Adventures & experiences in contemporary technology
The Flatpak concept offers a useful way of getting the latest version of software like LibreOffice or GIMP on Linux machines because repositories are managed conservatively when it comes to the versions of included software. Ubuntu has Snaps, which are similar in concept. Both options bundle dependencies with the packaged software so that its operation can use later versions of system libraries that what may be available with a particular distribution.
However, even Flatpak depends on what is available through the repositories for a distribution as I found when a software update needed a version of the tool. The solution was to add PPA using the following command and agreeing to the prompts that arise (answering Y, in other words):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexlarsson/flatpak
With the new PPA instated, the usual apt commands were used to update the Flatpak package and continue with the required updates. Since then, all has gone smoothly as expected.
Recent curiosity about Java programming and Groovy scripting got me trying to start up the Eclipse IDE that I had install on my main machine. What I got instead of a successful application startup was a message that included the following:
!MESSAGE Exception launching the Eclipse Platform:
!STACK
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter
at java.base/java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:466)
at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:566)
at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:499)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.invokeFramework(Main.java:626)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.basicRun(Main.java:584)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.run(Main.java:1438)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.main(Main.java:1414)
The cause was a mismatch between Eclipse and the installed version of Java that it needed in order to run. After all, the software itself is written in the Java language and the installed version from the usual software repositories was too old for Java 11. The solution turned out to be installing a newer version as a Snap (Ubuntu’s answer to Flatpak). The following command did the needful since Snapd already was running on my machine:
sudo snap install eclipse --classic
The only part of the command that warrants extra comment is the --classic switch since that is needed for a tool like Eclipse that needs to access a host file system. On executing, the software was downloaded from Snapcraft and then installed within its own bundle of dependencies. The latter adds a certain detachment from the underlying Linux installation and ensures that no messages appear because of incompatibilities like the one near the start of this post.
When I upgraded to Ubuntu GNOME 13.10 and went for the 64-bit variant, I tried a previously tried and tested approach for installing Nightingale that used a PPA only for it not to work. At that point, the repository had not caught up with the latest Ubuntu release (it has by the time of writing) and other pre-compiled packages would not work either. However, there was one further possibility left and that was downloading a copy of the source code and compiling that. My previous experiences of doing that kind of thing have not been universally positive so it was not my first choice but I gave it a go anyway.
In order to get the source code, I first needed to install Git so I could take a copy from the version controlled repository and the following command added the tool and all its dependencies:
sudo apt-get install git autoconf g++ libgtk2.0-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libtag1-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev zip unzip
With that lot installed, it was time to checkout a copy of the latest source code and I went with the following:
git clone https://github.com/nightingale-media-player/nightingale-hacking.git
The next step was to go into the nightingale-hacking sub-folder and issue the following command:
./build.sh
That should produce a sub-directory named nightingale that contains the compiled executable files. If this exists, it can be copied into /opt. If not, then create a folder named nightingale under /opt using copy the files from ~/nightingale-hacking/compiled/dist into that location. Ubuntu GNOME 13.10 comes with GNOME Shell 3.8, the next step took a little fiddling before it was sorted: adding an icon to application menu or dashboard. This involved adding a file called nightingale.desktop in /usr/share/applications/ with the following contents:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Nightingale
Comment=Play music
TryExec=/opt/nightingale/nightingale
Exec=/opt/nightingale/nightingale
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/nightingale.xpm
Type=Application
X-GNOME-DocPath=nightingale/index.html
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=Nightingale
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=nightingale
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=BugBuddyBugs
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version=1.1.2
Categories=GNOME;Audio;Music;Player;AudioVideo;
StartupNotify=true
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;
Keywords=Run;
Actions=New
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=nightingale
[Desktop Action New]
Name=Nightingale
Exec=/opt/nightingale/nightingale
OnlyShowIn=Unity
It was created from a copy of another *.desktop file and the categories in there together with the link to the icon were as important as the title and took a little tinkering before all was in place. Also, you may find that /opt/nightingale/chrome/icons/default/default.xpm needs to be become /usr/share/pixmaps/nightingale.xpm using the cp command before your new menu entry gains an icon to go with it. While the steps that I describe here worked for me, there is more information on the Nightingale wiki if you need it.
Installing the latest version of Citrix Receiver (13.0 at the time of writing) on 64-bit Ubuntu should be as simple as downloading the required DEB package and double-clicking on the file so that Ubuntu Software Centre can work its magic. Unfortunately, the 64-bit DEB file is faulty so that means that the Ubuntu community how-to guide for Citrix still is needed. In fact, any user of Linux Mint or another distro that uses Ubuntu as its base would do well to have a look at that Ubuntu link.
