Have you run into this loading problem when you start Octave in Cygwin recently? If yes, you are not alone.
[zandy@cygwin] ~ $ octave
/usr/bin/octave-cli-3.8.1.exe: error while loading shared libraries: ?: cannot open shared
object file: No such file or directory
Diagnose:
[zandy@cygwin] ~ $ cygcheck /usr/bin/octave-cli-3.8.1.exe
C:\cygwin\bin\octave-cli-3.8.1.exe
cygcheck: track_down: could not find cygblas-0.dll
cygcheck: track_down: could not find cygblas-0.dll
cygcheck: track_down: could not find cyglapack-0.dll
cygcheck: track_down: could not find cyglapack-0.dll
cygcheck: track_down: could not find cygblas-0.dll
cygcheck: track_down: could not find cyglapack-0.dll
cygcheck: track_down: could not find cygblas-0.dll
cygcheck: track_down: could not find cyglapack-0.dll
It looks like Octave cannot find the shared libraries of blas and lapack but they actually have
been installed.
Solution:
The loading issue is cause by the fact that cygblas-0.dll and cyglapack-0.dll were accidentally
installed into /usr/lib/lapack. According to the Cygwin documentation, Cygwin looks for DLL's
by searching the directories defined in the environment variable PATH. The default PATH doesn't
include /usr/lib/lapack. Therefore, the solution is either
cp /usr/lib/lapack/*.dll /bin
or
export $PATH=/usr/lib/lapack:$PATH