How to do a WebEx screen share on 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04

If your favorite operating system is Ubuntu/Linux, then you might agree with me when I say that its a bit of a pain to have to login to Windows just to join a WebEx session. Well if its just attending WebEx as a listener/viewer its one thing. Imagine if you do all your development in Ubuntu and have all your server/environment etc setup in Ubuntu, and you have to demonstrate your work via a WebEx by sharing your screen. Needless to say having to setup an identical work environment on Windows merely for a presentation is not worth it! As if its going to work just like that on Windows anyway ;) No offense meant, but as software developers we know all too well that its not so simple to switch between platforms.

That doesn't mean you can stay away from doing the demonstrations either. So the next solution is to somehow get the blessed thing to work on Ubuntu. If you are using a 32-bit distribution on Ubuntu, then it might be pretty simple, all you need to do is simply install the 32-bit Java plugin to your Firefox web browser and join the WebEx. However if you are using a 64-bit Ubuntu distribution just installing the Java plugin to your existing (64-bit) Firefox might not work. I know it didn't work for me, initially.

So lets see how you can get WebEx applet to work on 64-bit Ubuntu (12.04).

1. First you need to install ia32-libs on your machine, follow this post if you have issues installing it.
2. Next download 32-bit Firefox and 32-bit Java (JDK) to your machine. (I am assuming you can Google and find the downloads :))
3. Extract Firefox and the JDK to a directory, lets say ~/webex/firefox/ and ~/webex/jdk_<version>/ respectively.
4. The you need to create a symbolic link in ~/webex/firefox/plugins/ directory to ~/webex/jdk_<version>/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so. You can do that as follows;

$cd ~/webex/firefox/
$mkdir plugins
$cd plugins/
$ln -s ~/webex/jdk_/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so

This will basically install the 32-bit Java plugin for your new 32-bit Firefox.

5. Now you are all good to go, simply run Firefox as follows;

$cd ~/webex/firefox/
$./firefox

Make sure you do a "./firefox" and not just "firefox" which might open the default 64-bit browser.

6. To make sure that 32-bit Java is installed correctly go to Java test page and check if the "Java Architecture" is "32-bit". If so, congratulations you are good to go!

Good Luck .! :)

Installing ia32-libs on Ubuntu 12.04

If you ever wanted to run a 32-bit program in a 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04 and encountered package dependency issues while trying to install the ia32-libs via apt-get, don't worry, you are not alone. I myself tried this once when I wanted to install JD-GUI (Java de-compiler) but gave up because I ran out of options that time. This time however I had no choice but to get it to work. Good news is that I manage to to install the necessary libs thanks to post found at [1]. For my own future reference and also for those who might need this I am writing it down here, hope some find it useful, lemme know if its you :)

Downgrade the installed package is follows;

$sudo vi /etc/apt/preferences

and insert the following code;

Package: *       
Pin: release a=precise*
Pin-Priority: 2012

and "write & quite" by doing ":wq!"

Next you can downgrade the packages as follows;

$sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

This operation is going to take a while, so let if complete. Once it is done you can install ia32-libs as follows;

$sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Don't forget to remove the preference file you created, remove it as follows;

$sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences

If not new updated will not be installed. That's it you can now run you 32-bit applications without a issue. Hope this post will help you.!

[1] - http://askubuntu.com/questions/136394/cannot-install-ia32-libs