“You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run: libc.so.6” The common fixes don't work

[FriendlyFire]

Update: Problem Solved!

Solution -> Went to ubuntu 13.10. If you have a reason you need 12.04, I don't know how to help you, but if anyone stumbles across this, try upgrading. I thought 12.04 would be the more stable version that things worked on, perhaps it is not that simple.


So I know this is a problem that has been asked around a lot, but I've tried a bunch of solutions with no success. I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 (64 bit), and I just installed it yesterday. This is my first time working with linux.

The error is: You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run: libc.so.6

Things I've tried. First, I had downloaded from the steam website. I uninstalled it, and tried again from the ubuntu software centre.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
sudo apt-get upgrade

This installed a bunch of the 32 bit libraries, but did not fix the issue. This seems like the major fix for most people. The direct approach of

sudo apt-get install libc.so.6

returns this:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package libc.so.6
E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'libc.so.6'

I guess libc.so.6 isn't a package, just a single file or something? I also tried

gksudo gedit /etc/ld.so.conf.d/steam.conf

Added these two lines, those the second one was all ready in the file, but copied over:

/usr/lib32
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa

Then executed:

sudo ldconfig

But nothing seemed to happen, steam still doesn't work.

So, I feel like it is more likely that I have the library and steam isn't looking in the right place. One thing I've seen is people usually reference /usr/local/lib/ for your library locations. However, I can't find where to cd into /usr/, it isn't in my home folder. If /usr/ is the home folder, there is only a /.local folder which only has /share, no lib anywhere. Sorry for my linux ignorance.

I appreciate any help, I honestly have no idea how to confirm I have the library and point steam to it, or if that is even the right thing to do.

[kisa]

I don't have Ubuntu so I couldn't test this, but I think "sudo apt-get install libc6-i386" (without the quote obviously) should fix that.

/edit:
Some further information:
libc.so.6 is as you correctly guessed a single file. As far as I can tell it should be at /lib32/libc.so.6 on a 64 bit Ubuntu system.

Also since you couldn't find the /usr folder let me explain that to you: There is the so called root node of your filesystem, which is so to say the lowest point in the filesystem, every folder is a subfolder of the root. This is shown as the leading slash in filepaths. So for example your home folder is "/home/<username>/" which means to get to the root from there you have to go up 2 times. Often your home folder is simply abbreviated "~". Now if you want to cd into "/usr/" you can either just enter "cd /usr" (notice the leading slash) or from your home folder "cd ../../usr" (two dots refer to the folder above)
The reason for all this is, that linux systems are designed with multiple users in mind, so everyone can have their own configurations and stuff in their home folder and systemwide stuff like libraries, systemwide configuration files or systemwide installed programms are stored in other folders(/lib, /etc, and /bin for example)

To find if you have a particular file, you can use the find command for example "find / -name "libc.so.6" -print" to find the libc.so.6 in any folder below the root (/)

Hope that helps :)

[FriendlyFire]

kisa, before I could test your idea I took some advice to upgrade to 13.10, and steam is now working (though I have not played anything yet, still downloading). Thanks for the help and explanation about root directories though, I really appreciate it!