Installing Family Search Indexing on Ubuntu 14.04 (64bit)

So was looking around on these forums in hope of finding something that would allow me to install indexing software on a linux machine (whether it be 32 or 64bit). Within minutes I was glad to find something that made my day! I just figured I'd put it out there a little more if it wasn't known. I wish I understood more fully the code that's used to make it work, but for now I'll quote the individual who figured it out and got it to work just fine for me without using Wine. Well, at least I think it doesn't use Wine. The way the GUI looks reminds me of things running in wine. But if anything, it works with a two simple lines of code once you have the file. Here's what I followed:

Save this as a script, make it executable, run it, and it should download, apply a patch, and install on 64 bit Ubuntu 14.04.

http://hostcode.sourceforge.net/view/2140.txt

qui10001

https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=143&t=19508#

Thanks to that individual I got it working. The URL above leads to the discussion where he shares this insight.

Once you click on the link, you will need to copy and paste the text or save the text as a .sh file. For example, I named mine "family.sh". I saved it in my Documents folder. The following commands got it up and running for me without a hitch on a 64bit Ubuntu 14.04 VM:

1) cd /home/<inser your pc name or username>/Documents
2) bash family.sh

Below is an alternate route the does the same (from what I understand):

1) cd /home/<inser your pc name or username>/Documents
2) chmod +x family.sh
3) ./family.sh

I hope this helps someone out there! This is just what I found that works and figured I'd share with everyone. Have a great day!

You can download a zip here so you won't need to create the file or change any permissions:

Just extract it and run the install script in the FamilySearch folder, never mind the other folder it's part of another project.

https://github.com/zvakanaka/easy-peasy

P.S. It doesn't use Wine. All the script does is link up the 32 bit libraries to the original script.

Am trying to install FSI on Debian/Testing (Jessie) 64bit.. Tried the listed script... Apparently, even though Ubuntu is based on Debian/testing, there is *something* different... Looks like some missing/misnamed libraries..I get the following when running the listed script... I've switched quite a few ward members over to Linux/32bit and many of them are indexers and have had zero issues.. Now I'm getting some to be migrated to Linux who, like me, hate Ubuntu/Unity and since they have machines with over 4GB of ram, I'm working on migrating them to the Debian 64bit/ KDE Spin.. I may reconsider if getting FSI going on Debian is going to be problematic...

Dave Frandin

qui10001 wrote:You can download a zip here so you won't need to create the file or change any permissions:

Just extract it and run the install script in the FamilySearch folder, never mind the other folder it's part of another project.

https://github.com/zvakanaka/easy-peasy

P.S. It doesn't use Wine. All the script does is link up the 32 bit libraries to the original script.

I appreciate the feedback. I'm glad to hear that it doesn't use Wine. I personally love it when I can get things to work without having to go through Wine. I'll try this and see how it goes! Thanks again. I'm hoping to get a few people to switch over to linux and their indexers as well. Figured I'd work with this in any way that I can.

Thanks again for this! I've been looking around at different distros and thought I would try some. I was happy to find out that this script still works on Linux Mint 17. I'm not sure why this doesn't work on Debian, I personally haven't tried it. My guess is you've had to direct the script to the right URL's for Debian based. At that point I wonder if you could do it by just simply manual installing each piece (I'd personally follow the script on this one).

qui10001 wrote:You can download a zip here so you won't need to create the file or change any permissions:

Just extract it and run the install script in the FamilySearch folder, never mind the other folder it's part of another project.

https://github.com/zvakanaka/easy-peasy

P.S. It doesn't use Wine. All the script does is link up the 32 bit libraries to the original script.

I tried using this ideia and it is working perfectly fine on Ubuntu 64-bits.
Thank you all for your contributions. I`m enjoying it a lot.

Kind regards from Brazil!
Moroni Ribeiro

I am using 64-bit Linux Mint 17 and I ran the script and it installed just fine.

This did not work for me on Ubuntu 15.04. Are there possibly some dependencies?

