Installing TweetDeck with Adobe AIR on Fedora 15

Unfortunately, there is a problem installing TweakDeck on Fedora 15, and even more unfortunately, it does not look like it will be fixed.

Using the 'TechnoZeal' instructions, I had no difficulty installing Adobe AIR on Fedora 15 (64-bit), although AIR seems to be a 32-bit application and so you will need to install many 32-bit library files.

[nwsmith@fed15-x64 ~]$ rpm -qa | grep -i adobe
adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch
adobeair-2.6.0-19170.i386

I downloaded the latest TweakDeck '.air' file:

[nwsmith@fed15-x64 Downloads]$ ll
-rw-rw-r--. 1 nwsmith nwsmith 2373967 Jun 30 20:46 TweetDeck_0_37.6.air
[nwsmith@fed15-x64 Downloads]$ md5sum -b TweetDeck_0_37.6.air 
d8dc9c0fbff37c31c8af6a788854cb25 *TweetDeck_0_37.6.air

..but when you try to install it, it aborts with error message:

Sorry, an error has occured.
The application could not be installed because the installer file is
damaged. Try obtaining a new installer file from the application author.

Eventually I discovered that the 'Adobe AIR Application Installer' was recording a log file:

[nwsmith@fed15-x64 ~]$ cd /home/nwsmith/.appdata/Adobe/AIR/Logs/
[nwsmith@fed15-x64 Logs]$ ll
-rw-rw-r--. 1 nwsmith nwsmith 83863 Jun 30 21:41 Install.log
[nwsmith@fed15-x64 Logs]$ cat Install.log 
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4156][INFO] Application Installer begin with version 2.6.0.19170 on Linux x86
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4156][INFO] Commandline is: 
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4156][INFO] Installed runtime (2.6.0.19170) located at /opt/Adobe AIR
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4156][INFO] Cancel request received
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4156][INFO] Application Installer end with exit code 6
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Application Installer begin with version 2.6.0.19170 on Linux x86
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Commandline is: 
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Installed runtime (2.6.0.19170) located at /opt/Adobe AIR
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Unpackaging file:///home/nwsmith/Downloads/TweetDeck_0_37.6.air to /tmp/FlashTmp.NhdYfW
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Application signature verified
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Unpackaging/validation complete
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] No app located for appID 'TweetDeckFast' and pubID 'FFF259DC0CE2657847BBB4AFF0E62062EFC56543.1'
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Converting unpackaged application to a native installation package in /tmp/FlashTmp.wkEIg0
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][ERR] Native installation package creation failed: [ErrorEvent type="error" bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2 text="Unhandled exception Error: Error creating the package /opt/Adobe AIR/Versions/1.0/Resources/rpmbuilder error : symbol not found: parseSpec, /usr/lib/librpmbuild.so: undefined symbol: parseSpec error :
<-- SNIP-->
File not found: /tmp/FlashTmp.wkEIg0/build/usr/share/app-install/desktop/tweetdeckfast.fff259dc0ce2657847bbb4aff0e62062efc56543.1.desktop" errorID=1]
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][ERR] Application Installer end with exit code 7

So Googling on "symbol not found: parseSpec" we find these links:

• Problem with air application installer on Fedora 15 linux


• Bug 692381 - missing parseSpec in librpmbuild.so

...where Panu Matilainen summaries:

"Yes, the entire librpmbuild API has changed in rpm 4.9.x and parseSpec() no
longer exists, it's been replaced by a new saner interface known as
rpmSpecParse(). Air (whatever it is, apparently some Adobe proprietary app)
appears to be cheating against soname changes by using the non-versioned -devel
.so symlink and now gets burned because of it. It'd be much better off
launching rpmbuild than using the librpmbuild API.

