More problems installing rgdal on Ubuntu 16.04 - undefined symbol - r

Question

I've been trying various suggestions on the many threads discussing how to install rgdal onto Ubuntu 16.04, and am still having trouble.
Here's where I've gotten to, after many false attempts. I tried the answer here (trouble in installing rgdal on ubuntu 16.04):
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gdal-bin python-gdal python3-gdal libgdal1-dev
This mostly worked, except that for libgdal1-dev, my package manager says the available version is 1.11.3, and that seemed to be giving me difficulties (not sure I can replicate at this stage), so I used Synaptic to uninstall that package and to install libgdal-dev instead, which had been flagged by Synaptic.
So at this point, according to Synaptic, when I do a search for "gdal", the installed files that show up are gdal-bin, gdal-data, libgdal-dev, libgdal20, python-gdal, and python3-gdal.
At this point, when I open R and run install.packages("rgdal"), this is what I get back:
Installing package into ‘/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
trying URL 'https://cloud.r-project.org/src/contrib/rgdal_1.3-4.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 1664774 bytes (1.6 MB)
==================================================
downloaded 1.6 MB
* installing *source* package ‘rgdal’ ...
** package ‘rgdal’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
configure: R_HOME: /usr/lib/R
configure: CC: gcc -std=gnu99
configure: CXX: g++
configure: C++11 support available
configure: rgdal: 1.3-4
checking for /usr/bin/svnversion... no
configure: svn revision: 766
checking for gdal-config... /usr/bin/gdal-config
checking gdal-config usability... yes
configure: GDAL: 2.2.2
checking GDAL version >= 1.11.4... yes
checking gdal: linking with --libs only... yes
checking GDAL: /usr/share/gdal/2.2/pcs.csv readable... yes
configure: pkg-config proj exists, will use it
configure: PROJ version: 4.9.2
checking proj_api.h presence and usability... yes
checking PROJ version >= 4.8.0... yes
checking projects.h presence and usability... yes
checking PROJ.4: epsg found and readable... yes
checking PROJ.4: conus found and readable... yes
configure: Package CPP flags: -I/usr/include/gdal
configure: Package LIBS: -L/usr/lib -lgdal -lproj
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating src/Makevars
** libs
g++ -std=gnu++11 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c OGR_write.cpp -o OGR_write.o
g++ -std=gnu++11 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c gdal-bindings.cpp -o gdal-bindings.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c init.c -o init.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c inverser.c -o inverser.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c local_stubs.c -o local_stubs.o
g++ -std=gnu++11 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c ogr_geom.cpp -o ogr_geom.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c ogr_polygons.c -o ogr_polygons.o
g++ -std=gnu++11 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c ogr_proj.cpp -o ogr_proj.o
g++ -std=gnu++11 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c ogrdrivers.cpp -o ogrdrivers.o
g++ -std=gnu++11 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c ogrsource.cpp -o ogrsource.o
g++ -std=gnu++11 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/include/gdal -I"/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/sp/include" -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c projectit.cpp -o projectit.o
g++ -std=gnu++11 -shared -L/usr/lib/R/lib -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-z,relro -o rgdal.so OGR_write.o gdal-bindings.o init.o inverser.o local_stubs.o ogr_geom.o ogr_polygons.o ogr_proj.o ogrdrivers.o ogrsource.o projectit.o -L/usr/lib -lgdal -lproj -L/usr/lib/R/lib -lR
installing to /home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/rgdal/libs
** R
** data
** inst
** preparing package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices
** installing vignettes
** testing if installed package can be loaded
Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘rgdal’ in dyn.load(file, DLLpath = DLLpath, ...):
unable to load shared object '/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/rgdal/libs/rgdal.so':
/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/rgdal/libs/rgdal.so: undefined symbol: _ZN10OGRFeature17GetFieldAsIntegerEi
Error: loading failed
Execution halted
ERROR: loading failed
* removing ‘/home/[username]/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/rgdal’
The downloaded source packages are in
‘/tmp/Rtmpuc6qcT/downloaded_packages’
Warning message:
In install.packages("rgdal") :
installation of package ‘rgdal’ had non-zero exit status
I did a search for the error message, and found this question (Cannot install rgdal package in R on RHEL6, unable to load shared object rgdal.so), so tried running
ldconfig -c "echo '/usr/local/lib' >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/R-dependencies-x86_64.conf"
but it doesn't seem to do anything and I'm still getting the same error message when I try to install rgdal.
Where do I go from here?

Answer 1

I'm on Ubuntu 18.04 but I just got the same problem (exact same error log) the solution for me was to link rgdal to a custom built of gdal. I was lucky enough that for other reason I already had a copy of GDAL (git master) built from source in /usr/local/gdal. So to install rgdal from source all i needed was to:
wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/rgdal_1.3-4.tar.gz
sudo R CMD INSTALL --configure-args=--with-gdal-config=/usr/local/gdal/bin/gdal-config rgdal_1.3-4.tar.gz
If you go this path, make sure your gdal installation has all the projection data installed in the expected location, mine wasn't so I had to add an extra step:
sudo cp -r /path/to/gdal-src-code/gdal/data/* /usr/local/gdal/share/gdal/