Webex Player on Linux
We use an application called Webex in work to remotely access peoples machines. These sessions can be recorded and therefore we often use this to view sessions from other Engineers and to record training sessions that may have been given elsewhere. One place to see a lot of trainings is from the VMWorld website which has a webex recording of each presentation in VMWorld, including mine.
Up until recently I have been able to access peoples machines from my Linux box but I haven’t been able to play recordings. However I have finally figured it out so I am posting the instructions for anyone else who may be interested.
- Login to your webex account
- On the left menu, select “download”
- Click on “recording and play back”
- Click in “Create a URL for a Recording page” at the bottom of the page
- Copy and paste http://www.webex.com/wrf/test.wrf in the “URL for recording” field,
- Click submit and then click test playback.
This will install webex player in ~/.webex/atrecply
If you do not have a Webex account I am not sure how you can download this software. However looking at the site I see that you can download the Windows and Mac versions for free so I assume Webex do not mind if I include a link here to the Linux executables for anybody who might be interested.
Download a compress copy of the files here.
Thanks for posting this. I just received a .wrf file today and need to view it.
Unfortunately I can’t see any of the graphic content when I play the file. I tried using Wine to run the Windows version but I just get a segfault.
Shucks.
Were you able to get this running? I know there is a Mac version as well that you can download.
Yeah, it worked fine on the Mac (PowerPC software on an Intel Mac). I was hoping to watch it away from our somewhat chaotic office, but I don’t own a Mac. No big deal.
Do you by chance know if there is a more up to date version of this? Perhaps there are core libraries and specific versions it depends on? I tried running a wrf file from the MySQL site and wasn’t even able to get audio working. I am on Fedora 7 (yeah, I know I need to upgrade).
Thanks for the link though, much appreciated. Just wondering if there were any system requirement notes?
Thanks again!
Hi!
I’ve tried WebEx on an Asus Eeepc 900 but the webcam doesn’t works… did you have the same problem?
Hi,
I’m very very new to Linux. I kinda like it, but I’m not sure what’s the command line for installing Webex player above.
Would you please be so kind to help step by step?
I’m using a Acer Aspire one a150 with Linpus Linux (~Fedora)
Thanks,
Massimo
I was looking at the Webex website and it seems they only support Ubuntu. I suppose it should work on other Linux flavours but the way I outlined above is the only way i know of installing it. I don’t use a webcam with Webex (although my webcam does work with Skype).
And the above is the only way I know of installing it. i do not think there is a command line installation. The file I provided should allow you to run the webex player directly from the folder, once you have extracted it. Simply type the following from within the extracted folder and it should work.
chmod 777 atrecply
./atrecply
Thanks for the information, but when I did ./atrecply in Ubuntu I had the message:
./atrecply: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Yeah I’ve seen that error as well. I can’t remember where right now. When I am back at my desk on Monday I’ll look into it and let you know. However I think it might be that the version of Ubuntu you are running isn’t supported…….but I’ll find out Monday and post it here.
Sorry for taking so long to get back. A list of supported OS and browsers for Webex is available on their support site.
What seems to be happening in your case is that you don’t have some required libraries installed. If you are using Ubuntu you can install them using the following command
yum install compat-libstdc++.so.5.Hope this helps.
Hi
Thanx a lot for the infor given by you. It was a great help.
CAn you tell us how to play arf files on linux
What would you normally use to play an arf file? I’ve never heard of them
Please check http://www.webex.com/downloadplayer.html
There is a link named What is the difference between .ARF and .WRF?
ARF is an advanced recording format for webex
At last I have found a rather nice way to view .arf files on linux:
At webex’s download page at http://support.webex.com/support/downloads.html you may find an utility named NBR2MP4 Converter which allows to convert webex recordings to mpeg-4 format and then view them as usual video.
The only thing I didn’t like is that converting takes as long as webex session lasts
Hope this will help anyone :)
great post, thanks! Just a note for the other readers. If using fedora 11 you need to install compat-libstdc++-33
Thanks, great help.
FYI, I got this working on Ubuntu Lucid (10.4) by adding this ppa: https://launchpad.net/~jason-scheunemann/+archive/ppa and doing a
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lib32stdc++5′
The bad news is that it seems the .wrf file format has evolved. When I run the webex player and point it to the file I want to view it alerts me: ‘Unknown file format. You may update your Webex player and try again.’
Oops, without the trailing ‘ on the “apt-get install” line above :-S
Should be just: sudo apt-get install lib32stdc++5
This worked a treat for me (openSuSE 11.2 64 bit), although the compressed files didn’t. I don’t understand why the WEBEX people don’t list the various UNIX versions as well as the Windows and Mac versions…
Thanks for the information.
Hi
When i try to play .wrf file in linux i am getting the message ‘Unknown file format. You may update your Webex player and try again.’ How do i fix it?
I am using Fedora 10.
I wish they made life easier by simply uploading the compressed files that you did and the latest version. Looks like some retarded player. I tried the steps and it looks like the atrecply directory is no longer created. If you can kindly upload the latest version it will help or a work around. I am attempting wine now.
To be honest Mayank I don’t use it anymore so I don’t have a copy of atrecply. Maybe someone else who is subscribed to this thread could get you a copy?
Dowload the File webex.tar.gz
Steps:
tar xvf webex.tar.gz
cd webex
chmod 777 atrecply
wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gcc-3.3/libstdc++5_3.3.6-18_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i libstdc++5_3.3.6-18_i386.deb
the command to play the player
./atrecply