which yielded descriptions of the preprocessor, as well as ldconfig, which only yielded results related to shared object libraries.

Last edited by Michael C. (2010-04-30 22:01:35)

grey · 2010-04-30 09:15:00

Run the compilation command directly from the command line. Same error message?

perbh · 2010-04-30 16:16:39

stdio.h surely shouldn't be in /usr/local/include?
It should be in /usr/include (you can check with 'ls -l /usr/include/stdio.h')
So - something is wrong with your Makefile -or- your compiler doesn't look in the right place?

Michael C. · 2010-04-30 19:52:08

@grey:

Yeah, I've tried writing a simple program that just #included stdio.h, called puts(), and returned. The most basic gcc command line I could think of, "gcc -o foo foo.c", failed with the same error.

@perbh:

Yeah, I've got nothing in the entire /usr/local hierarchy, gcc is just looking for all the standard headers there. My Makefile was working fine before the breakage, and I haven't changed it, so it must be something with the compiler itself.

Thank you for your responses.

grey · 2010-04-30 20:24:37

Maybe it's not root as root that allows you to compile, but the fact that root is a different user. To test that, create a new user and try to compile.

Michael C. · 2010-04-30 21:51:39

I've already tried that, it's a system-wide problem, except for root. Building on a different account yields exactly the same error message.

Michael C. · 2010-04-30 22:01:02

I figured it out!

Somehow, my /bin/install command changed the permissions on /usr/local/include to 644. I think because gcc couldn't get into that directory, it decided not to try any others, and exited.

Changing /usr/local/include back to 755 fixed the problem.

Thank you both for your replies!

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-30 04:45:01

[SOLVED] Can't find standard headers

#2 2010-04-30 09:15:00

Re: [SOLVED] Can't find standard headers

#3 2010-04-30 16:16:39

Re: [SOLVED] Can't find standard headers

#4 2010-04-30 19:52:08

Re: [SOLVED] Can't find standard headers

#5 2010-04-30 20:24:37

Re: [SOLVED] Can't find standard headers

#6 2010-04-30 21:51:39

Re: [SOLVED] Can't find standard headers

#7 2010-04-30 22:01:02

Re: [SOLVED] Can't find standard headers

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