For sake of completeness, I still am going to let you in on the process that worked for me. Once the DEB file has been downloaded, the first task is to creating a temporary folder where the DEB file’s contents can be extracted:
mkdir ica_temp
With that in place, it then is time to do the extraction and it needs two commands with the second of these need to extract the control file while the first extracts everything else.
sudo dpkg-deb -x icaclient- ica_temp
sudo dpkg-deb --control icaclient- ica_temp/DEBIAN
It is the control file that has been the cause of all the bother because it refers to unavailable dependencies that it really doesn’t need anyway. To open the file for editing, issue the following command:
sudo gedit ica_temp/DEBIAN/control
Then change line 7 (it should begin with Depends:) to: Depends: libc6-i386 (>= 2.7-1), lib32z1, nspluginwrapper. There are other software packages in there that Ubuntu no longer supports and they are not needed anyway. With the edit made and the file saved, the next step is to build a new DEB package with the corrected control file:
dpkg -b ica_temp icaclient-modified.deb
Once you have the package, the next step is to install it using the following command:
sudo dpkg -i icaclient-modified.deb
If it fails, then you have missing dependencies and the following command should sort these before a re-run of the above command again:
sudo apt-get install libmotif4:i386 nspluginwrapper lib32z1 libc6-i386
With Citrix Receiver installed, there is one more thing that is needed before you can use it freely. This is to put Thawte security certificate files into /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts. What I had not realised until recently was that many of these already are in /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla and linking to them with the following command makes them available to Citrix receiver:
sudo ln -s /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/* /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/
Another approach is to download the Thawte certificates and extract the archive to /tmp/. From there they can be copied to /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts and I copied the Thawte Personal Premium certificate as follows:
sudo cp /tmp/Thawte Root Certificates/Thawte Personal Premium CA/Thawte Personal Premium CA.cer /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/
Until I found out about what was in the Mozilla folder, I simply picked out the certificate mentioned in the Citrix error message and copied it over like the above. Of course, all of this may seem like a lot of work to those who are non-tinkerers and I have added a repaired 64-bit DEB package that incorporates all of the above and should not need any further intervention aside from installing it using GDebi, Ubuntu’s Software Centre, dpkg or anything else that does what’s needed.
Left to its own devices, Debian will leave you with an ever ageing re-branded version of Firefox that was installed at the same time as the rest of the operating system. From what I have found, the main cause of this was that Mozilla’s wanting to retain control of its branding and trademarks in a manner not in keeping with Debian’s Free Software rules. This didn’t affect just Firefox but also Thunderbird, Sunbird and Seamonkey with Debian’s equivalents for these being IceDove, IceOwl and IceApe, respectively.
While you can download a tarball of Firefox from the web and use that, it’d be nice to get a variant that updated through Debian’s normal apt-get channels. In fact, IceWeasel does get updated whenever there is a new release of Firefox even if these updates never find their way into the usual repositories. While I have been know to take advantage of the more frozen state of Debian compared with other Linux distributions, I don’t mind getting IceWeasel updated so it isn’t a security worry.
The first step in so doing is to add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list using root access (using sudo, gksu or su to assume root privileges) since the file normally cannot be edited by normal users:
deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main
deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ squeeze-backports iceweasel-release
With the file updated and saved, the next step is to update the repositories on your machine using the following command:
sudo apt-get update
With the above complete, it is time to overwrite the existing IceWeasel installation with the latest one using an apt-get command that specifies the squeeze-backports repository as its source using the -t switch. While IceWeasel is installed from the iceweasel-release squeeze-backports repository, there dependencies that need to be satisfied and these come from the main squeeze-backports one. The actual command used is below:
sudo apt-get install -t squeeze-backports iceweasel
While that was all that I needed to do to get IceWeasel 18.0.1 in place, some may need the pkg-mozilla-archive-keyring package installed too. For those needing more information that what’s here, there’s always the Debian Mozilla team.
There are packages absent from the Arch Linux repositories that could come in useful. When you are after one of these, then it’s time to search the Arch User Repository (AUR). In here, I have found the likes of Microsoft Core Fonts, Adobe Reader and Dropbox. There may be others but these examples are what comes to mind as I write this. In time, it may be that packages make if from the AUR into the Arch community repository but you have to use the former if you cannot wait.
Just search the AUR for what you want and download the tarball (tar.gz file) from the webpage where you find it. Then, I recommend extracting it to /tmp where clearance at boot time means that you don’t need to do it yourself. Then, going into the appropriate subfolder in /tmp (acroread for Adobe Reader, for instance) and issue the following command:
makepkg
This will attempt to create a package file where you are working for installation by pacman. If dependencies are absent, you will be told and these may need another AUR search in some cases though most are included in the repositories. Once dependencies, have been sorted, just issue the makepkg command again to create the xz file that pacman needs to perform the installation. To do so, issue the following command from the same directory either as root or by using sudo if your user account has such privileges:
pacman -U *.xz
There usually is but one xz archive in a package folder so I have been taking the easy route of not looking up the name all of the time. Of course, you can do that for safety if you want.
With pacman not looking at the AUR, you have to do more work to get upgrades to happen if you want to avoid without having to repeat the above process all of the time. There is a package in the AUR called yaourt that needs package-query from the same place as well. Before any of these, yajl needs to installed from one of the default repositories. Once yaourt is in place, then the following does the updates for you:
yaourt -Syu --aur
Again, it might be best run this as root or using sudo though that gives messages from makepkg about not running it as a privileged user. However, I reckon that those might need to be ignored. When I tried it, the Citrix update failed though the Dropbox one succeeded. This experience might be worth bearing in mind. Saying that, I have found installing and updating software from the AUR not to be too onerous a process so far. Anything that gives a little more freedom only can be a good thing.
Uninstalling software still leaves any dependencies that came with them in place so a quick way to get rid of any detritus is always useful. Here’s a command that achieves this in a painless manner:
apt-get autoremove
Just say yes to what it suggests to allow it on its way.