[Tutorial] install boxee on 64bit ubuntu

mojoxojom · #1 January 23rd, 2009, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by agentlame

correct... there is not x86_64 build of boxee.

Well anyone know of a way to use the 32bit debs on 64bit? I seem to remeber there being a way, getlibs or something? I have to google around...

..yes, it was getlibs. Here is a thread on Ubuntu Forums about it...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=474790

Okay, that was helpful. I got Boxee to run, though I had no sound at first. I have two sound cards so I simply changed the audio settings from "default" to "hw:1,0" and that seems to have worked. Yay!!!

I used the error message in synaptic which said it could not download the package list located at "http://apt.boxee.tv/dists/hardy/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz". So I did a wget and modified the "amd64" part to read "i386" which worked...

Code:

wget http://apt.boxee.tv/dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz

Then I used zcat to show the contents of Packages.gz...

Code:

zcat Packages.gz

I found the path to the deb file I was after by examining this output. But there is a lot to wade through, so a short-cut would be to use grep to filter the zcat output, showing just the lines we are interested in...

Code:

zcat Packages.gz|grep Filename
Filename: ./dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9-r2365.deb
Filename: ./dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9-r2462.hardy.deb
Filename: ./dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9-r2492.hardy.deb
Filename: ./dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9-r2927.hardy.deb
Filename: ./dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9-r3927.hardy.deb
Filename: ./dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9-r3970.hardy.deb
Filename: ./dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.6.4578.hardy.deb
Filename: ./dists/intrepid/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.7.4826.intrepid.deb

Now the latest Hardy version given is what I'm after. I can download it using wget and install using dpkg. I concocted the URL for wget from the line "http://apt.boxee.tv/dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz" in my first wget to grab the packages combined with the highest-release numbered hardy deb listed in the grep'd output from zcat above. Where it starts "./dists/...", I dropped the leading period and prepended "http://apt.boxee.tv" to come up with...

Code:

wget http://apt.boxee.tv/dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.6.4578.hardy.deb

And I then installed the downloaded package with dpkg, using sudo for admin rights...

Code:

sudo dpkg -i --force-all boxee-0.9.6.4578.hardy.deb

That installed Boxee but did not take care of the dependencies. We forced dpkg to ignore missing dependencies and architecture mismatches with --force-all. Now I tried to use getlibs to install the dependencies for Boxee. First I checked the properties of the menu item used to launch Boxee to see that it ran "/usr/boxee/run-boxee-desktop", but that is a script and getlibs had problems with that. Executing /usr/boxee/run-boxee-desktop from the command line showed me a useful error message, "/opt/boxee/Boxee: error while loading shared libraries...". So I ran getlibs against "/opt/boxee/Boxee" and that seemed to work...

Code:

getlibs /opt/boxee/Boxee

That took care of all the dependencies that remained for Boxee. Now a special note: When I first did this I installed an earlier version (0.9rc2365) and it did not connect to the net. I did this again installing the latest (0.9.6.4758). Everything works, but the menu item still points to "/usr/boxee/run-boxee-desktop". For whatever reason, the file is now missing. So I had to change the menu item to launch "/opt/boxee/Boxee" in order to run it from the menu.

There is something else I should mention, in case you have trouble with it... I was not able to get getlibs, initially, to install libfaad2-0. I had to download the hardy deb package manually from the Ubuntu package search web site and install the library manually using getlibs. The libfaad2-0 package is a dummy package that points to libfaad0, so I installed the i386 deb of that. To do this from the command line w/o visiting the web site, download using wget. I use the mirrors.kernel.org site to download from in this example...

Code:

wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/faad2/libfaad0_2.6.1-2ubuntu0.1_i386.deb

getlibs -i libfaad0_2.6.1-2ubuntu0.1_i386.deb

I hope this helps some of you others running 64bit get Boxee 32bit running on your system. Now to explore...

Tim LePes

srwalter · #2 January 24th, 2009, 05:58 PM

This is a very clever procedure, thank you for documenting it. I'm not able to run boxee on my amd64 system. Unfortunately, boxee silently fails when I try to play any videos, and trying to play music results in an immediate segfault. Are you seeing that?

obriente · #3 January 25th, 2009, 07:15 PM

I keep getting a permision denied message when i try to wget anything from Boxee...

anyone having success with this?

bizthepirate · #4 January 25th, 2009, 07:30 PM

Log in to app.boxee.tv first, then try.

obriente · #5 January 25th, 2009, 11:57 PM

i was logged in, logged out and logged back in, got the same error...

setheck · #6 January 28th, 2009, 06:22 PM

I can attest that this works in Intrepid as well.
Thanks!

technomensch · #7 January 29th, 2009, 06:21 PM

It worked in Intrepid for me too. However, when I went to Exit, or Click on the WB link (2 examples that did not work), my computer completely froze up. Would not let me go to another desktop. Would not let me open a terminal or gnome-do or even kill the process. I had to perform a complete reboot. On the upside, Hulu worked without a problem. I followed the steps exactly, any ideas?

sjfischr · #8 January 29th, 2009, 08:57 PM

I had the exact same problem. Pretty un-cool as I have never had a situation on an Ubuntu box where the power switch was a sole option. Can someone please check into this? Other that that, the system came up and looked awful nice

Quote:

Originally Posted by technomensch

It worked in Intrepid for me too. However, when I went to Exit, or Click on the WB link (2 examples that did not work), my computer completely froze up. Would not let me go to another desktop. Would not let me open a terminal or gnome-do or even kill the process. I had to perform a complete reboot. On the upside, Hulu worked without a problem. I followed the steps exactly, any ideas?

got80s · #9 January 29th, 2009, 10:41 PM

I tried this method but every time I open boxee my computer goes black and logs me out of Ubuntu. Would love to get this thing working. I've wanted to try it for the past 6 months but don't have any Intel processors lying around.

Linux got80s-desktop 2.6.24-23-generic #1 SMP Mon Jan 26 01:04:16 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

todd1814 · #10 February 14th, 2009, 01:02 PM

Using the post I was able to install Boxee. The interface is impressive but it isn't very stable on my system. I get lots of segfaults and the video player doesn't work as expected. Does anyone have a stable setup of Boxee? Some more specific issues:

Some videos has no sound while others play great
Some videos play at the wrong speed - I can't get them to play normal speed
Boxee doesn't scan everything correctly and/or doesn't go back to rescan folders after a crash

I'm impressed enough with Boxee to try running it on 32 bit linux or maybe some other platform. I'd just like to get a stable install working. Linux is preferable because I can then run diskless (network boot) clients. That isn't possible on mac or windows.