After hours of trying to install different Java's and extra libraries for 32bit and trying to get XServer to work, and still failing, I found this thread and the first method of getting the code from http://hostcode.sourceforge.net/view/2140.txt worked perfectly!

Thank you!

(my system was 64bit Ubuntu 14.04 with XFCE and Java 7 and Java 8 from oracle. apparently java6 is part of the answer)

Ubuntu Gnome 15.10 AMD 64 bit.
Reinstalled Indexing showing several GTK Warning during installation. The program work fine!

mariano@mariano-Aspire-5551:~/Scaricati$ java -version
java version "1.7.0_80"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_80-b15)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.80-b11, mixed mode)

You made my day! Thank you so much for the information. I used to index, but then my daughter broke my Windows and now I have only Ubuntu and I hadn't been indexing for a long time. There wasn't easy to follow information on indexing web site how to install in on ubuntu. For some reason I didn;t thing googling it until today! People, you rock! Thank you so much! I'm from Russia by they way, in case you'd be happy to know that Russian lds Index, use Ubuntu and you helped someone from Russia other side of the globe for you probably

On Ubuntu 14.04, unsure which desktop env I've got, but I'm having a few issues here. When I ran the shell script it said it couldn't display the GUI because it needed access to an X server so I ran the installer in the shell instead, appeared to be successful but when I search for the FamilySearch indexing program and click on it, nothing happens. I've tried running it from the search bar about three times and I can't find any likely suspects in the pid list, although it does say a GNOME process is running, so I'm guessing that's the flavour of my desktop env.

Anyone got any ideas?

jozefos wrote:On Ubuntu 14.04, unsure which desktop env I've got, ....

Type "echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP" (w/o quotes) and you get your desk env.
Then let us know.

Great thanks, it's Unity then. I'm none the wiser after a few Google searches on Ubuntu, Unity and X server so I'd really appreciate any help, as it will hopefully enhance my knowledge of Linux too

jozefos wrote:When I ran the shell script it said it couldn't display the GUI because it needed access to an X server so I ran the installer in the shell instead, ...

I don't understand, sorry but my English is really poor. Have you problem running the "installer script" or "program script"?

Sorry, I probably wasn't very clear - I do better with bullet points

[*] I saved the script which is on the familysearch site at the install stage, "Indexing_unix.sh".
[*] When I ran it I saw this message:

Could not display the GUI. This application needs access to an X Server.
*******************************************************************
You can also run this application in console mode without
access to an X server by passing the argument -c
*******************************************************************

[*] So from my Downloads directory I ran "./Indexing_unix.sh -c" and the install process appeared to work - the output in the shell was very similar to when you install something using apt-get and I now have a desktop icon with the following properties:

"Allow executing file as program" is ticked
Command is set to '/bin/sh "/home/joseph/.FamilySearchIndexing/indexing.familysearch.org/indexing"'

[*] However, when I double click that icon nothing happens. It doesn't appear to start any processes and no programs appear in my launcher bar. When I navigate to that directory in the shell and run ./indexing, again nothing useful happens - it pauses momentarily and then displays the prompt again, like so:

joseph@laptop-JG:~/.FamilySearchIndexing/indexing.familysearch.org$ ./indexing <------------------------------ No program launches at this point
joseph@laptop-JG:~/.FamilySearchIndexing/indexing.familysearch.org$

I wonder whether it is X server related because if the installer GUI needs X server and can't have it then perhaps the program itself needs X server and can't have it.

Are you familiar with shell script?
I looked at "indexing" shell script but find nothing significant.

I haven't really looked at it, I've only done a little bit of shell scripting, and I only needed a brief look at Indexing_unix.sh to realise I had no idea what was going on.

Could this have to do with the .jar files in the bin folder not having any execute permissions? But then I don't understand what's up with the X Servers. I might just give up for now and wait for the browser-based version, or take a deep breath and boot into Windows and install it there.

