I had and still continue to have some problems concerning the recognition of shared libraries (Fedora Core 2, x86_64, kernel v2.6). The library in question is libstdc++.so.5, which is undoubtedly used by many common applications - Thunderbird and the Firefox installer to name a few I've had trouble executing. I've scoured the internet looking for solutions, and I've done everything that's been recommended to solve the problem, however these application still continue to say that it has trouble loading the module because it cannot be found or doesn't exist (I'm on Windows right now so I don't have the exact error message, but you know exactly the one I'm talking about). Here's what I've done: 1) ldconfig. The libstdc++.so.5.0.5 file on my computer is in /usr/lib64, so that's the folder I added to list in /etc/ld.so.conf. I then ran ldconfig -v as root, and witnessed: libstdc++.so.5 -> libstdc++.so.5.0.5. This indicates to me that the symbolic link has been set up and that ld.so should be aware of this library, right? Well, no cigar doing that, the executables still complain. I even do a slocate libstdc++.so.5 and it finds both the file and the link, no problem. 2) LD_LIBRARY_PATH. I added all my shared library directories to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable and made it persistent via .bash_profile. This actually managed to fix some problems I was having with other shared libraries, but still nothing for stdlibc++.so.5. I'm no expert at Linux, but I've done everything I can possibly think of and it still can't find this one particular shared library. I'm going nuts because it exists, and the system should be able to find it!

you probably want the i386 version of it, sounds like you only have the x86_64 version.

try 'yum install compat-libstdc++.i386'

Try putting those lines in your .bashrc file instead of your .bash_profile. .bashrc is executed for all shells, whereas .bash_profile is only executed for login shells--usually just the tty's created during system bootup. Unfortunately, I seem to have forgotten the name of the init script that sets the default environment variables, so I can't help you in making it system wide.