And yes, Fedora 15 is using rpm 4.9.x:

[nwsmith@fed15-x64 ~]$ rpm -qa | grep ^rpm | sort
rpm-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64
rpm-build-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64
rpm-build-libs-4.9.0-9.fc15.i686
rpm-build-libs-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64
rpm-devel-4.9.0-9.fc15.i686
rpm-devel-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64
rpm-libs-4.9.0-9.fc15.i686
rpm-libs-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64
rpm-python-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64

So it looks like Adobe need to fix it. Unfortunately, we read here that:

"Note: Beginning June 14 2011, Adobe AIR is no longer supported for desktop Linux distributions."

So I've given up on this. A pity as it would have been really nice to run TweetDeck on Fedora Linux. Anyway now I guess I can remove all those 32-bit libraries I just install, and revert to a 'clean' 64-bit environment.

---

Status Update: 2011-07-15
Please read Sérgio Basto's comments to this post. Sérgio seems to have found a way around the problem, using Mock. I've not yet tried this for myself, but I will give it a try when I have a few minutes to spare. If anyone else tried this method, please post a comment with your result.

---

Status Update: 2011-07-22
Chris Beckenbach is reporting success with Sergio's method.

DTrace for Linux: Progress, but still a work in progress

A couple of months back, I blog posted on Paul Fox's port of DTrace to Linux. I've continued to play around with it since then, and so I think its about time for another blog post about it.

Certainly now there is no problem compiling DTrace for Linux on Fedora 14 with the 2.6.35 kernel, provided you install the necessary dependencies that I listed in the previous post. Since my initial report, I've exchanged many emails with Paul, and he had been able to incorporate in the code the necessary fixes to support compiling on Fedora.

Paul has spent a lot of time recently on the cross-call (aka xcall) problem, and you can read the details on Paul's blog. Certainly this is a challenging area, and although there are still some issues, it looks to me like Paul is determined to fully resolve the issues.

Ok, so let's give DTrace for Linux a bit of a work out and discover a little bit more about it.

After compiling, with 'make all' and installing with 'make install', you load
the DTrace module, with 'make load'.

# uname -a
Linux fed14-64 2.6.35.13-91.fc14.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue May 3 13:23:06 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
# make load
tools/load.pl
21:41:23 Syncing...
21:41:24 Loading: build/driver/dtracedrv.ko
21:41:25 Preparing symbols...
21:41:25 Probes available: 319433
21:41:30 Time: 7s

So you can see there are a lot of probes available. Let's look at a break down:

# dtrace -l | awk '{ print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
      1 PROVIDER
      3 dtrace
      4 io
     17 profile
   1270 syscall
  63808 fbt
 254330 instr

You can see that most of the probes come from the 'instr' provider, which I believe is unique to the Linux port of DTrace. And note that the number of providers available is less than what is available on Solaris and FreeBSD.

Let's list the probes, where there are only a small number of probes for the providers:

[root@fed14-64 ~]# dtrace -l -n dtrace:::
   ID   PROVIDER            MODULE                          FUNCTION NAME
    1     dtrace                                                     BEGIN
    2     dtrace                                                     END
    3     dtrace                                                     ERROR
[root@fed14-64 ~]# dtrace -l -n io:::
   ID   PROVIDER            MODULE                          FUNCTION NAME
    4         io      do_sync_read                                   start
    5         io      do_sync_read                                   done
    6         io     do_sync_write                                   start
    7         io     do_sync_write                                   done
[root@fed14-64 ~]# dtrace -l -n profile:::
   ID   PROVIDER            MODULE                          FUNCTION NAME
254912    profile                                                     profile-97
254913    profile                                                     profile-199
254914    profile                                                     profile-499
254915    profile                                                     profile-997
254916    profile                                                     profile-1999
254917    profile                                                     profile-4001
254918    profile                                                     profile-4999
254919    profile                                                     tick-1
254920    profile                                                     tick-10
254921    profile                                                     tick-100
254922    profile                                                     tick-500
254923    profile                                                     tick-1000
254924    profile                                                     tick-5000
319429    profile                                                     tick-1ms
319430    profile                                                     tick-1s
319431    profile                                                     tick-5s
319432    profile                                                     tick-10s

Now let's give a breakdown of the number of probes available for each modules for the FBT (Function Boundary Tracing) provider. This will give you an idea of what kernel modules I have loaded on my test system.

