LiveZilla - brief howto

Linux Tips & Tricks
1

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.

2

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_thumb.jpg

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

3

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:

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. :slight_smile:

4

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 …)

5

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

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

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

6

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.

7

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

8

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.

9

Running on KVM using Seamless and RDP seems to be rock solid and works 100% … :slight_smile:

10

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