At one point, I thought WebEx was working natively in 64-bit Linux. Either I am mistaken or it no longer works on 64-bit. So, I decided to dust off my old 32-bit hack where you install 32-bit versions of Java and Firefox to make it all work.
Earlier, I had thought I would use my regular 64-bit installation, and I had posted my hooking Java up to Firefox for WebEx. I was rightly corrected on troshlyak’s blog. The 64-bit will work, but you can’t share your desktop or view another’s desktop. So, I am back to the old way. So, here’s what I did…
I downloaded the two programs:
- Java 7 SDK (32 bit)
- Firefox (32 bit)
Environment Script:
I created this script in ~/bin/webex/env.sh:
#!/bin/sh export WEBEX_HOME=~/bin/webex export JDK_HOME=$WEBEX_HOME/jdk1.7.0_01 export JAVA_HOME=$JDK_HOME/jre export FIREFOX_HOME=$WEBEX_HOME/firefox export MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=$FIREFOX_HOME/plugins export PATH=$FIREFOX_HOME:$JAVA_HOME/bin/:$JDK_HOME/bin/:$PATH
To make sure you have it right, you can check it like this:
[skp@pecan bin]$ . ~/bin/webex/env.sh [skp@pecan bin]$ which java ~/bin/webex/jdk1.7.0_01/jre/bin/java [skp@pecan bin]$ java -version java version "1.7.0_01" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_01-b08) Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 21.1-b02, mixed mode)
Now, you can link in the Java plugin like this:
mkdir $MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH ln -s $JAVA_HOME/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so $MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH/libnpjp2.so
Now, fire up firefox. Note you may be asked to create the WebEx profile. Make sure you create a profile with the same name you use on the command line so it won’t ask you again.
firefox --no-remote -P WebEx http://java.com/en/download/testjava.jsp
This should give you a successful Java applet working on the test page. You also should see the architecture as i386.
Finally, I created a ~/bin/webex.sh script to launch webex easily for me.
#!/bin/bash cd ~/bin/webex . ./env.sh firefox --no-remote -P WebEx
And you should be good to go.