Thursday, July 03, 2008

Installing Gnome2 IPMessenger

IPMsg (http://www.ipmsg.org/index.html.en) is a staple application here in the office. When I was given a Linux workstation, I then had to run IPMsg for Windows on Wine. However, it pops up a series several error messages on startup.



It was annoying the first time. But I somehow got used to it. But, still, if I could get rid of it, I would.

Then, yesterday, Randell thought of running IPMsg on his laptop which was on Fedora. He said that he downloaded IPMsg from its site, to be sure that he had the latest version. I was also reading around about running IPMsg on different LANs and I found out that IPMsg is open-source and cross-platform! So I took a look at the official site.

There were indeed various versions for different platforms (and languages! there's a Tagalog version?!)! I readily picked GNOME2 IP Messenger, as it was the UNIX version that was most recently updated (2008 at that! version as of writing is g2ipmsg-0.9.5).

A few things about GNOME2 IP Messenger (g2ipmsg), though.

Make sure you have all dependencies installed:

  • libxml-parser-perl

  • libgnomeui-dev

  • libpanel-applet2-dev


(UPDATE 2008-07-06 2:35AM -- additional dependencies)

  • gettext

  • intltool


How to install these depends on the Linux distribution. The easiest way is to use the graphical Package Manager.

(MAJOR UPDATE 2008-07-07 5:27PM)
Randell reported that he couldn't find the dependencies in Fedora -- I was surprised! I did a search and found out that libxml-parser-perl was perl-XML-parser in Fedora! I suppose that the rest of the dependencies are only for Debian-based distros. Randell said that he'd look up the rest, and post a Fedora instructional soon. With that, I'm slapping the apt-get command back into the list below.

After assuring that you have the above dependencies, you can do a conventional build and install from source. Assuming that the current working directory is where g2ipmsg-0.9.5.tar.gz is located:

$ tar zxf g2ipmsg-0.9.5.tar.gz
$ cd g2ipmsg-0.9.5/
$ sudo apt-get install libxml-parser-perl libgnomeui-dev libpanel-applet2-dev gettext intltool
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo g2ipmsg

Make sure to execute sudo g2ipmsg right after installation. You'll only be able to run it without the sudo after a reboot -- I don't know why, though.

I suddenly posted something like this because while researching specifically about this, the search results with definite instructions were non-English sites.

21 comments:

mark said...

thanks for this niks. :) malaking tulong...

mark said...

btw, for ubuntu, in commandline:

# sudo apt-get install libxml-parser-perl libgnomeui-dev libpanel-applet2-dev

For documentation purposes. :)

Nikki! said...

yeah, yeah..

i had that in my initial draft, and i dunno why i removed it -- i think i got too lazy to include the other distro-specific commands (yum for RedHat/Fedora/etc), so i removed it to be fair.. hence the tip about the graphical Package Manager. =p

mark said...

hehe. :) mas madali lang pay may pwede nang icopy paste sa command line. :)

btw, nanghingi pa sakin ng gettext na dependency.

Initial impression, dami pang rough edges. :( UI-wise ha, hindi functionality. I'm not complaining about the aesthetics ha... Hindi lang ganun ka-optimized yung UI for a smoother usage.

Nikki! said...

re: gettext

sabi na nga ba, dapat sinama ko.. 1 out of 5 na researched sites lang kasi yung naglagay nun.. =p

Anonymous said...

thnx dude
its great
i tried on many sites but finally u rovided the right so;uton

Anonymous said...

Thanks. Was wanting to have this done on Ubuntu and the instructions helped.

Ninad Pundalik said...

Thanx for the dependencies man... I had compiled a .deb for G2ipmsg but wasn't sure of the deps... Need to use it on my college LAN and a lot of my friends couldn't use it correctly becuase of the missing deps... I Like g2ipmsg more than kipmsg though I am mostly on KDE...

Anonymous said...

g2ipmsg crashes (without sudo)

and with sudo (just after sudo make install), this is the error I get:

Error : pubcrypt.c line:2085 ] Directory /home/user/.g2ipmsg is not secure or does not exist.

I am on intrepid

Appreciate any help..

lavezarez said...

bro, thanks a lot for this post. worked 100% on my ubuntu 9.04 jaunty. just followed your instructions, but instead of using the sudo app-get, i used the synaptic.

and yes! i can IPmsg my fellow XP officemates.

Tech-Talk said...

na-install ko ipmsg sa latest release ng ubuntu 9.04 (jaunty) pero may error na lumalabas.

FileName:userdb.c
Function:fill_user_info_with_message
Line:272
Can not convert message from 192.168.1.63 into ineternal representation

pero kahit na may lumalabas na ganito ok pa naman IPMsg ko. Paano kaya ito alisin?

Thanks.

Nikki! said...

@ Anonymous #2, Tech-Talk:

Sorry, but I can't quite help you with your questions.. Haven't got the time to play with installing g2ipmsg again.. =p

borgy said...

hey kuya niks, salamat sa blog post mo! hahaha d ko akalain ikaw pa makakatulong sa problema ko sa pagbuild ng ipmsgr. google makes our world smaller :D BTW congrats!!

Nikki! said...

Yo, Borgy! =D

Thanks! =)

sharef said...

i was wondering if there was a command line send function on this program, i want to script an ipmsg system to send status reports to my vista box from my intrepid file server

Nikki! said...

@sharef -- Unfortunately, I don't think g2ipmsg was made to accomodate sending via command-line.. Another option you can consider is to run the Windows version (which has command-line support) under Wine, if you need it badly..

Unknown said...

Excellent work man. Thanks a lot.

Advali said...

sa lahat ng may error message na

"fill_user_info_with_message"

before you install g2ipmsg, do the following

1)find the userdb.c file from src folder
2)find and delete this line and save the file:

ipmsg_err_dialog(_("Can not convert message from %s into ineternal representation"), peer_addr);

reinstall ipmsg. then after that, no more messages.

no probs sa linux ko.

Nikki! said...

@Cookie: Thanks for the additional info! :)

~/.raymond said...

You guys wanna try iptux. It's gtk based...it can also communicate with ipmessenger. I believe nasa repo rin ng Ubuntu ito...mine is Debian. Tried the xipmsg for minimal deps, but I guess I have to set some conf file...for other configs like network address (I am having 2 networks at the same time), etc. which I couldn't locate...I believe this is the same thing when I made my bc (I don't need astig UI calculator...just bc) to output in a small terminal and used static config file like scale and base.

Camila said...

I am not sure i am following , i try to do the same thing with other programs but this isn't working at all, i hope i can find the steps to install whatsapp pc and make it work.