Monday 30 May 2016

WebEx on Ubuntu 16.04

Java

You need Java installed. I used the Open JRE. Some places on the web say you need the Oracle version, but it works for me with the Open JRE and IcedTea:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jre icedtea-8-plugin

That’s all you need to get the meeting to work, but…

Missing i386 Libraries

But you won’t be able to share screens without a bunch of missing i386 libraries. The WebEx plugin is 32-bit, so you need to install some libraries that aren’t installed by default.

Check to see if you’re missing libraries by going into ~/.webex/ and then into a sub-directory whose name is all digits and underscores. Once there, run:

ldd *.so | grep "not found" | cut -f1 -d' ' | tr -d '\t' | uniq

I got about a dozen missing libraries on a relatively new install of Ubuntu 16.04. You may get different results, depending on what’s been installed on your system since you initially installed Ubuntu 16.04.

I installed the following packages [updated with suggestions from readers] (fewer than a dozen, because some packages pull in multiple libraries as dependencies):

sudo apt-get install libxmu6:i386
sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-0:i386
sudo apt-get install libpangox-1.0-0:i386
sudo apt-get install libpangoxft-1.0:i386
sudo apt-get install libxtst6:i386
sudo apt-get install libasound2:i386
sudo apt-get install libxv1:i386

If you check again with the above ldd command, the only library you should still be missing is libjawt.so. This library doesn’t seem to be needed.

8 comments:

pfb said...

This was the easiest post to follow to get this working quickly on my machine. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Hi Larry,
nice work! Finally got it up and running on Ubuntu 16.04. After installing your suggestions I was still missing some more libraries

ldd *.so | grep "not found" | cut -f1 -d' ' | tr -d '\t' | uniq

libjawt.so
libasound.so.2
libjawt.so
libXv.so.1

So I've also installed:
sudo apt-get install libasound2:i386
sudo apt-get install libxv1:i386

After that I've run you first command again:
ldd *.so | grep "not found" | cut -f1 -d' ' | tr -d '\t' | uniq

And as you've pointed out only this library was still missing:
libjawt.so

But desktop sharing works. Thanks man!

Anonymous said...

This works! thanks a lot!

Anonymous said...

Hi,

i dont see ~/.webex/ directory in my home folder. i am using ubuntu 16.04. Do i need to install somepackage. ?

Larry Reid said...

The `~/.webex` directory is created by the Webex install, which should happen automatically the first time you try to use Webex. Try to connect to or start a Webex meeting and see if that creates the directory for you.

Forgive me if I'm telling you the obvious, but `.webex` is a hidden directory. If you're looking for it via your graphical file browser, then you have to enable "view hidden files". If you're looking for it in the Terminal, you have to `ls -a ~`.

Unknown said...

This worked for me as well. Thanks a lot!!

Unknown said...

This worked for me as well. Thanks a lot!!

Anonymous said...

As already pointed this is the easiest and quickest way to get this resolved. Thanks a lot.