Posts Tagged ‘TeamViewer’

Install TeamViewer on latest Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS Linux quick how to

Tuesday, October 31st, 2017

teamviewer-howto-install-on-gnu-linux-teamviewer-and-tux-penguin-logo

If you're a sysadmin who uses GNU / Linux as a Desktop as me you will certainly need to have TeamViewer installed and ready for use on your Linux desktop.

Even though TeamViewer is a proprietary application and I prefer not to use it I'm forced to have it installed because of every now and then a friend or customer would require you to login remotely to his Windows server and clean up the system either from spyware or viruses or just deploy some new software.

Nowdays most of people are running 64 bit ( amd64 ) built operating system and the problem with TeamViewer on Linux 64bit is that it doesn't have an actual full featured 64 port of the application but only have a 32 bits install, besides that big part of components of TeamViewer are running using wine windows emulation and hencing making it work on Linux is sometimes not so trivial as we might have desired.

Because TeamViewer is a 32 bit application, it has a number of dependency libraries that are 32 bit in Linux that's the so called (i386) built libraries (packages).

Hence to make TeamViewer work on modern GNU / Linux operating systems such as Debian / Ubuntu / Mint Linux / Fedora / CentOS etc. it is necessery to have some i386 libraries and other 32 bit things pre-installed and only then you can have a working copy of teamviewer on your Linux.

1. Installing i386 applications required for TeamViewer operation

– On Debian / Ubuntu / Kubuntu / Xubuntu Linux run below commands:

First we need to add the i386 architecture to be supported by Linux

 

dpkg –add-architecture i386
apt update

 

Then on Debian and other deb based Linux we need to install following libraries
 

# apt install libjpeg62-turbo:i386 wget gdebi-core
 

 


2. Download latest teamviewer version from TeamViewer website

– On Debian, Ubuntu and other deb based Linux distros.

Download latest teamviewer version and install it:

 

# wget https://download.teamviewer.com/download/teamviewer_i386.deb

 

 

 

On CentOS, Fedora, OpenSuSE other RPM based distros:

Download the Teamviewer package and package signature using wget

 

# wget https://download.teamviewer.com/download/linux/signature/TeamViewer2017.asc
# wget https://download.teamviewer.com/download/teamviewer.i686.rpm


 

 

3. Insteall teamviewer with gdebi (Simple Tool to install deb files)

 

# gdebi teamviewer_i386.deb


Remote control and meeting solution.
 TeamViewer provides easy, fast and secure remote access and meeting solutions
 to Linux, Windows PCs, Apple PCs and various other platforms,
 including Android and iPhone.
 .
 TeamViewer is free for personal use.
 You can use TeamViewer completely free of charge to access your private
 computers or to help your friends with their computer problems.
 .
 To buy a license for commercial use, please visit http://www.teamviewer.com
 .
 This package contains Free Software components.
 For details, see /opt/teamviewer/doc/license_foss.txt
Do you want to install the software package? [y/N]:y

 

On Fedora, CentOS, SuSE RPM based ones:

 

# rpm –import TeamViewer_Linux_PubKey.asc

 

 

# rpm -i teamviewer_12.0.xxxxx.i686.rpm

 

or if you face some failed dependencies you better use zypper that will download any missing teamviewer dependencies.

 

# zypper install teamviewer_12.0.xxxxx.i686.rpm

 

 

 

4. Start Teamviewer

 

 

teamviewer-running-on-linux-screenshot

 

linux:~$ teamviewer
Init…
CheckCPU: SSE2 support: yes
XRandRWait: No value set. Using default.
XRandRWait: Started by user.
Checking setup…
wine: configuration in '/home/hipo/.local/share/teamviewer12' has been updated.
Launching TeamViewer …
Launching TeamViewer GUI …

 

Adding Teamviewer to auto start on Linux GNOME login

Friday, February 1st, 2013

Administrating Linux via graphical interface is not common, however sometimes it is necessery. There are plenty of ways to remotely administrate with GUI Linux. You can connect to remote Xserver and launch X session via xinit, connect via (Gnome Display Manager) GDM, use nomachine NX server / client (if you're on slow connection line) or use the good old Teamviewer.

As Teamviewer works pretty well on both Windows and Linux in last times I like using teamviewer as a standard. It is freeware and it often disconnects with the annoying Trial message, but in general for managing something quick on remote desktop it is nice.

To use teamviewer, you need to have it installed on the Linux host via deb or rpm:

Whether on Debian / Ubuntu use:

 

# wget http://www.teamviewer.com/download/version_8x/teamviewer_linux_x64.deb
.....
# dpkg -i teamviewer_linux_x64.deb
...
....

 

On Fedora, CentOS, RHEL run:

# wget -q http://www.teamviewer.com/download/teamviewer_linux.rpm
# rpm -Uvh teamviewer_linux.rpm
.....

Once package is installed teamviewer is installed in /opt/teamviewer/* there is a tiny wrapper run script in /usr/bin/teamviewer – evoking TeamViewer to be run via wine emulation.

Hence to make TeamViewer start on certain user GNOME login the script has to run on GNOME user login session.
In both GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 what is run on user login is managed through gnome-session-properties thus /usr/bin/teamviewer has to be set to run through gnome-session-properties (to run it press ALT+F2 or type it directly in gnome-terminal)

user@linux:~$ gnome-session-properties

A window like in below screenshot pops up and from there Add TeamViewer.

