As I'm currently looking for ways to maximize my incomes without taking participation in 5 days week 8 hours schedule in a Big Corporation office job (which prooved for me to be a terrible slavery) I decided to give Free Lancing a try once again.
Historically I have registrations in some of the most popular Free Lancing services Web platforms such as freelancer.com and upwork.com.
But none of them really was easy enough to handle as applying and winning a project there is usually a lot of headbanging into the walls and the platforms are full of clients that are looking for free lancers for short-term projects the work selection there required too much work, often projects offered there are seriously under-paid and its really hard to negotiate with many of the clients as they're unprofessional in the fields they're working (don't get me wrong I'm not saying many people are not very successful with this platforms, and that the platforms are not providing work for me I only say it is not really something to my liking …
In the mean time if you happen to read this article and looking for a High Quality Empoyee Cheap System Administrator or automation developmer, an IT counseling FreeLancer or a Ultra cheap WebHosting service in the European Union, I'll be very happy if you become my client.
Anyways … further on I decided to further experiment a little bit with other Free Lancing platforms (suggested by a friend Mitko Ivanov who helped me a lot with things and is continuing to help me over the last year ).
So following his kind suggestion I already tried one of the popular FreeLancing freeeup.com which is looking only for a best specialists into the fields of Marketing, Development, System Administration etc. but even though I tried hard with them the guys decided I am not matching there criteria for a the best 1% of all the people in the field of IT so my application for the platform was rejected twice over the last 1 month and a half.
Another similar new platform for free lancing that looks promising that I've learned about is toptal.com (there site Slogan is Hire FreeLance Talent from the Top 3%) so I went there and registered.
I had hit a road block there too as it seems, there website registration form was not tested enough with non-Windows operating systems with Mozilla Firefox and as it happens that I am using Debian GNU / Linux for my Desktop their drop-down menus was not working, just like some of the form on their website regular expression checks failed.
I've contacted the guys to inform them about their problems (and they kindly advised) I just give a try a registration with different browser (i.e. Google Chrome) which I immediately did and registratoin there was finally a success.
I have to say the new user application form registration of toptal also annoyed me with the stupid requirement to provide a picture in 1000px x 1000px but as this freelancing platform is still new and has way to go until it is established name in the field of freelancing such as upwork.com and I warmly excuse them.
Once registerered for them the user has to schedule an entry interview just like it goes with a standard company interview with a kind of Human Resources (HR) specialist and I guess some technical guys in order to evaluate on your value (Ha-Ha, someone else to determine your value is already crazy but all crazy employees do it still, of course I don't care as I well know that my value is much more than what they put on me).
The online interview once scheduled has to be done in a Web Meeting (Online Rooms) Platform called BlueJeans similar to Cisco WebEx (that is today heavily used in Corporate world in companies such as Hewlett Packard where we used it heavily, IBM, Concentrix etc.) and others Zoom, JoinMe GotoMeeting, HighFive.
As you could guess BlueJeans (which is by the way a Cloud based meeting software – yackes !) is planned to work mainly on Windows and Mac OS Operating Systems and even though there is a BlueJeans Linux version the provided binary is only for RedHat based linuxes in the RPM binary package format, so in order for me to participate in the scheduled meeting, I either had to port the package and install it on my Debian (what triggeted me to write this article or) use a Virtual Machine such as VirtualBox or VMWare running some kind of Windows OS such as Windows 8 / 10 etc.
Even though I have a Windows 10 OS testbed in a Virtualbox container, I preferred to not use it for BlueJeans and do it the hard way and install BlueJeans on my Debian 9.5 Stretch Linux.
That appeared to be a relatively easy process, so below is how I did it:
1. Download alien convertion (tool) that allows you to convert RPM -> deb, Slackware -> Deb and Linux Standard Base (LDB) packages to deb package format
noah:~# apt-get install –yes alien
…
2. Download latest BlueJeans version from BlueJeans website
As of time of writting this article the download link for bluejeans online conferencing software is here
noah:~# wget https://swdl.bluejeans.com/desktop/linux/1.36/1.36.9/bluejeans-1.36.9.x86_64.rpm
…
3. Convert bluejeans rpm package with alien
noah:~# alien –to-deb bluejeans-*.rpm
Warning: Skipping conversion of scripts in package bluejeans: postinst postrm preinst prerm
Warning: Use the –scripts parameter to include the scripts.
bluejeans_1.36.9-2_amd64.deb generated
root@jericho:/home/hipo/Свалени# dpkg -i bluejeans_*.deb
Selecting previously unselected package bluejeans.
(Reading database … 516203 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack bluejeans_1.36.9-2_amd64.deb …
Unpacking bluejeans (1.36.9-2) …
Setting up bluejeans (1.36.9-2) …
4. Install the deb package as usual with dpkg tool
noah: ~# dpkg -i bluejeans_*.deb
By default BlueJeans were installed under directory /opt/bluejeans
noah:~# ls -al /opt/bluejeans/bluejeans-bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 72423392 Jun 14 02:31 /opt/bluejeans/bluejeans-bin*
5. Fix missing library links if such are present in order to make BlueJeans workable
Historically I have dealt with many Linux programs that are provided only in RPM package format and I knew that often once an RPM is converted to DEB with alien due to the package dependency differences on Redhats (CentOS / Fedora etc.) there are problems with missing libraries.
