On Ubuntu 12.04 libgazebo_common.so.1 not found

edit

tl;dr:

sudo bash -c "echo /usr/local/lib >> /etc/ld.so.conf"
sudo ldconfig

First, let's understand the situation:

ldd `which gazebo` | grep "not found"

That will give you a list of the libraries that the executable needs, but that the loader can't find. Probably libgazebo_common.so will be in that list, likely along with many other lib_gazebo* libraries.

If you did a default install, it went into /usr/local. By default, your system loader might be configured not to look in /usr/local/lib. To test that, add that directory to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH ldd `which gazebo` | grep "not found"

If that gives you an empty list, then you're ready to go, in which case you run gazebo like so:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH gazebo

or:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
gazebo

But it's better not to have to remember that. So you can configure your system to look in /usr/local/lib for libraries:

sudo bash -c "echo /usr/local/lib >> /etc/ld.so.conf"
sudo ldconfig

That should work for gazebo and for anything else that you install to /usr/local.