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I recently upgraded from Kubuntu 12.04 to 13.04, a complete reinstall.

Using gcc 4.7.3. I compiled some programs to discover there is no /usr/include/sys directory. That is, types.h, stat.h, etc, are absent. They exist in the include/linux directory but not include/sys.

What's going on?

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What's the error message that GCC prints? Please edit the question to provide this and other information related to your problem. –  edwin Feb 1 at 16:09
Do you have build essential installed? –  Seth Feb 1 at 16:17
The couple of programs I have tried compile fine so there is no error message from gcc. I just can't figure where the header is coming from. I have an editor that builds references to functions and syscall and the like and it isn't happy that it can't find the directory. –  Duck Feb 1 at 16:20
Yes, build-essential is up to date. –  Duck Feb 1 at 16:22

1 Answer 1

up vote 4 down vote accepted

If you use Ubuntu on 64-bit (I can't text exactly right now on a 32-bit system), then the directory from the question is:


Now, having this information, you can create symbolic links to those files if you really need them at that location (/usr/include/sys) using this on a terminal:

sudo ln -s /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/types.h /usr/include/sys/types.h
sudo ln -s /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/sys/stat.h /usr/include/sys/stat.h

# ...etc
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Yes, 64 bit. I read something similar elsewhere and it seems like everything is in that directory but I am not certain how the headers are getting included from the "#include sys/stat.h" to the x86_64/sys directory. Is this some new fangled gcc injection feature? Off-hand I don't see any symlinks or the like that would (externally) lead to this behavior. –  Duck Feb 1 at 16:37
Looks like we passed each other in the wind. So the bottom line is that the compiler is doing some magic but I may need to use some symlink hacks to make my editor happy? –  Duck Feb 1 at 16:39
@Duck I just edited my answer before 2 min of your comments :) –  Radu Rădeanu Feb 1 at 16:44

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