This time this was the case as well, so as usual right after install I did a check up with ldd (print shared object dependencies Linux command) to find out about missing libraries and one library appeared missing.
noah:~# ldd /opt/bluejeans/bluejeans-bin
linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fffa2182000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007fae95f5e000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fae95d5a000)
libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0x00007fae95718000)
libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0x00007fae95463000)
libatk-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libatk-1.0.so.0 (0x00007fae9523d000)
libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 (0x00007fae95030000)
libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 (0x00007fae94e0c000)
libcairo.so.2 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcairo.so.2 (0x00007fae94aef000)
libpango-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpango-1.0.so.0 (0x00007fae948aa000)
libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 (0x00007fae945f5000)
libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x00007fae943b2000)
libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0x00007fae9415e000)
libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0x00007fae93e48000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6 (0x00007fae93b0a000)
libXi.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXi.so.6 (0x00007fae938fa000)
libnss3.so => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss3.so (0x00007fae935b1000)
libnssutil3.so => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnssutil3.so (0x00007fae93381000)
libsmime3.so => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsmime3.so (0x00007fae93154000)
libplc4.so => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libplc4.so (0x00007fae92f4f000)
libnspr4.so => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnspr4.so (0x00007fae92d10000)
libgconf-2.so.4 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgconf-2.so.4 (0x00007fae92adf000)
libexpat.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 (0x00007fae928ad000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6 (0x00007fae9269b000)
libXfixes.so.3 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXfixes.so.3 (0x00007fae92495000)
libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXrender.so.1 (0x00007fae9228b000)
libXcomposite.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXcomposite.so.1 (0x00007fae92088000)
libasound.so.2 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libasound.so.2 (0x00007fae91d8a000)
libXdamage.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXdamage.so.1 (0x00007fae91b87000)
libXtst.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXtst.so.6 (0x00007fae91981000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fae91763000)
libcap.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcap.so.2 (0x00007fae9155d000)
libudev.so.0 => not found
libdbus-1.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdbus-1.so.3 (0x00007fae9130c000)
libnotify.so.4 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnotify.so.4 (0x00007fae91104000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007fae90d85000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007fae909f2000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007fae907db000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fae90421000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fae96166000)
libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0x00007fae9021d000)
libgio-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgio-2.0.so.0 (0x00007fae8fe7f000)
libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 (0x00007fae8fc6a000)
libfribidi.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfribidi.so.0 (0x00007fae8fa53000)
libXinerama.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXinerama.so.1 (0x00007fae8f850000)
libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXrandr.so.2 (0x00007fae8f645000)
libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXcursor.so.1 (0x00007fae8f43b000)
libpng16.so.16 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng16.so.16 (0x00007fae8f208000)
libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007fae8efea000)
libpixman-1.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpixman-1.so.0 (0x00007fae8ed44000)
libxcb-shm.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-shm.so.0 (0x00007fae8eb41000)
libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1 (0x00007fae8e919000)
libxcb-render.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-render.so.0 (0x00007fae8e70b000)
libthai.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthai.so.0 (0x00007fae8e501000)
libuuid.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0x00007fae8e2fa000)
libffi.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffi.so.6 (0x00007fae8e0f1000)
libpcre.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3 (0x00007fae8de7f000)
libplds4.so => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libplds4.so (0x00007fae8dc7b000)
libgthread-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgthread-2.0.so.0 (0x00007fae8da79000)
libdbus-glib-1.so.2 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdbus-glib-1.so.2 (0x00007fae8d851000)
libsystemd.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsystemd.so.0 (0x00007fae8d5c9000)
libselinux.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libselinux.so.1 (0x00007fae8d3a1000)
libresolv.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libresolv.so.2 (0x00007fae8d18a000)
libmount.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmount.so.1 (0x00007fae8cf31000)
libharfbuzz.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libharfbuzz.so.0 (0x00007fae8cc81000)
libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXau.so.6 (0x00007fae8ca7d000)
libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x00007fae8c877000)
libdatrie.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdatrie.so.1 (0x00007fae8c66f000)
liblzma.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5 (0x00007fae8c449000)
liblz4.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblz4.so.1 (0x00007fae8c22c000)
libgcrypt.so.20 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcrypt.so.20 (0x00007fae8bf10000)
libblkid.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libblkid.so.1 (0x00007fae8bcc1000)
libgraphite2.so.3 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgraphite2.so.3 (0x00007fae8ba94000)
libbsd.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbsd.so.0 (0x00007fae8b87d000)
libgpg-error.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgpg-error.so.0 (0x00007fae8b65d000)
As I am on my notebook with Debian 9 and on Debian / Ubuntus and other Linuxes udevd daemon and connected libraries are long time existing, it was obvious the problems to dependencies are because of missing library links (or library version inconsistencies).
To find out what kind of libudev.so* are present I used slocate package (locate) command.
noah:~# locate libudev.so
/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1
/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1.6.10
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1.6.10
Obviously the missing library libudev.so.0 was present under a different name so I give a try to just create a new symbolic link from libudev.so.1 to libudev.so.0 hoping that the libudev library version Blue Jeans was compiled against did not have a missing binary objects from the ones installed on my OS.
noah:~# ln -sf /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.0
noah:~# ldd /opt/bluejeans/bluejeans-bin |grep -i 'not found'
Above command did not return any missing libraries, so I went further and executed it.
6. Go start BlueJeans and register a user or use the anonymous login to be ready for the scheduled online meting
… And, Guess, what it works! 🙂
noah:~# /opt/bluejeans/bluejeans-bin
To make it easy to remember to later start the binary under a familiar name, I've also created a link into
noah:~# ln -sf /opt/bluejeans/bluejeans-bin /usr/bin/bluejeans
noah:~# sudo su – hipo
hipo@noah:~$ /usr/bin/bluejeans