Acrobat Reader 7.0.9, error on 64 bit machine

lawrence_lee_lee · 06-19-2007, 04:40 AM

I installed Acrobat Reader 7.0.9 on my Ubuntu 7.04 Linux (64 bit). However, when I load it, it gave me the following message:

error while loading shared libraries: libXext.so.6: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

I know this is something about 32 bits and 64 bits problems, but just don't know how to resolve the problem. Can anyone help?

Besides, I cannot install Adobe Flash player plugin onto my firefox. Is this also due to the 64 bits reason?

Thanks in advance for any help!

weibullguy · 06-19-2007, 05:24 AM

Yes. Both Acrobat Reader and the Flash plugin are 32-bit and will not work with 64-bit libraries. There is a wrapper that will allow you to use 32-bit plugins with a 64-bit Firefox (sorry, I don't remember what it is called). Acrobat Reader is a different story AFAIK.

If your machine is x86_64 (AMD64 or Intel), then it is a multilib architecture. Any standards-compliant Linux distro should provide both 32-bit and 64-bit libraries. That is, on the x86_64 platform, you can use both 32-bit and 64-bit applications simultaneously. And, as my signature says, you don't need a chroot. Everything will happily coexist right next to each other.

You may also want to check out these pages once you get the 32-bit libraries you need (assuming, of course you have an x86_64 machine):

http://cblfs.cross-lfs.org/index.php/Flash_Player
http://cblfs.cross-lfs.org/index.php/Adobe_Reader

jschiwal · 06-19-2007, 05:33 AM

On my system, not Ubuntu, that library is supplied by a xorg-x11-libXext-devel-7.2-12 package. Is Ubuntu a biarch system? When I looked for that library I found:
locate libXext
/usr/lib/libXext.so.6
/usr/lib/libXext.so.6.4.0
/usr/lib64/libXext.a
/usr/lib64/libXext.la
/usr/lib64/libXext.so
/usr/lib64/libXext.so.6
/usr/lib64/libXext.so.6.4.0

Also, looking at /usr/bin/acroread, it is a long shell script that sets up the library path. When I checked further, my acroread program (/usr/lib/Acrobat7/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread is a 32bit program, and uses 32 bit libraries ( checking with lsof | grep lib ).

Look for the libXext: locate libXext
and check if it is 64 or 32 bit: file /usr/lib/libXext.so.4.0 (for example)
and check the acroread program: file /usr/lib/Acrobat7/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread

If a 32 bit libXext library exists make sure that the path to it is in /etc/ld.so.conf. If not, add it and run as root "sudo /sbin/ldconfig".