[*] Note it's not the permissions, I did 'chmod 777 *.jar' and it still didn't launch the program

jozefos wrote:[*] Note it's not the permissions, I did 'chmod 777 *.jar' and it still didn't launch the program

Of course. System will provide you an error message if a script try to execute a program with wrong permissions.
If I have well understood, all seem to work fine (I mean no error message) but you see nothing on the screen even when you launch the program. It's right?

Ok, hopefully this can help anyone else who runs into this issue.

I have a 64-bit machine but it seems that the 32-bit JRE is bundled with the app.

I ran to get the JRE needed. Solved the problem.

Thanks for your time Mariano, much appreciated!

I tried putting in your command jozefos, because I am having the same problem getting it to work in Ubuntu Mate. I'm completely new to Linux and am trying to make sure everything is able to work that I need working.

Is it because I'm using Mate or is it something different?

Again, I have the desktop icon and it looks like it does something, then doesn't when I ask it to run.

This is the message I get after putting in your command:
ubuntu-mate@ubuntu-mate:~$ sudo apt-get install libxtst6:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package libxtst6:i386

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Caleb

Got indexing running on 16.04!

All it took was
1. Having the correct version of Java (which for some reason was 6...seemed a bit odd considering the newest stable version is 8).
2. Downloading Indexing_unix.sh from https://familysearch.org/indexing/get-started-indexer
3. Going to the Downloads folder in the terminal and running 4. Going through the installer.

If you run before installing Java, it should tell you which version you need.

I have tried running through your instructions, but I am getting this error.

testing JVM in /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-oracle ...
No suitable Java Virtual Machine could be found on your system.
The version of the JVM must be at least 1.6 and at most 1.6.
Please define INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME to point to a suitable JVM.
You can also try to delete the JVM cache file /home/mike/.install4j

Any Idea why? I am not sure if I absolutely have to have oracle 6 or if a later version will work.

when I try to run the terminal by the program I received the following message:

No suitable Java Virtual Machine could be found on your system.
The version of the JVM must be at least 1.6 and at most 1.6.
Please define INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME to point to a suitable JVM.
You can also try to delete the JVM cache file /root/.install4j

I installed version 8 Update 91 of Java, however the program does not run.

bezerra wrote:I installed version 8 Update 91 of Java, however the program does not run.

Indexing works with JRE v 6u45. On Windows platforms the Indexing installer installs the JRE v 6.

Why it require only 1.6 version of JVM and not higher?

Has anybody been able to successfully install familysearch indexing on Ubuntu 16.04? I previously did it on 14.04 with this resource:

https://github.com/zvakanaka/easy-peasy

but it no longer works because openjdk-6-* is no longer available on Ubuntu 16.04.

Also http://hostcode.sourceforge.net/view/2140.txt just gives a 404 now.

Does anybody know why familysearch does not update this to work with newer versions of Java?

rviertel wrote:Does anybody know why familysearch does not update this to work with newer versions of Java?

I don't know for certain, but since the FamilySearch indexing development efforts are heavily focused on the new browser-based indexing application, it's understandable that the obsolescent Java-based indexing application would be rather neglected.

aebrown wrote:

rviertel wrote:Does anybody know why familysearch does not update this to work with newer versions of Java?

I don't know for certain, but since the FamilySearch indexing development efforts are heavily focused on the new browser-based indexing application, it's understandable that the obsolescent Java-based indexing application would be rather neglected.

Why not give the chance to the lds community to contribute?
If the pioneers have build a shared irrigation system we can do it even for technology, isn't.

marianomarini wrote:

aebrown wrote:

rviertel wrote:Does anybody know why familysearch does not update this to work with newer versions of Java?

I don't know for certain, but since the FamilySearch indexing development efforts are heavily focused on the new browser-based indexing application, it's understandable that the obsolescent Java-based indexing application would be rather neglected.

Why not give the chance to the lds community to contribute?
If the pioneers have build a shared irrigation system we can do it even for technology, isn't.

