Can't make menuconfig

Question

I use Debian 7.4 Wheezy. I trying to upgrade my kernel, but when I type "make menuconfig" it says:

 *** Unable to find the ncurses libraries or the
 *** required header files.
 *** 'make menuconfig' requires the ncurses libraries.
 *** 
 *** Install ncurses (ncurses-devel) and try again.
 *** 
make[1]: *** [scripts/kconfig/dochecklxdialog] Error 1
make: *** [menuconfig] Error 2

I trying to install "libncurses5-dev", but I get the error:

E: Unable to locate package libncurses5-dev

P.S.

I downloaded and installed the packages manually and now everything is okay! Thanks a lot!!

Relevance

Answer 1

You should have run (as root)

aptitude update
aptitude search libncurses

that would suggest you the right package name.

Then try

aptitude install libncurses-dev

and

aptitude install kernel-package
aptitude build-dep linux-image linux-image-amd64 

At last, use make-kpkg --initrd binary to compile your kernel. (it will produce *.deb files in the parent directory). You want to configure /etc/kernel-pkg.conf and perhaps /etc/kernel-img.conf

Dummy

i libncurses5 - shared libraries for terminal handling i libncursesw5 - shared libraries for terminal handling I get the same error after these commands.. When I type apt-get update libncurses5 libncursesw5 I get this massege Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done libncursesw5 is already the newest version. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. – Relevance

# aptitude install libncurses-dev No candidate version found for libncurses-dev No candidate version found for libncurses-dev No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed. 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used. – Relevance

The thing that surprised me is that it needed the -dev package. I had libncurses5 installed, and thought that would be enough. But it turned out that libncurses5-dev was needed. – Binni

Answer 2

I had the same problem. In my case installation of package libncursesw5-dev solved the issue.

Anastasio

Answer 3

make menuconfig needs ncurses libraries try following command to install ncurses library

sudo apt-get install libncurses5
sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

Skyscape

Answer 4

make menuconfig

worked for me after i installed all the libaries, and added myself sudo permission, i was also using this to cross_compile stuff

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command

%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

%b37399 ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

Corundum

Answer 5

For Fedora(Red Hat);

$ make menuconfig
#error encountered :
make[1]: *** [scripts/kconfig/Makefile:210: scripts/kconfig/mconf-cfg] Error 1
make: *** [Makefile:588: menuconfig] Error 2
#resolution : 
$ sudo yum install libncurses-dev

Thanks

Snipes

There are already other answers saying to install that lib, this is just a duplicate of other answers. – Meissner

Answer 6

Depending on the project the menuconfig could be made with the kconfiglib library:

https://pypi.org/project/kconfiglib/

For these projects it's required to:

• Install Python (I tested it with Python2.7, but I think newer Pythons are just fine)
• Install pip (if it's not done with Python)
• And then the pip install kconfiglib

And for some projects, this will fix the error instead of the libcurses package.

Just as example here is one kconfiglib based project which prints the same error, but will not be fixed with libcurse:

https://github.com/polarfire-soc/hart-software-services

Caplan