Reinstalling some favorite apps after reinstalling Ubuntu

Previous: Restoring Firefox personalization after re-installing Ubuntu

So, I wanted to reinstall some of the apps I had been using before. But the way I had them scattered around the filesystem was pretty sloppy. Better this time.

Recovering my local wiki

Installed sqlite3 and sqlite ruby support (Instiki depends on them):

sudo apt-get install sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev
sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby

Put the wiki under /home/.wiki so that it would not show up in normal directory listings.

Moved the wiki icon to /usr/share/pixmaps to make it consistent with other applications.

Put a wiki icon on the top panel for convenient starting.

For more information about how I've customized Instiki for personal use, see http://kotowanandesu.blogspot.com/2009/08/pimp-my-instiki.html.

Reinstalling Google Earth

Installed Google Earth by following the instructions I documented on this blog at http://kotowanandesu.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-earth-install.html. I downloaded a fresh copy in case there have been any updates since the last time I installed it.

Had a problem this time that I didn't have last time. The installer complained that gtk2 was missing.

Searching for similar problems, I found that some people had installed lib32nss-mdns, and this solved the problem for them. I tried

sudo apt-get install lib32nss-mdns

and ran the installer again.

The console output was:

setup.data/bin/Linux/amd64/setup.gtk2: error while loading
shared libraries: libxml2.so.2: cannot open shared 
object file: No such file or directory
setup.data/bin/Linux/amd64/setup.gtk: error while loading
shared libraries: libSM.so.6: cannot open shared 
object file: No such file or directory
The setup program seems to have failed on amd64

Better, but apparently I forgot to install libxml2 after reinstalling Ubuntu. I found a security notice for 9.04 at http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-815-1 advising an upgrade. I did that and tried

sudo apt-get install libxml2

and it informed me the latest version of libxml2 was already installed. So, that wasn't the problem.

There are many personal blogs out there written by people whose installation worked properly on the first try. I found no help that addresses the problems I'm seeing today.

I ran across a comment by Daniel Holbach buried in a long list of comments on one article that advised the following:

$ sudo apt-get install googleearth-package
$ make-googleearth-package --force
Doubleclick on the resulting .deb file.

I gave that a try, since there was little to lose at this point.

The make spewed hundreds of warning-level messages. The installer proved to be a very long-running process. I left it running during the day and checked on it after work. It worked fine.

This time I put the app in ~/.googleearth so that it would not show up in normal directory listings.

Reinstalling Freemind

Copied my old installation of Freemind from a backup. Referred to to set it up. This time, I put the app in ~/.freemind and set an alias for 'freemind' instead of putting the absolute path in the freemind.desktop file. No problems with this install.

Reinstalling UMLet

A new version of UMLet is available. I downloaded the standalone version and the Eclipse plugin from http://www.umlet.com, version 10.1. I had 10.0 previously. Recovering from a system crash offers all sorts of opportunities for improvement.

I set up the standalone version in the same way as I had set up Freemind. This time, I noticed that UMLet has its own logo. I downloaded the logo from their site and associated it with the app, instead of the icon I came up with before.

Installation of the standalone UMLet consists of unpacking the zip file. The shell script that starts the program already had execute privileges. Convenient. The default directory name is UMLet. I changed it to .umlet. I defined an alias, umlet, in .bash_aliases, ran my .bash_profile and gave it a try.

Didn't work. I took a look at the UMLet.sh file, and learned that it looks for an environment variable, UMLET_HOME. So, they've made things a bit more formal. I added these lines to my .profile:

UMLET_HOME=~/.umlet
export UMLET_HOME

then copied ~/.umlet/UMLet.sh to ~/.bin/umlet.sh and uncommented the line that changes to the UMLET_HOME directory. Typing umlet at a command prompt started the program properly.

