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2017

Running Webex on Ubuntu

Webex Logo

Webex running on Ubuntu and other non-Windows platforms is literally a click away, in this case the CMR (Collaboration Meeting Room).

Webex is a fact of life for many people and for many Linux (BSD and other non-Windows) users, it has been a thorn in the side with people going so far as to set up virtual machines just to run Cisco’s collaboration software. While Webex is written in Java, it isn’t so simple to get running everywhere and apparently not all features are available for non-Windows users.

Most likely you are running up against the following message after logging into *.webex.com

Your browser,browser version, or operating system is currently unsupported

This requires the intervention of whoever is administrating the *.webex.com account and they can modify it in the following way.

Directions for disabling CMR

  1. Log into “xxxxx.webex.com/admin” using a site admin level account
  2. Click “Edit user list” on the left navigation Window.
  3. Search for the account you want to change
  4. Click on the account and uncheck “Collaboration Meeting Room”
  5. Click “Update”

Once this has happened, then you can log in and start Webex. Usually this is enough, but in case you hit the next wall which is runnig Java from a web-browser then there is always Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release). This version will allow you to still run the Java (or IcedTea) NPAPI plugin. I usually download and extract to /opt then run a symlink over the system’s version of firefox in /usr/bin/firefox which is enough for my needs.

You can check to see if the Java plugin is installed in Firefox by going to the URL bar and typing:
about:plugins
Should you not see it, but you’re sure the plugin exists on the system you can make a symlink yourself:
ln -vs /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so ~/.mozilla/plugins/
or
ln -vs /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-i386/jre/lib/i386/IcedTeaPlugin.so ~/.mozilla/plugins/
depending on your implementation, 32/64-bit or library location.

Ultimately regardless of which bit-ness of Java you use, Webex uses 32-bit libraries as well. Which ones? Here is list, not complete, of all the ones I needed to get it working:

apt-get install libasound2:i386 libasound2-plugins:i386 libfontconfig1:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386 libgcj14-awt:i386 libpango-1.0-0:i386 libpangoft2-1.0-0:i386 libpangox-1.0-0:i386 gcj-4.8-jre-headless libpangoxft-1.0-0:i386 libpng12-0:i386 lib32stdc++6: libuuid1:i386 libx11-6:i386 libxext6:i386 libxft2:i386 libxi6:i386 libxmu6:i386 libxrender1:i386 libxt6:i386 libxtst6:i386 libxv1:i386 libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 gtk2-engines-murrine:i386

To find which libraries you are still missing, you can go to your Webex directory and ldd through all the ‘so’ files to see what is missing.

cd ~/.webex/ find | grep so | xargs ldd | grep 'not found' | sort | uniq

If the result is something like this:

libjawt.so => not found

then you’re ready to go. Otherwise you’ll need to track down all the libraries in order to get the most out Webex.

Using Qemu and Chroot to replace your cross-compile toolchain

RaspberryPi Logo

Awhile back I wrote about how you can set up a cross-compile toolchain for compiling on x86_64 with the Raspberry Pi as a target. There is another, perhaps easier way to do the same thing by using Qemu 2.0 as your backend.

By installing and enabling Qemu support, you can run code compiled for another architecture (that is supported by Qemu) on your native machine. You can then create a Chroot environment, perhaps similar to what you have on your Raspberry Pi, and run it as if it was natively.

You can verify support by checking for the availability of the aarch64 interpreter:
# update-binfmts --display | grep -i aarch qemu-aarch64 (enabled): interpreter = /usr/bin/qemu-aarch64-static

First you’ll need to set up your locales on your host:
You’ll need to configure locales so your Qemu Chroots have access to them. Otherwise, you will have to configure each Chroot’s locale individually.

# From the host sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Secondly you’ll need to install the necessary packages:
This includes qemu, Chroot and binfmt support
# From the host sudo apt-get install qemu qemu-user-static binfmt-support debootstrap

Thirdly we create the Chroot.
This uses debootstrap to create the Chroot environment. In the command below, the Chroot will be named debian-arm64. You can change it to suit your taste.

From the host

sudo qemu-debootstrap –arch=arm64 –keyring /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg \
–variant=buildd –exclude=debfoster stretch debian-arm64 http://ftp.debian.org/debian
…
I: Retrieving Release
I: Retrieving Release.gpg
I: Checking Release signature
…

Fourthly we step into Chroot
Lastly before it’s usable we’ll setup the guest environment.

# From the host sudo chroot debian-arm64/

apt-get install debian-ports-archive-keyring

apt-get install locales build-essential git curl cmake # and etc.

Lastly…
The sky is the limit, you have your own chroot using binaries compiled for another arch. Clone your git repo, run cmake, install deps as necessary and run make to compile. The resulting binaries should run just fine on your RPi3.