Have you ever tried to join webex session through 64bit firefox? Well – in case you’ve tried may be you’ve got something along the lines:
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.8.1) (fedora-42.b18.fc13-x86_64)OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 14.0-b16, mixed mode)applet startapplet start######### leaveUrl=https://vmwareeducation.webex.com/cmp0306lb/webcomponents/docshow/docshow.do?siteurl=vmwareeducation&jvm=1.6.0_18&isJavaClient=trueapplet returnjava.lang.NullPointerException at sun.applet.PluginAppletViewer.handleMessage(PluginAppletViewer.java:649) at sun.applet.PluginStreamHandler.handleMessage(PluginStreamHandler.java:270) at sun.applet.PluginMessageHandlerWorker.run(PluginMessageHandlerWorker.java:82)java.lang.RuntimeException: Failed to handle message: width 1 height 1 for instance 1 at sun.applet.PluginAppletViewer.handleMessage(PluginAppletViewer.java:660) at sun.applet.PluginStreamHandler.handleMessage(PluginStreamHandler.java:270) at sun.applet.PluginMessageHandlerWorker.run(PluginMessageHandlerWorker.java:82)Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at sun.applet.PluginAppletViewer.handleMessage(PluginAppletViewer.java:649) ... 2 moreJava downloader 2.5Os Name: LinuxNetscape user.dir : /home/tusheNetscape installation path11: /home/tusheget:https://vmwareeducation.webex.com/client/T27LB/linux/nbr/npatgpc.xxxDownload finish^M
/bin/chmod 755 /home/tushe/.mozilla/plugins/npatgpc.soLoadPlugin: failed to initialize shared library /home/tushe/.mozilla/plugins/npatgpc.so [/home/tushe/.mozilla/plugins/npatgpc.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32]
inside your .xsession-errrors log file.
That is because webex tries to download and install their plugin and start it in the firefox session, but as it is only 32bit and it cannot be wrapped by the nspluginwrapper – it fails.
I’ve tried to manually install it and wrap it, but the java applet apparently does not have checks whether the plugin is already installed and tries the same procedure again and again.
So at the end I’ve managed to fix this with these tree simple commands:
# setarch i686 yum install firefox (this install firefox as i686 binary and pulls all its 32bit dependencies)
# yum reinstall firefox (this reinstalls the original 64bit firefox)
# setarch i686 firefox (this instructs firefox script to load the 32bit libraries)
And there you go – the webex plugin load like a charm!
Random thoughts on different matters 
I had some problems with adobe plugins and got the “wrong ELF class” error message.
(fedora13 64bit) Now I could finaly solve it with your three lines. Thanks a lot,Todor. Greetings. Rita.
I’m glad that this helped someone – I thought that I’m the only one with that kind of problem 🙂
I played for a while with this myself and it seems that after all you CAN make the wrapped plugin work. Just copy it (symlinking wont work) from /usr/lib64/mozilla-wrapped/ into ~/.mozilla/plugins/npatgpc.so and webex then thinks its their own version so it runs it fine.
Cheers,
Ivan
Thank you for the feedback Ivan. I’m pretty sure that I’ve tried this also. The nspluginwrapper was able to see it and it was listed on the ‘about:plugins’ firefox page, but still was not working. Maybe I should give it a try again.
Hi,
I have Fedora 14 x86-64 bit, and installed the firefox.i686 and java plugins for 32 bit. But not able to see presenter desktop and also can not shared my desktop.
Please suggest how to troubleshoot and where to check the log.
Cheers,
Manoj
Hi Manoj,
I would start with inspecting the ~/.xsession-errors log file.
Hi,
Those 3 commands brought webex aline on my 64-bit Fedora 14. But there is one thing missing, the webex player starts, sound works, but slides window is missing. Could you give a test to one of the presentations listed here -> http://ams.confex.com/ams/13CldPhy13AtRad/techprogram/session_23645.htm
Thanks.
Hi,
I’ve reprodused the configuration on by box which is currently also f14, and what I’ve noticed that the player that displays the recorded sessions needed java plugin enabled, so I had to additionally add this:
# setarch i686 yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin
# ln -sf /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0/jre/lib/i386/IcedTeaPlugin.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
After that the player started without any problems and displayed the slides.