Adding Teamviewer to auto start on Linux Debian Fedora CentOS GNOME non privileged user

To be able to later connect via a Remote host with another TeamViewer peer launch TeamViewer and configure permanent password through menus:

Extras -> Options -> Security

teamviewer extras options security configuring teamviewier permanent password for ID

All left is to write down your Teamviewer Remote Connect ID and permanent set password

Teamviewer remote connect ID screnshot Linux

After next succesful GNOME login teamviewer will just pop-up. Enjoy

New version of Teamviewer 8 beta for GNU / Linux is out

Monday, January 28th, 2013

I had to login to a Windows host, after a friend handed in his Teamviewer ID and pass. I tried connecting few times and connection failed every time. It was not very likely it is a network problem as I have pretty good internet bandwidth here. I ask him what is his teamviewer, release and it turned out he is using TeamViewer 8. Just few months ago I've updated my teamviewer from TV 6 to TV 7 after finally Teamviewer 7 was launched for Linux. I check immediately TeamViewer website, but this time (TeamViewer GmbH – the vendor company of TV) has launched TV 8 for Linux in parallel with launching TV 8  for Windows.

Of course like often in Linux it is not all perfect TeamViewer 8 version is still in beta testing stage. I've downloaded and updated my (64 bit) teamviewer 7 to teamviewer 8 using the Deb binary, i.e.:

# wget http://www.teamviewer.com/download/version_8x/teamviewer_linux_x64.deb
.....
# dpkg -i teamviewer_linux_x64.deb
...
....

Just like previous TeamViewer, releases, the program launches via wine, so teamviewer_linux_x64.deb depends on working wine Windows emulator.
There are minor difference in graphic interface but no so significant changes from previous release.

TeamViewer beta 8 ver on Debian GNU linux screenshot

I used it to connect to remote Windows 8 host and experienced random issues with typing some characters from keyboard remotely, though I'm not sure if this was due to some bug of the TV 8 beta release or it is due to fact the Win host was infested with viruses.
Just for some convenience if I further need it, I've also made mirror of 32 bit TeamViewer 8 beta here and 64 bit TeamViewer 8 beta mirror here.

 

Finally TeamViewer 7 release for GNU / Linux is available

Thursday, March 29th, 2012

 

TeamViewer 7 Debian GNU / Linux released, my desktop screenshot

After a long time of inavailability, finally TeamViewer 7 for GNU / Linux is out!

Here is the short TeamViewer 7 Linux release note :

In our TeamViewer download area you will now find TeamViewer 7 for Linux.
The final version includes a selection of new features for Linux, e. g. an integrated screenshot feature and the possibility of saving individual connection settings per computer.
You can now establish cross platform connections with other computers running version 7 and hold online meetings and presentations with up to 25 participants.

We wish you best continued success with TeamViewer!

Well, guys it was about time, even later than that… Until now I've so many times experienced troubles with Windows machines which I had to administrate remotely and they only had a TeamViewer 7 installed (a real, real pain in the ass).

The issue comes cause TeamViewer 6 is incompatible with 7 and just until very recently only TV 6 for Linux was available, so trying to access a 7 install directly from Linux was impossible.
Hence to access TeamViewer 7 Windows install, I had to use either a fresh Windows copy with TeamViewer 7 installed or a Virtual Machine like (Qemu, VirtualBox) with Windows version installed in it.
Often back then, when I had to fix remotely a Windows machine behind a firewall, I had to instruct the machine owners to replace the TeamViewer 7 with TeamViewer 6 in order to be able to easily access the remote host from my Debian Linux.

I still remember, it was quite a stuggle to find a link to a Windows .exe install file for TeamViewer 6.

Now thanksfully, TeamViewer guys are starting to make it easier for the user who would for some reason want to stick to older TV version.
I've noticed on TeamViewer's website there is already a new TeamViewer download page offering for download all the old teamviewer version – 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x

One example, where old teamviewer release is useful is if you want to run teamviewer on older hardware or old OS (MS Windows 98 or old Linux distro).

I've made a mirror of teamviewer 6 for Debian / Ubuntu amd 32 and 64 bit versions along with all the OS available TeamViewer version 6 and 7, for the sake of preserving it if one day link to old versions of Teamviewer disappear from their website.

Here are the TeamViewer mirrored files:

Below you see a screenshot of teamviewer 7 running on my Debian Squeeze 🙂

TeamViewer 7 Debian GNU / Linux released, my desktop screenshot

It is great teamviewer produced a Linux working application, however if you run it you realize just like the previous releases TeamViewer is not natively supposed (compiled) to run on GNU / Linux OS but uses wine (windows emulator) to launch through…
Instead of porting the application to be natively for the Linux distros once again with this new release, teamviewer developers just "hacked" it to run on top of windows emulation. Though this is working its performance, is probably a bit degraded and it depends on having install on the Linux host a bunch of useless packages which wine depends on.
Besides that even if it "works" on Linux , TeamViewer has still non-free software essense. I still use it because unfortunately, I don't know of a better remote access program capable to connect to servers behind NAT / machines located behind a tight firewalled routers.
If only (I knew of?) a TeamViewer free software / open source equivalent
I will be glad to hear if someone know a (free software / open source) TeamViewer like program able to access remote hosts with no a real (public inet) IP address?P.S.: By similar TV program I don't mean VNC, UltraVNC and this kind of other VNC derivative programs but mean close TeamViewer alternative.

How to set applications (programs) Autorun on XFCE in Xubuntu Linux

Monday, January 16th, 2012

I needed to set TeamViewer to autorun, each and every startup on one Xubuntu Linux

Xubuntu is running by default with Xfce 4 . Xfce is a sort of a very liteweight GNOME like graphical environment.

In Gnome the way that is through invoking the gnome-session-manager .

In Xfce the command is almost analogous doing changes is done by running:

user@xubuntu:~$ xfce4-session-manager

XFce session manager Xubuntu Linux screenshot
Further on simply use the Add button to add applications to load each time user (opens xfce session) / logs in.
Cheers 😉