The Java-based system is going away. It would take significant effort to set up the project for community involvement, which would be just as much of an effort as fixing things. I doubt that the development managers at FamilySearch would welcome that distraction at this point.

marianomarini wrote:If the pioneers have build a shared irrigation system we can do it even for technology, isn't.

The pioneers lived in a simpler time. Also, a mistake in a irrigation system wasn't likely to mess up things around the world.

russellhltn wrote:The pioneers lived in a simpler time. Also, a mistake in a irrigation system wasn't likely to mess up things around the world.

It sure could mess up things in the entire world in which the pioneers lived, however. [grin]

True, but it goes back to the old saying "to really mess things up takes a computer".

I asked my question on askubuntu.com and here is the response that I got.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/832673/h ... untu-16-04

It worked perfectly for me

Hello. What about RPM distros? I'm running Fedora 24 x64 here, and I get this message:

[rei@dhcppc7 ~]$ rm .install4j
[rei@dhcppc7 ~]$ sh Indexing_unix.sh
testing JVM in /usr ...
testing JVM in /usr/lib/jvm/jre ...
testing JVM in /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.8.0 ...
testing JVM in /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.8.0-openjdk ...
testing JVM in /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.111-1.b16.fc24.x86_64 ...
testing JVM in /usr/lib/jvm/jre-openjdk ...
No suitable Java Virtual Machine could be found on your system.
The version of the JVM must be at least 1.6 and at most 1.6.
Please define INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME to point to a suitable JVM.
You can also try to delete the JVM cache file /home/rei/.install4j

ReimonPC wrote: testing JVM in /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.111-1.b16.fc24.x86_64 ...
The version of the JVM must be at least 1.6 and at most 1.6.

As you can see, it want version 1.6 ONLY of JVM and you have 1.8. bla, bla, bla.

marianomarini wrote:

ReimonPC wrote: testing JVM in /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.111-1.b16.fc24.x86_64 ...
The version of the JVM must be at least 1.6 and at most 1.6.

As you can see, it want version 1.6 ONLY of JVM and you have 1.8. bla, bla, bla.

Yes, I can see, and there is no 1.6 in repositories, so I'd like some guidance on what to do next. Of course, getting 1.6 is next. I need help on that. Maybe compile?

Yes, I can see, and there is no 1.6 in repositories, so I'd like some guidance on what to do next. Of course, getting 1.6 is next. I need help on that. Maybe compile?

See the rviertel suggestion!

I can confirm that the steps listed in the Installation Instructions section of that askubuntu page should be distro-agnostic. I had to do similar when getting it set up on my fresh PCLinuxOS install which only has Java 8 in the repos (which I did rather blindly, but knowing that newer versions of the java runtime are backwards-compatible, took a bit of finagling to get the install script updated though. knowing about the patch would have saved me quite a bit of time and effort).

Olá para todos. estou aqui para apresentar uma dificuldade. Trabalho a muito tempo no familysearch indexing e queria muito instalar na versão Linux. Uso o Linux Mint MATE x64. Como devo proceder.. agradeço a atenção de todos e espero respostas

msfsud27 wrote:Olá para todos. estou aqui para apresentar uma dificuldade. Trabalho a muito tempo no familysearch indexing e queria muito instalar na versão Linux. Uso o Linux Mint MATE x64. Como devo proceder.. agradeço a atenção de todos e espero respostas

I can try to install in my Mint x64 and then help you.

The Indexing program no longer works for me on Ubuntu 16.04 with OpenJDK 8. (the instructions in my previous post still work to install, but you will get Java errors while trying to run the program). Fortunately, I was able to get on the beta test for the new web app though by contacting familysearch support

This is my experience too. It start but raise image display error, so no images are load.
What I've done is modify indexing.sh file uncommenting the line: # INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME=
and add openJDK-1.8.0 path after the equal sign.
More tests to do, but now I've less time to do it. Sorry.