libmysqlclient.so.12: cannot open shared object file or directory

This is an annoying problem which occurs with some installations of mysql 4.1. For some reason the libmysqlclient.so.12 isn't installed and clients which us the static objects (such as Perl::DBI) die with the following message: libmysqlclient.so.12: cannot open shared object file

In my case, I was running one of the mailer scripts for dotcut (formerly known as Carnival). The whole error looked like this:

root@nikita:/export/dotcut/bin# /export/dotcut/bin/globals-mailer-linked.pl
install_driver(mysql) failed: Can't load '/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/i486-linux/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql.so' for module DBD::mysql: libmysqlclient.so.12: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.4/i486-linux/DynaLoader.pm line 230.
 at (eval 11) line 3
Compilation failed in require at (eval 11) line 3.
Perhaps a required shared library or dll isn't installed where expected
 at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.4/Carnival/DB.pm line 12

The clue to fixing this problem is that the libmysqlclient.so.12 is missing. I ran 'locate' on the system and in fact it didn't exist at all. However, this was fixed with a very quick and dirty sybolic link hack like so:

ln -s /usr/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.so.14 /usr/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.so.12

The end result is a working mysql-client.

hth

christo