Building TensorFlow from source on Ubuntu 16.04 w/ GPU: `GLIBCXX_3.4.20' not found

Question

I'm on Ubuntu 16.04 and am trying to build TensorFlow with GPU support from source according to this. Everything works fine until the "Build TensorFlow" step, in which I execute:

bazel build -c opt --config=cuda //tensorflow/tools/pip_package:build_pip_package

The compilation hits an error with output:

ERROR: /home/thomas/tensorflow/tensorflow/core/BUILD:978:28: Executing genrule //tensorflow/core:proto_text_srcs_all failed: bash failed: error executing command /bin/bash -c ... (remaining 1 argument(s) skipped): com.google.devtools.build.lib.shell.BadExitStatusException: Process exited with status 1.
bazel-out/host/bin/tensorflow/tools/proto_text/gen_proto_text_functions: /home/thomas/anaconda2/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.20' not found (required by bazel-out/host/bin/tensorflow/tools/proto_text/gen_proto_text_functions)
bazel-out/host/bin/tensorflow/tools/proto_text/gen_proto_text_functions: /home/thomas/anaconda2/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `CXXABI_1.3.8' not found (required by bazel-out/host/bin/tensorflow/tools/proto_text/gen_proto_text_functions)
bazel-out/host/bin/tensorflow/tools/proto_text/gen_proto_text_functions: /home/thomas/anaconda2/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.21' not found (required by bazel-out/host/bin/tensorflow/tools/proto_text/gen_proto_text_functions)
Target //tensorflow/tools/pip_package:build_pip_package failed to build
Use --verbose_failures to see the command lines of failed build steps.

My suspicion is that the error has something to do with anaconda since bazel seems to be looking for libstdc++.so from within ~/anaconda2/lib.

Answer 1

This command seemed to fix my problem:

conda install libgcc

from here.

Answer 2

EDIT : Feynman27's solution seems cleaner, try it first.

Had the same issue. These steps have solved it for me (root, add sudo when needed):

1. Get the newest libstdc++ 6 available (MAY NOT BE REQUIRED):

   add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test apt-get update apt-get upgrade

2. Update the symlinks in ananconda, I did it in my python2 env in anaconda, maybe you need to do it in ~/anaconda/lib directly:

   cd ~/anaconda2/envs/python2/lib mv libstdc++.so libstdc++.so.backup mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.backup ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6