Help needed installing anki on xubuntu [linux]

[tracker]

Hiya all,
I’m on Xubuntu linux, trying to install [Qt6] Anki following the official instructions. Installs fine. When I go to launch it (from terminal), I get this:

anki
Anki starting…
Initial setup…
Preparing to run…
File “”, line 1, in
File “aqt”, line 509, in run
File “aqt”, line 583, in _run
File “aqt.profiles”, line 139, in setupMeta
File “aqt.profiles”, line 421, in _loadMeta
resetting corrupt _global
Qt warning: QGuiApplication::setDesktopFileName: the specified desktop file name ends with .desktop. For compatibility reasons, the .desktop suffix will be removed. Please specify a desktop file name without .desktop suffix
Qt warning: From 6.5.0, xcb-cursor0 or libxcb-cursor0 is needed to load the Qt xcb platform plugin.
Qt info: Could not load the Qt platform plugin “xcb” in “” even though it was found.
Qt fatal: This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Available platform plugins are: offscreen, wayland, wayland-egl, vkkhrdisplay, minimalegl, linuxfb, vnc, eglfs, minimal, xcb.

What should I do?
Oh, and yes, I did do:

sudo apt install libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-cursor0 libnss3

Any help much appreciated.

[stupid]

@tracker

Qt info: Could not load the Qt platform plugin “xcb” in “” even though it was found.

This is the important part.

I’m guessing that you’re using xfce because you’re on Xubuntu. I searched for xfce and found a user with the same error as above, but on Debian: Anki 23.12.1 fail to start in Debian 12

Dae linked to this page: Missing Libraries - Anki Manual. It says to launch with QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 anki to add debug output in order to see which library is missing.

In that user’s case, dae saw that libxcb-icccm.so.4 was missing via the end of the last line starting with Qt debug:

@miku4j

Qt debug: QLibraryPrivate::loadPlugin failed on "/usr/local/share/anki/lib/PyQt6/Qt6/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so" : "Cannot load library /usr/local/share/anki/lib/PyQt6/Qt6/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so: (libxcb-icccm.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)" 

and a search for the required package gave libxcb-icccm4:

@dae

% apt search libxcb-icccm     
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
libxcb-icccm4/stable,stable,now 0.4.1-1.1 amd64 [installed]
  utility libraries for X C Binding -- icccm

I’d still try to follow those steps instead of going straight to installing the package. Try to find a similar error message using QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 anki and then find out what package provides/owns the missing library.

In case the apt search command shown above doesn’t work for you, I did a few searches. On my OS, the search I’d use is pacman -Qo <missing-library> pacman -F <missing-library> to find which package owns it. This page gives the equivalent in Debian/Ubuntu: pacman/Rosetta - ArchWiki

pacman -Qo equivalents likely incorrect in this case, see edit below

dpkg -S <missing-library>

OR

dlocate <missing-library>

Edit: I tested. libxcb-icccm.so.4 showed up by using pacman -F, not pacman -Qo. So the command in that case would be:

apt-file search <missing-library>

Man pages:
dpkg
dlocate
apt-file

[tracker]

Thanks for the reply.
So, I ran QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 anki and got this:

Qt debug: Got keys from plugin meta data QList(“xcb”)
Qt debug: checking directory path “/usr/local/share/anki/platforms” …
Qt debug: “/usr/local/share/anki/lib/PyQt6/Qt6/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so” cannot load: Cannot load library /usr/local/share/anki/lib/PyQt6/Qt6/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so: (libxkbcommon-x11.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
Qt debug: QLibraryPrivate::loadPlugin failed on “/usr/local/share/anki/lib/PyQt6/Qt6/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so” : “Cannot load library /usr/local/share/anki/lib/PyQt6/Qt6/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so: (libxkbcommon-x11.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)”
Qt warning: From 6.5.0, xcb-cursor0 or libxcb-cursor0 is needed to load the Qt xcb platform plugin.
Qt info: Could not load the Qt platform plugin “xcb” in “” even though it was found.
Qt fatal: This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

I’ve tried searching for libxkbcommon-x11.so.0 without luck, though I don’t really know what I’m doing.
What should I do next?

[stupid]

The Xubuntu releases page has two versions listed, Mantic (23.10) and Jammy (22.04). But I think what version you have doesn’t matter in this case.

Using Ubuntu’s package search, I found libxkbcommon-x11.so.0 in the libxkbcommon-x11-0 package for both.

• Results for Mantic: Ubuntu – Package Contents Search Results -- libxkbcommon-x11.so.0
• Results for Jammy: Ubuntu – Package Contents Search Results -- libxkbcommon-x11.so.0

This command should install it for you:
sudo apt install libxkbcommon-x11-0

And hopefully Anki should start after that.

[tracker]

Hi again,
Thanks, I installed libxkbcommon-x11-0, but anki still won’t run.
Here’s the output from QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 anki now:

Qt debug: Got keys from plugin meta data QList(“xcb”)
Qt debug: checking directory path “/usr/local/share/anki/platforms” …
Qt debug: “/usr/local/share/anki/lib/PyQt6/Qt6/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so” cannot load: Cannot load library /usr/local/share/anki/lib/PyQt6/Qt6/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so: (libxcb-icccm.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
Qt debug: QLibraryPrivate::loadPlugin failed on “/usr/local/share/anki/lib/PyQt6/Qt6/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so” : “Cannot load library /usr/local/share/anki/lib/PyQt6/Qt6/plugins/platforms/libqxcb.so: (libxcb-icccm.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)”
Qt warning: From 6.5.0, xcb-cursor0 or libxcb-cursor0 is needed to load the Qt xcb platform plugin.
Qt info: Could not load the Qt platform plugin “xcb” in “” even though it was found.
Qt fatal: This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

I’m afraid I need to ask for more help. I’ve tried searching that ubuntu packages list, without much success.
Oh, and I’m on Xubuntu 22.04.

[stupid]

@tracker

I’ve tried searching that ubuntu packages list, without much success.

It’s the second search field available since we’re searching for package contents. I should’ve made that more clear. Here’s a picture of my search on that search page:

I selected Jammy since you’re on 22.04. Results page: Ubuntu – Package Contents Search Results -- libxcb-icccm.so.4

The next package to install is libxcb-icccm4.

[tracker]

Ok, I installed libxcb-icccm4, still problems launching. Then I repeated QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 anki, and successfully searched for libxcb-keysyms.so.1, found and installed libxcb-keysyms1.
Success! Anki is now launching and running fine, I’ve downloaded all my cards and can verify that everything is working as it should.

Arigato @stupid, you’ve been extremely helpful and prompt. Couldn’t have done it without your help.