Unfortunately, following this step doesn’t fix my problem. Could this be due to multiple java installation in my system?
alternatives –config java
lists 5 java locations 2 for Sun’s java, 2 for openjdk and 1 for gcj.
This is what I’ve got:
1 /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.5.0-gcj/bin/java
*+ 2 /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.6.0-openjdk.x86_64/bin/java
3 /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.6.0-openjdk/bin/java
But I highly doubt that this is the problem, because initially I’ve installed only the java plugin package and it complained that cannot find java executable (as it was searching for 32bit java). After installing it everything run as expected.
I am using the fedora 15 and firefox 5. When I try to use any webex meeting. I got the following error.
Oops! Your browser or browser version is currently unsupported.
Please help me.
Unfortunately these are checks that are done at the site level and are something that it hard to overcome … most probably the only way to do it is to spoof the browser version to some older and see if it will work then.
Maybe something like this could help:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/
Hello
I thought I may ask a wee question here as you do seem to be the authority on getting webex to work with 64bit Linux on the internet 🙂
I have posted a question on fedoraforum.org basically I am unable to share my desktop out to other people in meetings. The errors that I am getting in my .xsessions-errors are below.
Any pointers my friend would be gratefully received
All the best
grep -i webe .xsession-errors.old
Window manager warning: Invalid WM_TRANSIENT_FOR window 0x4800020 specified for 0x480015d (Cisco WebE).
grep -i desk .xsession-errors.old
Window manager warning: Invalid WM_TRANSIENT_FOR window 0x4800020 specified for 0x48000b6 (Share Desk).
Window manager warning: Invalid WM_TRANSIENT_FOR window 0x4800020 specified for 0x48000e9 (Share Desk).
Hi Stu,
sorry for the delay – but from what I see in your comment, these are only warnings related to the window compositing manager. And why are you searching through “.xsession-errors.old” and not your current log file “.xsession-errors” ?
Hiya Todor
No sweat for the delay in getting back to me. The reason that I am searching through my xsession-errors.old is that the log had just been rolled over so it was not really that old. I have had a colleague try webex from ubuntu and he has no trouble sharing out his desktop. Do you think that it could be something to do with the fact that I am using Suns Java
java -version
java version “1.6.0_26”
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_26-b03)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.1-b02, mixed mode)
and the ndswrapper for flash
# rpm -q nspluginwrapper
nspluginwrapper-1.3.2-1.fc14.x86_64
nspluginwrapper-1.3.2-1.fc14.i686
# rpm -q nspluginwrapper
nspluginwrapper-1.3.2-1.fc14.x86_64
nspluginwrapper-1.3.2-1.fc14.i686
My colleague is using the new 64bit flash, or is flash not really important with webex ?
Thanks
As far as I know, webex is not related with flash in any way. Under linux it uses a combination of native firefox add-ons and java player. So if you have problems with your java version you should definitely see the errors in .xsession-errors file.
And because you are mentioning 64bit flash – are you running 32bit firefox via “setarch i686 firefox” or running native 64bit firefox? Because if you trying to get webex running with the 32bit version (same as me), all 64bit plugins are completely irrelevant – both flash and java …
Hello Todor
Thanks again for your help thus far, I am using a 64bit version of firefox as can be seeing in the below. I may test on my wife’s laptop and see if I can share with her laptop (she is running Linux Mint).
Thanks
rpm -qi firefox4
Name : firefox4 Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version : 4.0.1 Vendor: (none)
Release : 2.fc14 Build Date: Thu 02 Jun 2011 18:32:43 BST
Install Date: Fri 03 Jun 2011 15:14:07 BST Build Host: f14.x86-64
Group : Applications/Internet Source RPM: firefox4-4.0.1-2.fc14.src.rpm
Size : 21655203 License: MPLv1.1 or GPLv2+ or LGPLv2+
Signature : (none)
URL : http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Summary : Mozilla Firefox Web browser
Description :
Mozilla Firefox is an open-source web browser, designed for standards
compliance, performance and portability.