I copied the umlet.desktop file from my backup and changed it to refer to the new logo file:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=UMLet
Comment=UML diagramming tool
Exec=umlet
Icon=umlet_logo.jpg
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Application;Development;
StartupNotify=true

and copied the logo file to /usr/share/pixmaps. At this point, UMLet appeared in the gnome menu under Applications > Programming, but the logo image was not displayed. I used Gimp to change it from .jpg to .png. Worked!

Logged out and in and tried to run UMLet from the menu. The launcher was unable to start the child process. It complained that there was no such file or directory as "umlet." I checked .bash_aliases and it looked correct. There must be something about launchers I don't quite understand. I changed the alias to give the absolute path of umlet.sh, logged out and in, and tried again. Worked!

Dropped the jar for the UMLet Eclipse plugin into the Eclipse plugin directory and started Eclipse. Created a UML diagram from Eclipse's New... dialog. Looks good.

Reinstalling Banshee

Ran the command

sudo apt-get install banshee

Banshee appeared in the gnome menu, and started normally. It imported my music files correctly. It played mp3 files correctly. It imported my video files correctly. It played .flv, .mov, .mp4, .mpg, .mpeg correctly.

Next: Shell personalization after reinstalling Ubuntu

Flash player for Firefox libnspr4-dev dependency

Previous:

Ran into a dependency problem with Ubuntu Karmic 9.10: Adobe Flash player plugin for Firefox depends on package libnspr4-dev, which apparently is problematic for one reason or another. I got the player to install by doing the following:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libnspr4-dev

Without doing the update first, the install warned that it would remove several packages, including Firefox itself. Not very convenient.

Next: Installing Wubi on HP Pavilion notebook

Troubles with Flash player

Previous: Static from the speakers

I had been having a lot of trouble with the Flash player plugin for Firefox on Ubuntu. When I first switched to Ubuntu, there was no Flash plugin for 64-bit Linux in general release. After a while, they published an "alpha" version, and it appeared to work. But after the latest Firefox upgrade, YouTube videos did not play and no error message was displayed to indicate any problems with the plugin.

A post on launchpad.net suggested using any of the following Firefox plugins:

• MPlayer (package name mozilla-mplayer)
• Totem (package name totem-mozilla)
• VLC (package name mozilla-plugin-vlc)

I've noticed that MPlayer, which came bundled with Ubuntu, appears to play every kind of media file I've got with no difficulty, so I decided to try the MPlayer plugin. I installed it with

sudo apt-get install mozilla-mplayer

and restarted Firefox. Absolutely no problems. This is the way to go, rather than the Flash plugin.

That is, it's the way to go when it works. I haven't investigated the cause, but sometimes Firefox doesn't seem to know it ought to launch the MPlayer plugin. I suspect it has to do with the way the HTML is written on some sites. The observed behavior appears to be: When the page checks for the existence of the Flash plugin so that it can initiate a download for clients that don't have it installed, it finds a plugin associated with Flash video so it doesn't prompt for the download, but it also doesn't know how to invoke the MPlayer plugin, so you end up with nothing.

I've found that if I download the video manually, it will play just fine with MPlayer. Another workaround is to launch Opera and view the video with the "standard" Flash player in Opera. That seems to work without any problems.

I don't intend to invest much personal time on this problem. Based on what I've seen, my guess is that it boils down to a problem in the 64-bit version of Flash player for Firefox. When looking for answers I found a CNET article about the Firefox Flash plugin that suggests there has been a history of problems with that plugin ever since it was first introduced.

Next: Firefox addon toolbar buttons not displayed

Installing Banshee media player and ffmpeg video converter

Previous: Audio support fixed

With audio working, I went ahead and installed support for watching videos.

I started Firefox and went to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/. There, I installed the Video DownloadHelper add-on. Then I installed ffmpeg (video converter) and Banshee (media player) from a command line:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
sudo apt-get install banshee

Smooth as silk, no problems, no extra steps. Done. Lovely!

One less reason to boot into Vista. That in itself is like a cool drink of water on a hot day.

Next: Ubuntu: No love for Kodak printers