Archives: How-to: Installing Citrix ICA Client on Fedora Core 6

Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 12:32 PM

The Fedora project decided to drop OpenMotif from FC6 due to licensing issues. Fedora suggests recompiling applications to depend on lesstif instead. This is problematic for users that require the proprietary Citrix ICA Client, since Citrix doesn't distribute the source code. Symlinking libXm.so.3 to the libXm.so.2 provided by lesstif doesn't work either. It took some time, but I finally managed a work-around.

I rebuilt the openmotif RPM using the source RPM from FC5, installed it, symlinked libXm.so.3 to libXm.so.4.0.0, installed the ICA Client RPM package from Citrix, then symlinked npica.so in /usr/lib/mozilla.

Please note that I disable SElinux on my desktop machines, so I have no idea whether this will work with SElinux enabled. It worked like a charm for me, but as always, YMMV.

Here's what I did, step-by-step: (please note the use of root and ordinary user accounts)

1) From the Package Manager (pirut) install the Development Libraries and Development Tools groups. Also ensure your system is up-to-date.

[root@somebox ~]# yum update

2) Install rpmdevtools and set up an RPM build tree as an ordinary user.

[root@somebox ~]# yum install rpmdevtools
[user@somebox ~]$ rpmdev-setuptree

3) Install dependencies needed for installing the ICA client and compiling openmotif on FC6.

[root@somebox ~]# yum install libXp libXp-devel xorg-x11-xbitmaps

4) Download and install the FC5 openmotif source rpm, then build the binary rpm.

[user@somebox ~]$ wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/5/SRPMS/openmotif-2.3.0-0.1.9.3.src.rpm
[user@somebox ~]$ rpm -ivh openmotif-2.3.0-0.1.9.3.src.rpm
[user@somebox ~]$ cd rpmbuild/SPECS/
[user@somebox SPECS]$ rpmbuild -bb openmotif.spec

5) Install the openmotif binary rpm.

[root@somebox ~]# cd /home/user/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386
[root@somebox i386]# rpm -ivh openmotif-2.3.0-0.1.9.3.i386.rpm

6) Create the symlink needed to run the ICA Client.

[root@somebox i386]# ln -s /usr/lib/libXm.so.4.0.0 /usr/lib/libXm.so.3

7) Download and install the Citrix ICA Client.

[user@somebox SPECS]$ cd ~
[user@somebox ~]$ wget http://download2.citrix.com/files/en/products/client/ica/current/ICAClient-9.0-1.i386.rpm
[root@somebox i386]# cd cd /home/user
[root@somebox user]# rpm -ivh --nodeps ICAClient-9.0-1.i386.rpm

8) Create the symlink for the ICA Client mozilla plugin.

[root@somebox user]# ln -s /usr/lib/ICAClient/npica.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/npica.so

9) We're almost done. The last, and possibly most important step is to open /etc/yum.conf as root in your favorite editor and add the following line to the [main] section:

exclude=openmotif lesstif

This line keeps yum from overwriting openmotif with lesstif on future updates, preserving all your hard work.

10) Test your work, you should be able to run the ICA Client.

11) Optional cleanup:

[user@somebox ~]$ rpmdev-wipetree

12) Congrats! You're done. Time for a beer.