Using SageTV Placeshifter on an amd64 Debian/Ubuntu-based system

[tvierling]

In order to run SageTV, a 32-bit Java virtual machine is needed, along with proper 32-bit compatibility libraries for mplayer to work properly. Depending on your amd64-based system, this can be a bit difficult to get right.

The attached shell script will convert the 32-bit .deb package to its 64-bit equivalent, and should work on recent Debian/Ubuntu-based systems such as Debian squeeze, and Ubuntu lucid and maverick. (I have tested this only on Ubuntu lucid, and only with the Placeshifter package.)

Basically, you can run it as:

sh sage32to64.sh sagetv-client_6.6.1_i386.deb

and it should output a package such as "sagetv-client_6.6.1_amd64.deb".

To use this script, you need to have the distro-provided "dpkg-dev" and "fakeroot" packages installed. If you aren't sure if these are installed, do the following ahead of time:

sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev fakeroot

[stuckless]

Thanks for this. This came in handy a couple of days ago when I rebuilt my desktop to use Ubuntu 10.10 64bit. Thanks!

[bastafidli]

Did you reported this to Sage as bug? I believe the proper way is to provide .deb which just install on the 64b system.

[bastafidli]

I have submitted this to Sage.

[bastafidli]

Still not fixed in current beta. Any idea when this will be fixed?

[tcarlus]

Thanks for the great sage32to64 script. I had to update it for ubuntu 11.10 by removing a dependency
mv sage32to64.txt sage32to64.sh
vi sage32to64.sh (or your favorite editor)

then go down to the dependencies line and change (arrow down to the comma and type
20d
and a <space bar>
Q
w!
q!

Of course, <space bar> means tap the space bar.
so, you are changing
/^Depends: /s/ .*$/ ia32-libs, lib32asound2, ia32-sun-java6-bin/
to
/^Depends: /s/ .*$/ ia32-libs, lib32asound2/

then run the new script
sh sage32to64.sh sagetv-client_7.1.9_i386.deb
and you're good to go install with
sudo dpkg -i sagetv-client_7.1.9-1_amd64.deb