You can try to install all 32bit dependencies of firefox – as noted in the original blog post with:
# setarch i686 yum install firefox
# yum reinstall firefox
And then try to run firefox in 32bit mode with:
# setarch i686 firefox
Please not that if the plugin you are referring is already running and you are just missing the share desktop functionality – this most probably won’t help as this means that the plugin is loaded by the browser successfully …
I have been able to get WebEx working in 64-bit Fedora 15 with a 64-bit Firefox. I checked YumEx, and the 64-bit firefox package is installed.
I have the Sun JDK install as opposed to the OpenJDK, but that was for other reasons. I just haven’t tried OpenJDK.
I think this is the command that you can use to get the Java plugin working in Firefox:
sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives –install /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so libjavaplugin.so.x86_64 /usr/java/default/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so 20000
To troubleshoot, check the links to make sure the files exist:
ls -l /usr/java/default/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so
ls -l /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins
ls -l /etc/alternatives/libjavaplugin.so.x86_64
Make sure Java is working right before testing WebEx:
http://www.java.com/en/download/testjava.jsp
Once you get Java working, you can test WebEx here:
http://www.webex.com/lp/jointest
I hope that helps.
I also have WebEx working in Fedora 15 64-bit, but with 32-bit Firefox 3.6. Using 64-bit Firefox 5 or 6, the WebEx window appears, and I can see who is in the meeting and see chat information, but I can’t see the presenter’s desktop.
But in Firefox 3.6 32-bit, I am able to see presentations. Hooray!
I downloaded Firefox 3.6 from here (I didn’t find an RPM that I liked):
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all-older.html
Then I installed it and then installed the Java plugin.
[…] now on my Fedora 15, and it is time to get WebEx working. After a few Google searches, I came across instructions on using 32-bit Firefox on 64-bit […]
You are right. I had thought it was working because I was able to connect to the session. Once I had an actual meeting, I found that I could not view the shared desktop while everyone else in the meeting could.
Oh well, back to the 32-bit firefox. Frustrating!
Thanks much, you’re a hero! Some slight mods for my install. This is what it took on Fedora 16 64 bit. Nice is that I can run in 32 bit or 64 bit mode. The libXmu was an unsatisfied link – check your ~/.icedtea/logs to see if you suffer the same.
[root@glasscloud ~]# setarch i686 yum install firefox
[root@glasscloud ~]# yum reinstall firefox
[root@glasscloud ~]# setarch i686 yum install java-openjdk java-openjdk-plugin
[root@glasscloud ~]# yum reinstall java-openjdk
[root@glasscloud ~]# setarch i686 yum install icedtea-web
[root@glasscloud ~]# yum reinstall icedtea-web
[root@glasscloud ~]# setarch i686 yum install libXmu
[root@glasscloud ~]# yum reinstall libXmu
You could also create a new user account on your machine and manually install 32bit firefox and 32bit java. Unzip 32-bit firefox to the 32-bit user’s home directory, and download something similar to jre-7-linux-i586.tar.gz. Untar and place in /opt/.
cd ~/.mozilla/plugins
Make symlinks from /opt/jre1.7.0/lib/i386/ to here if java complains about missing plugins.
Then a simple shell script to call from your regular user instance:
ssh -X 32bit@localhost ~32bit/bin/firefox/firefox.
(forwards X from 32-bit user instance, (in this case firefox), to your regular user instance)
This will allow you to keep your 64-bit Firefox and use the 32-bit Firefox at the same time by sourcing the 32-bit user java.
Forgot to mention an important symlink:
cd ~/.mozilla/plugins
ln -s /opt/jre1.7.0/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so
Check to see if this is working by starting the 32-bit firefox and navigating to about:plugins.
You should see the 32-bit java.
I am able to share my Desktop and applications this way.
What about the 32bit library dependencies of Firefox? Did you installed them or the package is static?
[…] and I had posted my hooking Java up to Firefox for WebEx. I was rightly corrected on troshlyak’s blog. The 64-bit will work, but you can’t share your desktop or view another’s desktop. […]
I know this is an old thread, but it seems to be the ultimate reference for this issue. I’m having this same problem in Fedora 17 64-bit, I already installed 32-bit Firefox and 32-bit java (oracle) plugin is working perfectly, but I still can’t see other’s people desktop or share my own.
Thanks a LOT! For me, I also had to reinstall Java plugin:
sudo yum install java-1.7.0-oracle-plugin.x86_64
yum reinstall, rather!