Installing Adobe AIR 1.x on 64bit Linux

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Adobe currently offers an installer for AIR for almost all operating systems. Windows, Mac, and Linux, all of the major platforms are covered. However, one installer is missing… a 64bit one for Linux. For those of us who are die-hard Linux users who also prefer the speed and power of running 64bit operating systems, Adobe AIR won’t just install out of the box and work. This article is to help you get Adobe AIR installed and running on your 64bit Linux system in no time flat.

First, we’ll need to install getlibs, an incredibly useful package for those of us running 64bit Linux systems with the need to run 32bit software. In a previous tutorial, we used getlibs to install some required libraries for running a 32bit Flash Player debug edition on a 64bit Linux operating system. Now, we’ll use a similar technique to get 32bit AIR installed and running. Let’s download and install getlibs. If you have getlibs installed, you can safely skip this step and move on.

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wget -O getlibs-all.deb http://frozenfox.freehostia.com/cappy/getlibs-all.deb
sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb
rm getlibs-all.deb

The above code will download getlibs-all.deb, install it, and remove it, leaving you just what you need and nothing more. Now, let’s move on to the next step, downloading the Adobe AIR installer and installing some 32bit libraries.

wget -O AdobeAIRInstaller.bin http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/lin/download/latest/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
sudo getlibs ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0.1.1

According to Adobe’s website, this installs several other components that are necessary to AIR for internet connectivity, sound, etc. While you can technically install Adobe AIR without these libraries, you’ll find that many applications malfunction and many won’t even start. So yes, I recommend following the directions on this one

Now, we need to download and install some other libraries not available through getlibs. Let’s hit it up:

# Download some debs
wget -O libnss3.deb "http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/n/nss/libnss3-1d_3.12.0~beta3-0ubuntu1_i386.deb"
wget -O libnspr.deb "http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/n/nspr/libnspr4-0d_4.7.1~beta2-0ubuntu1_i386.deb"
 
# Extract 'em, get what we need, then remove them.
mkdir -p libnss3
sudo dpkg -x libnss3.deb libnss3
sudo cp libnss3/usr/lib/libnss3.so.1d /usr/lib32
sudo cp libnss3/usr/lib/libnssutil3.so.1d /usr/lib32
sudo cp libnss3/usr/lib/libsmime3.so.1d /usr/lib32
sudo cp libnss3/usr/lib/libssl3.so.1d /usr/lib32
rm -fr libnss3
rm libnss3.deb
 
mkdir -p libnspr
sudo dpkg -x libnspr.deb libnspr
sudo cp libnspr/usr/lib/libnspr4.so.0d /usr/lib32
sudo cp libnspr/usr/lib/libplc4.so.0d /usr/lib32
sudo cp libnspr/usr/lib/libplds4.so.0d /usr/lib32
rm -fr libnspr
rm libnspr.deb
 
# Link 'em up!
sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/libnss3.so.1d /usr/lib32/libnss3.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/libssl3.so.1d /usr/lib32/libssl3.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/libnspr4.so.0d /usr/lib32/libnspr4.so

Phew! That was a lot of work, so I hope you’re still with me. Now, we’ve got everything all ready for our fresh install of Adobe AIR. Let’s install it!

1	sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Cool! Now, we’ve got one last step to perform before we’re done, copying a simple file over to the /usr/lib32 folder:

1	sudo cp /usr/lib/libadobecertstore.so /usr/lib32

Done! You should now have an installed and fully functional AIR runtime installed on your system. Now, let’s try to encapsulate all of this into a shell script so anyone can install AIR in one step rather than a bunch of ‘em. Download airInstall.sh.gz, extract it, then run it like so:

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wget http://blog.tkassembled.com/u/2010/02/airInstall.sh.gz
gzip -d airInstall.sh.gz
sudo ./airInstall.sh

And, for your reference, here’s what the shell script looks like and does, for those of you who are into that kind of thing:

#!/bin/bash
 
# Check if this is root.
if [[ $EUID -ne 0 ]]; then
	echo "This script must be run as root." 1>&2
	exit 1
fi
 
# Download and install getlibs-all.deb
wget -O getlibs-all.deb http://frozenfox.freehostia.com/cappy/getlibs-all.deb;
dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb;
rm getlibs-all.deb;
 
# Download AIR
wget -O AdobeAIRInstaller.bin http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/lin/download/latest/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin;
chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin;
 
# Install some libraries using getlibs
getlibs ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin;
getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so;
getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0;
getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0.1.1;
 
# Download some unavailable libraries manually
wget -O libnss3.deb "http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/n/nss/libnss3-1d_3.12.0~beta3-0ubuntu1_i386.deb";
wget -O libnspr.deb "http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/n/nspr/libnspr4-0d_4.7.1~beta2-0ubuntu1_i386.deb";
 
# Extract the deb files we just downloaded, and install the libraries we need from them
mkdir -p libnss3;
dpkg -x libnss3.deb libnss3;
cp libnss3/usr/lib/libnss3.so.1d /usr/lib32;
cp libnss3/usr/lib/libnssutil3.so.1d /usr/lib32;
cp libnss3/usr/lib/libsmime3.so.1d /usr/lib32;
cp libnss3/usr/lib/libssl3.so.1d /usr/lib32;
rm -fr libnss3;
rm libnss3.deb;
 
mkdir -p libnspr;
dpkg -x libnspr.deb libnspr;
cp libnspr/usr/lib/libnspr4.so.0d /usr/lib32;
cp libnspr/usr/lib/libplc4.so.0d /usr/lib32;
cp libnspr/usr/lib/libplds4.so.0d /usr/lib32;
rm -fr libnspr;
rm libnspr.deb;
 
# Link the libraries up
ln -s /usr/lib32/libnss3.so.1d /usr/lib32/libnss3.so;
ln -s /usr/lib32/libssl3.so.1d /usr/lib32/libssl3.so;
ln -s /usr/lib32/libnspr4.so.0d /usr/lib32/libnspr4.so;
 
# Install AIR!
./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin;
rm AdobeAIRInstaller.bin;
 
# And, finally, link some libraries
cp /usr/lib/libadobecertstore.so /usr/lib32;
 
echo "Adobe AIR should now be installed! Woo!";

Did everything work out okay? Questions? Go ahead and light up the comments and I’ll see how I can help. In the future, we’ll cover installing the new beta version of AIR 2.0 on a 64bit Linux machine.

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