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Run Cisco Webex on 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04

Run Cisco Webex on 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04

With Audio and Screen Sharing Enabled

Enable support for 32-bit executables

Add the i386 architecture to the list of dpkg architectures :

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Install the libraries required to execute ELF-32 executables:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386

Install Firefox 52 ESR (32-bit)

Beginning with Firefox 52 (released March 2017), plug-in support is limited to Adobe Flash, and drops support for NPAPI, impacting plugins for Java, Silverlight, and other similar NPAPI based plugins. Hence you need the ESR release. You can read more on that here: https://www.java.com/en/download/help/firefox_java.xml

Download Firefox ESR for Linux (32-bit) from here.

Unpack it to somewhere, for example to /opt/webex/:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/webex/
sudo tar -xjvf firefox*esr*.tar.bz2 -C /opt/webex/

Install the libraries required for Firefox (i386) to run smoothly:

sudo apt-get install \
    libgtk-3-0:i386 \
    libasound2:i386 \
    libdbus-glib-1-2:i386 \
    libxt6:i386 \
    libxtst6:i386 \
    libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 \
    libcanberra-gtk-3-module:i386 \
    topmenu-gtk3:i386

Install 32-bit JRE

Download Oracle JRE for Linux (a tar.gz archive for x86 architecture) from here.

Unpack it to /opt/webex/:

sudo tar -xzvf jre*linux-i586.tar.gz -C /opt/webex/
sudo mv /opt/webex/jre* /opt/webex/jre

Enable Java support in Firefox

Create symbolic links for the Java browser plugin libraries:

sudo mkdir /opt/webex/firefox/plugins/
ln -s \
    /opt/webex/jre/lib/i386/libawt.so \
    /opt/webex/jre/lib/i386/libjawt.so \
    /opt/webex/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so \
    /opt/webex/firefox/plugins

Install the libraries required for Webex to run

sudo apt-get install \
    libpangoxft-1.0-0:i386 \
    libxft2:i386 \
    libpangox-1.0-0:i386 \
    libxmu6:i386 \
    libxv1:i386 \
    libasound2-plugins:i386

Create a Firefox launch script

cat << 'EOF' | sudo tee /opt/webex/firefox.sh
#!/bin/bash

export ENV_HOME=/opt/webex
export FIREFOX_HOME=$ENV_HOME/firefox
export MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=$ENV_HOME/firefox/plugins
export JAVA_HOME=$ENV_HOME/jre
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

#export JPI_PLUGIN2_DEBUG=1

$FIREFOX_HOME/firefox --no-remote -P
EOF

This script will start a new instance of Firefox with the ProfileManager. Choose an existing Firefox profile or create a new one.

You might want to specify a specific profile to start with. Just add the profile name after the -P flag.

Don't forget to make the script executable:

sudo chmod a+x /opt/webex/firefox.sh

You might want to create a symlink, like this:

sudo ln -s /opt/webex/firefox.sh /usr/local/bin/firefox-i386

Start a Webex session

Launch the script and join a Webex session.

If webex.com sends you a jnlp file and Firefox asks what to do with it, just download it. Further, in the Firefox Preferences > Applications, set the action for JNLP files: they should be opened with javaws (Java Web Start) which can be found here:

/opt/webex/jre/bin/javaws

(Optional) Install the missing libraries required by Webex

Find out what required libraries are be missing (note that the session number may be different):

ldd ~/.webex/T30_MC/*.so | grep "not found"

You can use http://packages.ubuntu.com/ to find out which packages contain the libraries.

It is OK to have libjawt.so being not found.

@proski
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proski commented Apr 27, 2020

I ended up with adding four URLs to "Cookies and Site Data" -> "Manage Permissions":

https://webex.com/ Allow for Session
http://webex.com/ Allow for Session
https://mycompany.webex.com/ Allow for Session
http://mycompany.webex.com/ Allow for Session

That works even with the current 64-bit Firefox. However, I need to exit Firefox between the calls. Logging out at the end of the session makes Firefox restart unnecessary, but it's easy to forget.

I guess another approach would be to write a Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey script that would replace "Your browser, browser version, or operating system is currently unsupported" with a page that at least allows to log out (remove the bad cookies). Maybe it's even possible to make the connection just work.

I suspect Webex detects some trivial issue but calls the "nuclear" handler on unsupported systems even though a graceful workaround is available on supported systems.

@RitamChakraborty
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Instead of installing Java 8 32 bit manually, you can use a tool called IcedTea.

I followed this tutorial, and used the tool to open the jnlp file from Firefox. But keep in mind some libraries are not found in apt repository. So you gotta do some digging to get the tool installed. I mean add some lines in source.list.

@djkerya
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djkerya commented Mar 29, 2021

Is this tutorial works for 20.04?

@RitamChakraborty
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RitamChakraborty commented Mar 30, 2021

@djkerya It worked for me in Deepin 20.1. As all the packages needed are available in apt repository, you should not have any problem. In case if some package is not available, you can always add the ppa in the source.

@proski
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proski commented Mar 30, 2021

I would not use this tutorial on any distro now, even if it works. I have never had any success with Java Webex, although I only tired this tutorial on Ubuntu 18.04. The version of Firefox needed to enable Java support is too old and insecure.
In the meantime, the Web version of Webex has greatly improved on Linux. I don't even need to set up exceptions for the cookies. Last time I saw the "currently unsupported" error it was a few months ago, and it was after multiple meetings involving personal rooms. Restarting Firefox fixed the issue.

@Aakash-sanandiya
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Hello everyone, first of all, great tutorial and it helps a lot. I am using ubuntu 18.04 and Webex running perfectly!! Just not able to take the control of participant's screen. Can anyone instruct what could be missing and should I expect it to work with the given installation? Thanks in advance and it would be great help.

@jamesmhbarry
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I use Ubuntu 18.04 64 bit and have been using Webex for a while on Firefox 88, no problems. Today suddenly the screen sharing is broken, it says "Use operating system settings" instead of giving me a list of windows I would like to share.

Funnily enough I installed the new Ubuntu Webex App and screen sharing is also not possible for me.

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