Julia loading Julia's libstdc++ instead of system, causes inscrutable errors

[weech]

Hi,
GLFW.jl is affected by the outdated libstdc++ issue. It's a problem that has been affecting several projects and has been documented in at least one Discourse thread. What happens is that Julia ships with an old version of libstdc++, and something in the linking process fails on systems that expect a newer version of libstdc++. If you run a GLFW.jl function with the LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose environment variable set, you get an error message like libGL: MESA-LOADER: failed to open /usr/lib/dri/radeonsi_dri.so: /home/alex/pkgs/julia-1.3.0/bin/../lib/julia/libstdc++.so.6: version GLIBCXX_3.4.26' not found (required by /usr/lib/libLLVM-9.so)`. The libstdc++ shipped with Julia 1.3 is version 3.4.24.

There's an open issue on the main Julia repo. Other packages like RCall have been adding notices in their docs with workarounds in the meantime. The error message GLFW.jl gives right now is especially lacking. Without the LIGBL_DEBUG=verbose, on my machine it is:

libGL error: MESA-LOADER: failed to open radeonsi (search paths /usr/lib/dri)
libGL error: failed to load driver: radeonsi
libGL error: MESA-LOADER: failed to open radeonsi (search paths /usr/lib/dri)
libGL error: failed to load driver: radeonsi
libGL error: MESA-LOADER: failed to open swrast (search paths /usr/lib/dri)
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
ERROR: GLFWError (VERSION_UNAVAILABLE): GLX: Failed to create context: BadValue
Stacktrace:
 [1] _ErrorCallbackWrapper(::Int32, ::Cstring) at /home/alex/.julia/packages/GLFW/g1nX6/src/callback.jl:43
 [2] CreateWindow(::Int64, ::Int64, ::String, ::GLFW.Monitor, ::GLFW.Window) at /home/alex/.julia/packages/GLFW/g1nX6/src/glfw3.jl:487 (repeats 2 times)
 [3] top-level scope at REPL[3]:1

The workaround right now is to:

1. Delete julia-1.3.0/lib/julia/libstdc++.so.6
2. Find the system libstdc++ with whereis libstdc++
3. Link that location to julia-1.3.0/lib/julia-libstdc++.so.6 using ln.

I think it'd be worthwhile to put a notice up on the README that this issue is occurring. I encountered the problem while trying to use Makie, and this repo was one of the first places I went to debug it since the error comes from this library. It's probably worthwhile to put a notice up in Makie too.

[giordano]

What version of GLFW.jl are you using?

[weech]

The Manifest lists GLFW_jll version = "3.3.2+0" and GLFW version = "3.2.2". The GLFW from the repos is "glfw-x11 3.3.2-1".

[SimonDanisch]

Is there any way we can fix this? Seems like quite a few people run into this!

[giordano]

There is this issue: JuliaLang/julia#34276

[giordano]

Is there a MWE to reproduce the error? I have GCC v9.3.0 with libstdc++.so.6.0.28 on my system and the example in the README.md works for me.

[SimonDanisch]

I think you need an AMD card, since this seems to be a radeon driver issue

[weech]

Yes, I have an AMD card, and it is the radeon driver specifically that can't be loaded while Julia's included libstdc++ is loaded.

[dawbarton]

It's not just radeon; I've just been hit by this and I've got an Intel integrated GPU with the iris driver. Thankfully now works with this fix 😄

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

I have this issue for testing Makie (Ubuntu 20.04, Julia 1.4, NVIDIA

@weech thanks for posting the work around. I'm new to Julia. Can you please elaborate on your work around.

1. Delete julia-1.3.0/lib/julia/libstdc++.so.6
   this step is clear
2. Find the system libstdc++ with whereis libstdc++
   This just returns: libstdc++:, am I missing something?
3. Link that location to julia-1.3.0/lib/julia-libstdc++.so.6 using ln.
   How does this linking work can you provide me with some information?

Thanks.

[weech]

Hi,
After more experimentation, it turns out steps 2 and 3 shouldn't be necessary (at least it works on my machine 😉). Just removing the libstdc++ included with Julia should be enough to stop the linker errors. (Julia will load the system libstdc++ automatically if not provided an alternative).

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@weech thanks for the quick reply. I tried doing just step 1 but unfortunately it still does not work. When I try ] build GLFW in Julia I get nothing, not even a warning message, an error or anything, just an empty line.
I then tried ] build GLMakie and got:

Building ModernGL → `~/.julia/packages/ModernGL/rVuW2/deps/build.log`
Building GLMakie ─→ `~/.julia/packages/GLMakie/2xw8L/deps/build.log`
Error: Error building `GLMakie`: 
│ libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
│ libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
│ init error of GLFW
│ ERROR: LoadError: OpenGL/GLFW wasn't installed correctly. This likely means,
│ you don't have an OpenGL capable Graphic Card,
│ you don't have the newest video driver installed,
│ or the GLFW build failed. If you're on linux and `]build` GLFW failed,
│ try manually adding `sudo apt-get install libglfw3` and then `]build GLMakie`.
...
...

FYI when I run glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version" in a terminal I get:

OpenGL version string: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 340.108

Any suggestions?

Thanks. (fyi @SimonDanisch, still stuck trying to set-up Makie)

[weech]

I think this might be a separate problem? I haven't seen the "No matching fbConfigs or visuals found" error before, and there's no error saying it couldn't load your driver. Can you compile and run the following program to test that the system GLFW is working? It's just a hello world app from the GLFW website that creates a window with the title "Hello World". Since you're on Ubuntu you might have to install the dev libraries and tweak where the headers are. I compiled it with clang $(pkg-config --cflags glfw3) -o glfwtest glfwtest.c $(pkg-config --libs glfw3) -lGL. Another debugging step would be to run Julia with the environment variable LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose so you get additional information.

#include <GL/gl.h>
#include <GLFW/glfw3.h>

int main(void)
{
    GLFWwindow* window;

    /* Initialize the library */
    if (!glfwInit())
        return -1;

    /* Create a windowed mode window and its OpenGL context */
    window = glfwCreateWindow(640, 480, "Hello World", NULL, NULL);
    if (!window)
    {
        glfwTerminate();
        return -1;
    }

    /* Make the window's context current */
    glfwMakeContextCurrent(window);

    /* Loop until the user closes the window */
    while (!glfwWindowShouldClose(window))
    {
        /* Render here */
        glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);

        /* Swap front and back buffers */
        glfwSwapBuffers(window);

        /* Poll for and process events */
        glfwPollEvents();
    }

    glfwTerminate();
    return 0;
}