OSError: libmmal.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory while trying to run picamera on Raspbian

Question

I am trying to open camera with the picamera module in my Raspberry pi B+ with has Raspbian 64 bit OS installed in it. I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/pi/Documents/hydroponics/scripts/picamera_test.py", line 1, in <module>
    from picamera import PiCamera
  File "/home/pi/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/picamera/__init__.py", line 72, in <module>
    from picamera.exc import (
  File "/home/pi/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/picamera/exc.py", line 41, in <module>
    import picamera.mmal as mmal
  File "/home/pi/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/picamera/mmal.py", line 49, in <module>
    _lib = ct.CDLL('libmmal.so')
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/ctypes/__init__.py", line 374, in __init__
    self._handle = _dlopen(self._name, mode)
OSError: libmmal.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The camera is enabled (I tried to capture the camera with opencv and it worked). I tried sudo rpi-update as well and it says that my firmware is already up to date. Tried sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade but none of them solve the above issue. I tried sudo ldconfig -p | grep mmal as well and it outputs:

 libmmal_vc_client.so (libc6) => /opt/vc/lib/libmmal_vc_client.so
 libmmal_util.so (libc6) => /opt/vc/lib/libmmal_util.so
 libmmal_core.so (libc6) => /opt/vc/lib/libmmal_core.so
 libmmal_components.so (libc6) => /opt/vc/lib/libmmal_components.so
 libmmal.so (libc6) => /opt/vc/lib/libmmal.so

Any suggestions on what I can do to solve this error? Thanks!

Answer 1

I just found out that picamera is still not supported for Raspbian 64 bit OS.

https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/1558#issuecomment-983483179

So we could probably use libcamera (didn't try it yet) or opencv (tried and works fine)

Answer 2

I had same error and I solved it by moving

/opt/vc/lib/libmmal_vc_client.so
/opt/vc/lib/libmmal_util.so
/opt/vc/lib/libmmal_core.so
/opt/vc/lib/libmmal_components.so
/opt/vc/lib/libmmal.so

into /usr/lib/

If it can`t find any other files just use

sudo find / -name "name of the file"

and move then into /usr/lib/ worked for me

hope this helps. :)