Ok, I know pidgin binaries are available for Lenny, but let’s build Pidgin 2.4.3 from source anyway… Lenny will be the new “stable” soonish (September?) and the Pidgin team don’t provide Debian binaries for stable.

(This will probably work on etch. I posted build instructions here for Pidgin 2.4.1 a while back. The configure script in that case was more lenient with respect to dependencies than the current 2.4.3 configure script.)

Before you build

Required stuff (For a minimal install.)

apt-get install gettext libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libxml2-dev libxml-perl libperl-dev

We need this if we’re going to use MSN or Google talk since they need ssl (Pidgin uses the gnutls ssl libraries)

apt-get install libgnutls-dev

Optional Stuff (Probably a good idea to install these.)

Spell checking
apt-get install libgtkspell-dev

X Screen Saver extension (needed for determining idle time from mouse and keyboard use)
apt-get install libxss-dev

Startup notification (visual feedback of startup)
apt-get install libstartup-notification0-dev

Sound support
apt-get install libgstreamer0.10-dev

More optional stuff (Install these if you need them.)

Tcl/Tk support (if you need tcl/tk scripting)
apt-get install tcl-dev tk-dev

Meanwhile support (Lotus Sametime support)
apt-get install libmeanwhile-dev

Avahi support (for Bonjour)
apt-get install libavahi-glib-dev

D-bus support (message bus support)
apt-get install libdbus-glib-1-dev

NetworkManager support (A D-Bus service providing connection management and selection of best available connection).
apt-get install network-manager-dev

Build and Install

Download the source package from http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pidgin/pidgin-2.4.3.tar.bz2

Unpack pidgin
tar jxvf pidgin-2.4.3.tar.bz2

Configure

cd pidgin-2.4.3
./configure

You can pass the following options to configure if you want to disable things you don’t need

--disable-gtkui compile without GTK+ user interface
--disable-consoleui compile without console user interface
--disable-screensaver compile without X screensaver extension
--disable-sm compile without X session management support
--disable-startup-notification compile without startup notification support
--disable-gtkspell compile without GtkSpell automatic spell checking
--disable-gstreamer compile without GStreamer audio support
--disable-meanwhile compile without meanwhile
--disable-avahi compile without avahi
--disable-nm compile without NetworkManager support

(To see all available options ./configure --help)

Build and install

make
su
make install

Pidgin is then at /usr/local/bin/pidgin

(Actually I do the whole install as root.)

Caveats

1. It’s a good idea to uninstall any previous version of pidgin, if you installed binaries, do an apt-get remove --purge pidgin
2. Keep the source/build tree! Tar and gzip it, then put it somewhere safe. In the future you might want to upgrade pidgin. To do it cleanly, issue a make uninstall from the build directory. Apparently, make uninstall needs to know which options were passed to ./configure to uninstall pidgin properly.

   Alternatively, note down the options you passed to ./configure, download the old source tarball, unpack and run ./configure with the options you used to build, then do a make uninstall.

3. You might need to run ldconfig after install if you get this error when you try to run pidgin
   pidgin: error while loading shared libraries: libpurple.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
4. This might work on Ubuntu, I haven’t tried it.
5. I doubt anyone will need this informaton until Lenny becomes stable. If you aren’t comfortable building from source, use a binary.
6. Substitute sudo for su if that’s your thing.

I did the final build with

./configure --disable-meanwhile --disable-avahi --disable-dbus

but built it with these enabled while testing dependencies.

1. KeePassX depends on the Qt libraries so fetch the necessary dependencies first

apt-get install libqt4-core libqt4-gui libpng3

2. Get the debian package from http://www.keepassx.org/downloads

3. Install it

dpkg -i KeePassX-0.2.2.deb

We need these to build it

apt-get install gettext libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libxml2-dev

perl-xml libraries may also be needed

apt-get install libxml-perl

To build it with ssl (needed for msn and google talk), we need the gnutls development headers

apt-get install libgnutls-dev

Get the source

http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pidgin/pidgin-2.3.1.tar.bz2

Build it

tar jxvf pidgin-2.3.1.tar.bz2
cd pidgin-2.3.1
./configure --enable-gnutls=yes
make
make install

pidgin is at /usr/local/bin/pidgin

I’ve tried to get Flash working with Firefox on FreeBSD a number of times, but haven’t been able to get it just right until recently.

