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How to install alfaview on openSUSE Leap 15.1

Introduction

The alfaview video conferencing software is available as a client for Linux. Installation on openSUSE 15.1 turned out to be problematic due to several reasons.

Package conversion and installation

  1. Install package alien with yast
  2. Download alfaview, alfaview_8.12.1.deb at the time fo this writing
  3. Convert to rpm and install rpm, use the --nodeps option to accept the unresolved dependency
alien --to-rpm alfaview_8.12.1.deb
sudo rpm -i --nodeps alfaview-8.12.1-2.x86_64.rpm

The alfaview application is now visible in the start menu but it is not (yet) functional.

glibc 2.27 installation

Important Install in a non-default location to prevent corruption of your base system.

Download glibc 2.27 sources from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.27.tar.xz

Extract to a temporary location, then compile and install:

tar -xJf https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.27.tar.xz
cd glibc-2.27
mkdir glibc-build; cd glibc-build

# Important: Install in a non-default location to prevent corruption of your base system
../configure --prefix=/some/path/glibc-2.27
make
sudo make install

Alfaview installation patch

Alfaview has to be started with libm 2.27, check that the following works on the command line:

export LD_PRELOAD=/some/path/glibc-2.27/lib/libm.so.6; /opt/alfaview/alfaview

Modify the Exec entry in /usr/share/applications/alfaview.desktop accordingly:

Exec=export LD_PRELOAD=/some/path/glibc-2.27/lib/libm.so.6; env /opt/alfaview/alfaview --url=%u

You should now be able to

Trouble shooting

Video support

Alfaview requires gstreamer-plugins-bad for video support. Install the respective package with yast.

Firefox will automatically start alfaview if the mime types are correctly registered by alfaview.desktop. If that doesn’t work then check correctness of the local copy (if it exists), look for the MimeType entry: