Why do I receive the error “libtiff.so.3: cannot open” when trying to run Stata on a Linux machine?

Some users may encounter the following error message when attempting to run Stata on a Linux machine:

./xstata: error while loading shared libraries: libtiff.so.3: cannot
open shared object file: No such file or directory

If this occurs, you are trying to run the dynamically linked version of Stata and your TIFF library does not meet the minimum library requirement. You have three options to fix this problem:

1. Run the statically linked version of Stata. To do this, you must reinstall Stata and select the statically linked version during installation.
2. Update the TIFF library via an RPM or by compiling and installing a newer version. Instructions on how this is done can be found in the following FAQ: stata.com/support/faqs/unix/dynamically-linked-version
3. Create a symbolic link for libtiff.so.3.7.4 to the existing version of the libtiff library on your system.