I’m using,
FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE #0: Sun May 7 04:32:43 UTC 2006
with
firefox-2.0_2,1.

The following worked for me (Thanks to a post from Lluis López: here).

1. First install linuxpluginwrapper from the ports tree:

cd usr/ports/www/linuxpluginwrapper
make
make install
make clean

2. Now go to /usr/src and get this patch and patch

cd /usr/src
patch < /home/work/rtld_dlsym_hack.diff
cd libexec/rtld-elf
make clean
make
make install

Substitute the correct path above !! (I downloaded the patch to /home/work/).

This assumes you have sources installed. If the tree under /usr/src is empty, then

sysinstall

[configure >> distributions >> src >> all ]

See The FreeBSD handbook if you’ve forgotten how to use sysinstall.

3. Install linux-flashplugin7

cd /usr/ports/www/linux-flashplugin7
make
make install
make clean

4. Copy /usr/local/share/examples/linuxpluginwrapper/libmap.conf-FreeBSD6 to /etc/libmap.conf

cp /usr/local/share/examples/linuxpluginwrapper/libmap.conf-FreeBSD6 /etc/libmap.conf

No need to edit /etc/libmap.conf.

5. Add symlinks in /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins to libflashplayer.so and flashplayer.xpt to

cd /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins
ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/linux-mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so .
ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/linux-mozilla/plugins/flashplayer.xpt .

6. Restart your browser, and navigate to about:plugins, you should see shockwave_flash listed:

File name:
libflashplayer.so

Shockwave Flash 7.0 r69

7. Install javavmwrapper

Before we can install Java (I’m using the diablo-jdk from the FreeBSD Foundation in this example) we need to install javavmwrapper from ports.

cd /usr/ports/java/javavmwrapper/
make
make install
make clean

8. Now we can install Java. Download the appropriate JDK package from The FreeBSD foundation and simply issue a pkg_add.

In my case,

pkg_add diablo-jdk-freebsd6.i386.1.5.0.07.01.tbz

8. We need to add a symlink in /usr/local/lib/browser to /usr/local/diablo-jdk1.5.0/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

cd /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins
ln -s /usr/local/diablo-jdk1.5.0/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so .

9. Restart your browser and navigate to about:plugins you should see

File name:

libjavaplugin_oji.so

Java(TM) Plug-in 1.5.0

I tested the Java install by trying the Rubik’s Cube Java Applet. It worked without problems.

Verifiying the Java installation at Sun’s site gives a (soft) error:

Oops! You don’t have the recommended Java installed.
Your Java version is 1.5.0. Please click the button below to get the recommended Java for your computer.

It does however verify that Java version 1.5.0 is installed.

Addendum: An alternative way to install Flash for Firefox, that bypasses the Linux compatibility layer altogether is to use the GNU Flash movie playergnash.

cd /usr/ports/graphics/gnash/
make
make install
make clean

Thanks to Matteo at Matteo’s Wasps’ Nest for this one. See his post for more details.

I just installed Java on my FreeBSD box. In the past it has been a nightmare to install Java due to licensing issues - BUT - the FreeBSD Foundation has negotiated a license with Sun to distribute JRE and JDK binaries for FreeBSD.

Installation is now very easy! Download the appropriate package from here and simply issue a pkg_add.

In my case it was

pkg_add diablo-jdk-freebsd6.i386.1.5.0.07.01.tbz

(I am currently running FreeBSD 6.1).

My installation baulked because javavmwrapper was not installed. A simple install from ports was all that was needed (it is a small package).

cd /usr/ports/java/javavmwrapper/
make
make install
make clean

After this I ran pkg_add again and the install went through without incident. It sure beats compiling the whole thing from sources.