"webbrowser-app: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" error when attempting to launch webbrowser-app

Is the package libgl1-mesa-glx not installed in your VM?
Does installing it fix the issue?

Yes, that package is already installed on the VM.

And is that file available in the VM?

    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1

Can you maybe try re-installing libgl1-mesa-glx in case it got corrupted?

    sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx

I have checked and that file is present:

    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Apr 23 12:42 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.1.2.0

I have tried reinstalling it with the command you gave and it reinstalled successfully, however the error when webbrowser-app is run remains the same.

Do other GL-enabled applications work in your VM? Try e.g. glxgears.

Well, glxgears runs fine without error.

Does a simple QML scene with a WebView launch in that VM?
You can save the following code snippet as test.qml and run it with `qmlscene test.qml`:

 import QtQuick 2.4
 import com.canonical.Oxide 1.12
 WebView {
  url: "http://example.org"
 }

The output of running that is:

    file:///home/tester/test.qml:2 module "com.canonical.Oxide" version 2.12 is not installed

And then it just exits.

this should be "import com.canonical.Oxide 1.12", not "2.12". Can you please test again with the correct version?

Right, sorry, don't know how that mistake got in there, but with the correct version it doesn't really work that much better. I see a small black box (I adjusted the URL to a proper one) which upon being enlarged does a while flashing stairs like pattern and flashes the top and right side when I try to enlarge it. It also shows me the clicking cursor when I go over it but upon clicking it the only thing that seems to change is that when I mouse over different parts of it the cursor changes to different things (e.g.: normal and text cursor mode). I assume that this is because it is providing an interactive experience with the website it's just only showing black instead of the site? I don't know, anyway, throughout the time it was active this was the output (the last line got outputted when I closed the window in the standard way with the little cross):

[0504/191704:ERROR:zygote_host_impl_linux.cc(162)] Failed to adjust OOM score of renderer with pid 2332: Permission denied
OpenGL Warning: glXCreatePbuffer not implemented by Chromium
[0504/191705:ERROR:layer_tree_host_impl.cc(2218)] Forcing zero-copy tile initialization as worker context is missing
[0504/191705:ERROR:buffer_manager.cc(361)] [.CommandBufferContext.Context-For-Testing-0x1391870]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_ENUM : glBufferData: <- error from previous GL command
[0504/191711:ERROR:texture_manager.cc(2421)] [.CommandBufferContext.RenderCompositor-0x3e5f51043780]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_ENUM : glTexImage2D: <- error from previous GL command
[0504/191711:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(2134)] [.CommandBufferContext.RenderWorker-0x3e5f51043900]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_ENUM : GLES2DecoderImpl::DoBindTexImage2DCHROMIUM: <- error from previous GL command
[0504/191711:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(2138)] [.CommandBufferContext.RenderWorker-0x3e5f51043900]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_OPERATION : ScopedTextureBinder::ctor: was unhandled
[0504/191711:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(2134)] [.CommandBufferContext.RenderWorker-0x3e5f51043900]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_VALUE : ScopedTextureBinder::dtor: <- error from previous GL command
[0504/191711:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(2134)] [.CommandBufferContext.RenderWorker-0x3e5f51043900]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_VALUE : ScopedTextureBinder::dtor: <- error from previous GL command
[0504/191711:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(2134)] [.CommandBufferContext.RenderWorker-0x3e5f51043900]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_VALUE : ScopedTextureBinder::dtor: <- error from previous GL command
[0504/191711:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(2134)] [.CommandBufferContext.RenderWorker-0x3e5f51043900]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_VALUE : ScopedTextureBinder::dtor: <- error from previous GL command
[0504/191712:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(2134)] [.CommandBufferContext.RenderWorker-0x3e5f51043900]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_VALUE : ScopedTextureBinder::dtor: <- error from previous GL command
[0504/191713:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(2134)] [.CommandBufferContext.RenderWorker-0x3e5f51043900]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_VALUE : ScopedTextureBinder::dtor: <- error from previous GL command
[0504/191713:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(2134)] [.CommandBufferContext.RenderWorker-0x3e5f51043900]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_VALUE : ScopedTextureBinder::dtor: <- error from previous GL c...

simple QML scene runs fine here but same error on webbrowser-app

webbrowser-app: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

glxgears is fine

any quick fix for this?

That looks like a confinement issue.
Could you please check if there are apparmor denials when you run webbrowser-app? You can monitor that from another terminal window with:

  tail -F /var/log/syslog | grep DEN

If there are denials, please paste them in this bug report. Thanks!

And I forgot to ask… John, which version of ubuntu and webbrowser-app do you have?