LiveZilla - brief howto

[Mad Penguin]

Just installed "LiveZilla" as a test on the Forum just as a proof of "does it work" for someone - here's the result.
It appears to work very well, i.e. using the Windows Client with a Linux server.

Steps;

• Download the LiveZilla .exe from https://www.livezilla.net/downloads/en/
• Install on your Windows PC
• Create a server profile for your site
• Run the server administrator
• Extract the Server setup to a local folder (rather than upload via FTP)
• Copy the resulting folder to your Linux web server, in this instance http://forum.linux.co.uk/LiveZilla (remembering to set the permissions to match your web server)
• Run the remainder of the Server setup, you'll need MySQL setup on your Linux server for this (it's a little confusing, the MySQL details you type into the Windows client are actually copied to the Linux server and executed there)
• Now you should be able to log into the Windows client - and the Server side should launch the demo chat application

End-to-End, 15m.
Bit of a shame it's a Windows only client, it does look pretty useful.

[Mad Penguin]

My mistake .. so here's a shot of the Windows client running on my Linux desktop, together with two active chat sessions ...


http://forum.linux.co.uk/images/livezilla.jpg

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Turns out it wasn't too hard to get the LiveZilla Client (for windows) running In WINE as long as you have the correct version (wine1.2 - 1.1.31) I couldn't get it to run in 1.0.1 at all.
I ended up having to uninstall wine 1.0.1 then delete the .wine and .winetrickscache (hidden) directories then install 1.1.31 ... Updating to 1.1.31 without deleting these directories didn't work.

Prior to step 1, I had copied all the fonts from a windows (c:\windows\fonts) installation to my ~/.fonts directory and rebuilt the font information cache files:

Code: [Select]

sudo fc-cache -vf

Not sure this is necessary, but I figured it can't hurt and now I have my Windows fonts available in Linux which is nice.

1) Install WINE1.2 version 1.1.31 (may run in later versions) I also installed wine1.2-dev, but not sure this was needed.
2) Use winetricks to install: 'gdiplus', 'ie6', 'dotnet20', 'mdac25', 'mdac28', 'wininet'
3) Install the 'LiveZilla_3.1.8.5_Client.exe'
4) NOW use winetricks to install: 'corefonts'

if you install corefonts earlier LiveZilla 'may' complain about missing fonts.... it didn't for me but this may have been because I already had the ttf-tahoma-replacement and ttf-symbol-replacement packages installed from the repos

It's not super quick at loading and I haven't fully tested it, but it appears to work. 

[Mad Penguin]

Mmm, that didn't work for me ... it kept complaining that either the "Microsoft Sans Serif" font or the "Tahoma" font was missing .. even tho' they were both clearly there ...

Be warned; ttf-tahoma-replacement , will screw with fonts on your web browser for any site (AJAX applications in particular) that tries to set it's own font .. it's very Zimbra unfriendly for example. (it seems not to have a 'bold' mode, apart from not looking good ...)

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

I had exactly the same problem UNTIL I started again by deleting the .wine and .winetrickscache directories... but this is EXACTLY how I did it

actually...there was 1 other step, but i'm convinced it was 'wrong' so I undid it afterwards and it still worked... maybe it helped with the installation though.

when I rebuilt the font cache, I also created a symbolic link to ~/.fonts from /root/.fonts

Code: [Select]

sudo ln -s ~/.fonts /root/.fonts

I'll try uninstalling the ttf-tahoma-replacement package and see if it still works.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Yup... Still works with the ttf-tahoma-replacement and ttf-symbol-replacement packages uninstalled in synaptic.

Glad you pointed that out, because I had Zimbra lock up twice since installing them, and it's saved me time tracking the problem down.

[goldendragonuk]

Guys i really appreciate this im really impressed and thankyou for taking the time

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

UPDATE:

At the moment running the LiveZilla client in WINE seems very unstable... it starts perfectly, but whilst 'typing' a message it just seems to quit/unload for no apparent reason.

I need to test it on another system, because 'exactly' the same thing happens with 'pidgin' on THIS system, so it could be a problem specific to this box.

I'll update once I've checked.

[Mad Penguin]

Running on KVM using Seamless and RDP seems to be rock solid and works 100% ..

[goldendragonuk]

ill have to try it out im now installing ubuntu onto this box so can have a play then