"Failed to load platform plugin "xcb" " while launching qt5 app on linux without qt installed

I wrote application for linux which uses Qt5.

But when I am trying to launch it on the linux without Qt SDK installed, the output in console is:

>Failed to load platform plugin "xcb". Available platforms are:

How can I fix this? May be I need to copy some plugin file? When I use ubuntu with Qt5 installed, but I rename Qt directory, the same problem occurs. So, it uses some file from Qt directory...

UPDATE: when I create in the app dir "platforms" folder with the file libqxcb.so, the app still doesnot start, but the error message changes:

>Failed to load platform plugin "xcb". Available platforms are: > >xcb

How can this happen? How can platform plugin be available but can't be loaded?

Use ldd (man ldd) to show shared library dependencies. Running this on libqxcb.so

.../platforms$ ldd libqxcb.so

shows that xcb depends on libQt5DBus.so.5 in addition to libQt5Core.so.5 and libQt5Gui.so.5 (and many other system libs). Add libQt5DBus.so.5 to your collection of shared libs and you should be ready to move on.

As was posted earlier, you need to make sure you install the platform plugins when you deploy your application. Depending on how you want to deploy things, there are two methods to tell your application where the platform plugins (e.g. platforms/plugins/libqxcb.so) are at runtime which may work for you.

The first is to export the path to the directory through the QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH variable.

QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH=path/to/plugins ./my_qt_app

or

export QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH=path/to/plugins
./my_qt_app

The other option, which I prefer is to create a qt.conf file in the same directory as your executable. The contents of which would be:

[Paths]
Plugins=/path/to/plugins

More information regarding this can be found here and at using qt.conf

I tried to start my binary, compiled with Qt 5.7, on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS where Qt 5.5 is preinstalled. It didn't work.

At first, I inspected the binary itself with ldd as was suggested here, and satisfied all "not found" dependencies. Then this notorious This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" error was thrown.

How to resolve this in Linux

Firstly you should create platforms directory where your binary is, because it is the place where Qt looks for XCB library. Copy libqxcb.so there. I wonder why authors of other answers didn't mention this.

Then you may want to run your binary with QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 environment variable set to check which dependencies of libqxcb.so are not satisfied. (You may also use ldd for this as suggested in the accepted answer).

The command output may look like this:

me@xerus:/media/sf_Qt/Package$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 ./Binary
QFactoryLoader::QFactoryLoader() checking directory path "/media/sf_Qt/Package/platforms" ...
QFactoryLoader::QFactoryLoader() looking at "/media/sf_Qt/Package/platforms/libqxcb.so"
Found metadata in lib /media/sf_Qt/Package/platforms/libqxcb.so, metadata=
{
    "IID": "org.qt-project.Qt.QPA.QPlatformIntegrationFactoryInterface.5.3",
    "MetaData": {
        "Keys": [
            "xcb"
        ]
    },
    "className": "QXcbIntegrationPlugin",
    "debug": false,
    "version": 329472
}


Got keys from plugin meta data ("xcb")
loaded library "/media/sf_Qt/Package/platforms/libqxcb.so"
QLibraryPrivate::loadPlugin failed on "/media/sf_Qt/Package/platforms/libqxcb.so" : "Cannot load library /media/sf_Qt/Package/platforms/libqxcb.so: (/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libQt5DBus.so.5: version `Qt_5' not found (required by ./libQt5XcbQpa.so.5))"
This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "xcb"
in "".

Available platform plugins are: xcb.

Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Aborted (core dumped)

Note the failing libQt5DBus.so.5 library. Copy it to your libraries path, in my case it was the same directory where my binary is (hence LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.). Repeat this process until all dependencies are satisfied.

P.S. thanks to the author of this answer for QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1.

I tried the main parts of each answer, to no avail. What finally fixed it for me was to export the following environment variables:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:~/Qt/5.9.1/gcc_64/lib
QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH=~/Qt/5.9.1/gcc_64/plugins/ 

Ubuntu 16.04 64bit. I got the problem for apparently no reasons. The night before I watched a movie on my VideoLan instance, that night I would like to watch another one with VideoLan. VLC just didn't want to run because of the error into the question. I google a bit and I found the solution it solved my problem: from now on, VLC is runnable just like before. The solution is this comand:

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/platforms/ /usr/bin/

I am not able to explain what are its consequencies, but I know it creates some missing symbolic link.

Since version 5, Qt uses a platform abstraction system (QPA) to abstract from the underlying platform.

The implementation for each platform is provided by plugins. For X11 it is the XCB plugin. See Qt for X11 requirements for more information about the dependencies.

There might be many causes to this problem. The key is to use

export QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1

before you run your Qt application. Then, inspect the output, which will point you to the direction of the error. In my case it was:

Cannot load library /opt/nao/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so: (/opt/nao/bin/../lib/libz.so.1: version `ZLIB_1.2.9' not found (required by /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng16.so.16))

But that is solved in different threads. See for instance https://stackoverflow.com/a/50097275/2408964.

Probably this information will help. I was on Ubuntu 18.04 and when I tried to install Krita, using the ppa method, I got this error:

> This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "". > > Available platform plugins are: linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, wayland-egl, wayland, xcb. > > Reinstalling the application may fix this problem. > > Aborted

I tried all the solutions that I found in this thread and other webs without any success.

