libtermcap.so.2 no such file or directory

If you are using a new version of ubuntu, i think 9.04 or above, and you get the error(might work with other distros too)

libtermcap.so.2 no such file or directory

Here is the work around. libtermacp.so.2 is no longer a part of ubuntu, its obsolete and instead of that libncurses can be used. So run the following commands on your terminal


$ sudo updatedb $ locate libncurses

you will see a set of libncurse.so. files for eg :

/lib/libncurses.so.5
/lib/libncurses.so.5.7 etc


If you do not see such files then you will have to install libncurses, which you can do using the synaptic package manager or


$ sudo apt-get install libncurses5 (or the version that is available in your repo).

(You can use yum in case you are using redhat).

once you find the libnucrses.so.5.7 file run the following command

$sudo ln -s /lib/libncurses.so.5.7 /lib/libtermcap.so.2

Then retry the operation that gave you the libtermcap error, you should not see the error any more.