Unable to run vagrant on opensuse leap 16: libreadline.so.8: undefined symbol: UP

[HolgerHees]

I tested vagrant 2.4.9 and 2.4.10.dev+000573-f2960d54

If I run vagrant without any arguments (arguments does not matter) I got the following error.

bash: /tmp/.mount_vagranMIMelF/usr/lib/libreadline.so.8: no version information available (required by bash)
bash: /tmp/.mount_vagranMIMelF/usr/lib/libreadline.so.8: no version information available (required by bash)
bash: /tmp/.mount_vagranMIMelF/usr/lib/libreadline.so.8: no version information available (required by bash)
bash: /tmp/.mount_vagranMIMelF/usr/lib/libreadline.so.8: no version information available (required by bash)
bash: symbol lookup error: /tmp/.mount_vagranMIMelF/usr/lib/libreadline.so.8: undefined symbol: UP

I'm using opensuse leap 16, but I think, vagrant is an AppImage, so the underlying os libs should not matter.

[HoyeonRhee]

I can confirm that the issue is reproducible.
For reference, it’s possible to run Vagrant by extracting the AppImage and removing the bundled libreadline library

$ ./vagrant --appimage-extract
$ rm squashfs-root/usr/lib/libreadline.so*
$ ./squashfs-root/AppRun
Usage: vagrant [options] <command> [<args>]

    -h, --help                       Print this help.

Hopefully this can be resolved soon.

[taru-garg-2000]

Hi @HolgerHees ,

This certainly seems quite interesting, I wonder if hashicorp/vagrant-installers#314 could be the cause for it, is it at all possible to test if Vagrant works with a new version of the dependency, although I am not sure it will.

Thanks!

[HolgerHees]

@taru-garg-hashicorp I tested build 2.4.8.dev+000526-c70e8ab3 from 20. June 2025 (which should not contain the fix) and the problem exists there too.

@HoyeonRhee I tested your fix and this works!

[RStephanH]

Additional findings — CachyOS / Arch Linux (readline 8.3, ncurses 6.6)

I hit the same issue on CachyOS (Arch-based rolling release) with Vagrant 2.4.9.

Confirming @HoyeonRhee's workaround works, but there is a second error that appears
after removing the bundled readline, which is not documented yet:

/usr/bin/ruby: error while loading shared libraries: libcrypt.so.1:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Root cause (additional detail)

The bundled libreadline.so.8 was compiled against an older ncurses ABI that exported
UP as a plain global symbol. In ncurses 6.6 / readline 8.3+, this symbol is versioned
differently — the bundled lib cannot resolve it at runtime.

On top of that, Vagrant's bundled Ruby expects libcrypt.so.1 (legacy libxcrypt),
which Arch-based distros no longer ship by default — only libcrypt.so.2 is present.

Complete working fix (Arch / CachyOS)

# 1. Install missing compat lib
paru -S libxcrypt-compat   # provides libcrypt.so.1

# 2. Extract the AppImage
./vagrant --appimage-extract

# 3. Remove bundled readline
rm squashfs-root/usr/lib/libreadline.so*

# 4. Test
squashfs-root/AppRun --version
# Vagrant 2.4.9 ✓

# 5. Make permanent
sudo mv squashfs-root /opt/vagrant
sudo tee /usr/local/bin/vagrant > /dev/null << 'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
exec /opt/vagrant/AppRun "$@"
EOF
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/vagrant

# 6. If you previously installed via AUR, remove the shadowing binary
rm ~/.local/bin/vagrant

⚠️ Do NOT downgrade readline system-wide

On rolling releases, bash is compiled against readline 8.3 (rl_print_keybinding).
Downgrading readline to 8.2 will break bash itself. Restore with:

sudo pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/readline-8.3*.pkg.tar.zst

Tested environment

Component	Version
OS	CachyOS x86_64
Kernel	6.19.10-1-cachyos
Vagrant	2.4.9
readline	8.3.003-1.1
ncurses	6.6-2.1
libxcrypt-compat	4.5.2-1.1

Full root cause write-up and README: [https://github.com/RStephanH/vagrant-appimage-rolling-fix]

[ajoga]

Exactly the same issue as OP on OpenSuse tumbleweed 20260331-0 & vagrant_2.4.9_linux_amd64.zip :

$ vagrant -h
bash: /tmp/.mount_vagranOFkPoP/usr/lib/libreadline.so.8: no version information available (required by bash)
bash: /tmp/.mount_vagranOFkPoP/usr/lib/libreadline.so.8: no version information available (required by bash)
bash: /tmp/.mount_vagranOFkPoP/usr/lib/libreadline.so.8: no version information available (required by bash)
bash: /tmp/.mount_vagranOFkPoP/usr/lib/libreadline.so.8: no version information available (required by bash)
bash: symbol lookup error: /tmp/.mount_vagranOFkPoP/usr/lib/libreadline.so.8: undefined symbol: UP

[RStephanH]

@ajoga
try to solve it in the same way i did but using opensuse package manager

[antoine-morvan]

Hello , stumbling on the same issue in a different context. Still, happened to find a workaround: the UP symbol is defined in the libtinfo.so.6 file, built allong with ncurses (or libtinfow.so.6 with ncursesw) when --with-termlib is given to configure.

Building readline with an extra LDFLAGS=-ltinfo will link readline with this additional lib from ncurses, and resolve the missing UP symbol.

For the record, I found the same fix on the package manager spack : https://github.com/spack/spack-packages/blob/develop/repos/spack_repo/builtin/packages/ncurses/package.py#L250-L251

Hope this helps,
Best.