Finally, I found a post where the author mention that is possible to activate the debugging tool of qt5 using this simple command:

export QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1

After adding this command I run again krita I got the same error, however this time I knew the cause of that error.

> libxcb-xinerama.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory.

This error prevents to the "xcb" to load properly. So, the solution will be install the `libxcb-xinerama.so.0" right? However, when I run the command:

sudo apt install libxcb-xinerama

The lib was already installed. Now what Teo? Well, then I used an old trick :) Yeah, that one --reinstall

sudo apt install --reinstall libxcb-xinerama

TLDR: This last command solved my problem.

So, I spent about a day trying to figure out what was the issue; tried all the proposed solutions, but none of that worked like installing xcb libs or exporting Qt plugins folder. The solution that suggested to use QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 to debug the issue didn't provide me a direct insight like in the answer - instead I was getting something about unresolved symbols within Qt5Core.

That gave me a hint, though: what if it's trying to use different files from different Qt installations? On my machine I had standard version installed in /home/username/Qt/ and some local builds within my project that I compiled by myself (I have other custom built kits as well in other locations). Whenever I tried to use any of the kits (installed by Qt maintenance tool or built by myself), I would get an "xcb error".

The solution was simple: provide the Qt path through CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH and not though Qt5_DIR as I did, and it solved the problem. Example:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/home/username/Qt/5.11.1/gcc_64

I ran into a very similar problem with the same error message. First, debug some by turning on the Qt Debug printer with the command line command:

>export QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1

and rerun the application. For me this revealed the following:

"Cannot load library /home/.../miniconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so: (libxkbcommon-x11.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)"

"Cannot load library /home/.../miniconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so: (libxkbcommon-x11.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)"

Indeed, I was missing libxkbcommon-x11.so.0 and libxkbcommon-x11.so.0. Next, check your architecture using dpkg from the linux command line. (For me, the command "arch" gave a different and unhelpful result)

>dpkg --print-architecture #result for me: amd64

I then googled "libxkbcommon-x11.so.0 ubuntu 18.04 amd64", and likewise for libxkbcommon-x11.so.0, which yields those packages on packages.ubuntu.com. That told me, in retrospect unsurprisingly, I'm missing packages called libxkbcommon-x11-0 and libxkbcommon0, and that installing those packages will include the needed files, but the dev versions will not. Then the solution:

>sudo apt-get update > >sudo apt-get install libxkbcommon0 > >sudo apt-get install libxkbcommon-x11-0

I faced the same problem when after installing Viber. It had all required qt libraries in /opt/viber/plugins/. I checked dependencies of /opt/viber/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so and found missing dependencies. They were libxcb-render.so.0, libxcb-image.so.0, libxcb-icccm.so.4, libxcb-xkb.so.1 So I resolved my issue by installing missing packages with this libraries:

apt-get install libxcb-xkb1 libxcb-icccm4 libxcb-image0 libxcb-render-util0

I like the solution with qt.conf.

Put qt.conf near to the executable with next lines:

[Paths]
Prefix = /path/to/qtbase

And it works like a charm :^)

For a working example:

[Paths]
Prefix = /home/user/SDKS/Qt/5.6.2/5.6/gcc_64/

The documentation on this is here: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qt-conf.html

All you need to do is

pip uninstall PyQt5 

and

conda install pyqt 

Most of the problem of pyqt can be fixed by this simplest solution.

In my case, I needed to deploy two Qt apps on an Ubuntu virtualbox guest. One was command-line ("app"), the other GUI_based ("app_GUI").

I used "ldd app" to find out what the required libs are, and copied them to the Ubuntu guest. While the command-line executable "app" worked ok, the GUI-based executable crashed, giving the "Failed to load platform plugin "xcb" error. I checked ldd for libxcb.so, but this too had no missing dependencies.

The problem seemed to be that while I did copy all the right libraries I accidentally had copied also libraries that were already present at the guest system.. meaning that (a) they were unnecessary to copy them in the first place and (b) worse, copying them produced incompatibilities between the install libraries. Worse still, they were undetectable by ldd like I said..

The solution? Make sure that you copy libraries shown as missing by ldd and absolutely no extra libraries.

In my case missing header files were the reason libxcb was not built by Qt. Installing them according to https://wiki.qt.io/Building_Qt_5_from_Git#Linux.2FX11 resolved the issue:

yum install libxcb libxcb-devel xcb-util xcb-util-devel mesa-libGL-devel libxkbcommon-devel

I link all Qt stuff statically to the generic Linux builds of my open source projects. It makes life a bit easier. You just need to build static versions of Qt libraries first. Of course this cannot be applied to closed source software due to licensing issues. The deployment of Qt5 apps on Linux is currently a bit problematic, because Ubuntu 12.04, for example, doesn't have Qt5 libraries in the package repositories.

I had this problem, and on a hunch I removed the Qt Configs from my environment. I.e.,

rm -rf ~/.config/Qt*

Then I started qtcreator and it reconfigured itself with the existing state of the machine. It no longer remembered where my projects were, but that just meant I had to browse to them "for the first time" again.

But more importantly it built itself a coherent set of library paths, so I could rebuild and run my project executables again without the xcb or qxcb libraries going missing.

Folks trying to get this started on Ubuntu 20.04 please try to run this and see if this solves the problem. This worked for me

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y libxcb-xinerama0

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/...."adapt-it"..../qt5/plugins/platforms/ /usr/bin/

It creates the symbolic link it's missed. Good for QT ! Good for VLC !!