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Building from Source and Advanced Topics
1

I dread seeing this message: “Report outdated / end-of-life Scan Engine / Environment”
Every time I see that message, I know that I’ll be spending days trying to debug the upgrade process.

I’ve compiled OpenVAS components from source multiple times this week, but I’m stuck.

I think that my current problem is that the ospd-openvas.service hangs in ‘activating’ state for some reason. Log indicates some problem finding openvas, but it’s on the path. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

$ tail ospd-openvas.log
OSPD[1539] 2024-05-29 16:40:27,949: ERROR: (ospd_openvas.db) openvas executable not available. Please install openvas into your PATH.

$ openvas -V
openvas: error while loading shared libraries: libopenvas_nasl.so.23: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

$ ls /usr/local/lib/nasl.so.23
/usr/local/lib/libopenvas_nasl.so.23 /usr/local/lib/libopenvas_nasl.so.23.0.1

2

Hi, you need to check via the linker if the library is available for the executable. Try running

ldd /usr/local/sbin/openvas

and check if libopenvas_nasl.so.23 is listed. If the linker can not find it, /usr/local/lib is not in your library search path.

3

Shouldn’t the openvas install-from-source instructions say something about setting this non-standard path when installing on a vanilla Debian machine?

Using your tip, I found a way to get ospd-openvas service to go ‘active running’. Perhaps this wasn’t the best way to resolve it, but I added one line in the ospd-openvas.service file:
Environment=“LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib”

Now I’ve got a new problem. Guess I should start another forum thread for that.
Thanks for the help

4

I was having this issue and adding the line “/usr/local/lib” in the file “/etc/ld.so.conf” and then running ldconfig fixed it for me.

1 Like
5

Hi,

with the standard setup /usr/local/lib should be in the library search path on Debian and its derivatives by default. When I checked that last time some month ago this was still the case. Not sure if something changed in the meanwhile.

On my Ubuntu 24.04 it’s still the case

> cat /etc/ld.so.conf.d/libc.conf 
# libc default configuration
/usr/local/lib

If you are still facing this issue please do the following

echo "/usr/local/lib" | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/greenbone-community-edition.conf
sudo ldconfig
1 Like
6

Maybe Ubuntu is different in some way. My OpenVAS is running on a vanilla Debian install - without GUI. It includes the same /etc/ld.so.conf.d/libc.conf that you show in your message (above), but the service definitely wasn’t finding it until I added the Environment path in the ospd-openvas.service file. Is it possible that the path isn’t loaded by Debian because I don’t have a GUI installed?

7

Not sure why it hasn’t been found. Running sudo ldconfig should fix that.