[root@fed14-64 dtrace-20110404]# dtrace -l -P fbt | awk '{print $3}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
      1 MODULE
     12 freq_table
     13 output
     14 speedstep_lib
     15 iTCO_vendor_support
     15 p4_clockmod
     23 i2c_i801
     29 ppdev
     30 i2c_algo_bit
     31 iTCO_wdt
     33 snd_page_alloc
     37 snd_seq_device
     37 soundcore
     41 dcdbas
     41 snd_hwdep
     61 sata_sil24
     63 microcode
     79 snd_hda_intel
     83 parport_pc
     99 snd_timer
    100 drm_kms_helper
    109 video
    138 scsi_transport_spi
    141 i2c_core
    155 parport
    199 snd_hda_codec_idt
    337 ttm
    357 snd
    357 tg3
    359 snd_seq
    420 fuse
    424 aic7xxx
    490 snd_hda_codec
    495 snd_pcm
    744 e1000e
    867 drm
   1671 ipv6
   1875 nouveau
  52615 kernel

As you can see from the above, I have two different network interface cards in my system. One is a Broadcom, supported by the 'tg3' module, and the other is an Intel card, supported by the 'e1000e' module.

Lets list the probes available for one of the FBT modules:

# dtrace -l -n fbt:p4_clockmod::entry
   ID   PROVIDER            MODULE                          FUNCTION NAME
310254        fbt       p4_clockmod                    cpufreq_p4_get entry
310256        fbt       p4_clockmod                  cpufreq_p4_setdc entry
310258        fbt       p4_clockmod                 cpufreq_p4_target entry
310260        fbt       p4_clockmod                 cpufreq_p4_verify entry
310262        fbt       p4_clockmod               cpufreq_p4_cpu_init entry
310264        fbt       p4_clockmod                   cpufreq_p4_exit entry
310266        fbt       p4_clockmod               cpufreq_p4_cpu_exit entry
310268        fbt       p4_clockmod                    cleanup_module entry
# dtrace -l -n fbt:p4_clockmod::return
   ID   PROVIDER            MODULE                          FUNCTION NAME
310255        fbt       p4_clockmod                    cpufreq_p4_get return
310257        fbt       p4_clockmod                  cpufreq_p4_setdc return
310259        fbt       p4_clockmod                 cpufreq_p4_target return
310261        fbt       p4_clockmod                 cpufreq_p4_verify return
310263        fbt       p4_clockmod               cpufreq_p4_cpu_init return
310265        fbt       p4_clockmod                   cpufreq_p4_exit return
310267        fbt       p4_clockmod               cpufreq_p4_cpu_exit return

Ok, enough of listing probes! Let show some simple DTrace one-liners in action on Linux:

# dtrace -n 'syscall:::entry { @num[execname] = count(); }'
dtrace: description 'syscall:::entry ' matched 635 probes
^C
  audispd                                                           1
  udisks-daemon                                                     6
  rtkit-daemon                                                      8
  gnome-settings-                                                   9
  abrtd                                                            10
  console-kit-dae                                                  10
  hald-addon-acpi                                                  12
  sendmail                                                         14
  gnome-screensav                                                  15
  sshd                                                             17
  crond                                                            18
  dbus-daemon                                                      18
  gnome-panel                                                      33
  gnome-power-man                                                  38
  clock-applet                                                     49
  gvfs-afc-volume                                                  60
  metacity                                                         68
  irqbalance                                                      120
  nautilus                                                        157
  gedit                                                           362
  dtrace                                                         1553
  Xorg                                                          10039
  firefox                                                       12083
#
# dtrace -n 'syscall:::entry { @num[probefunc] = count(); }'
dtrace: description 'syscall:::entry ' matched 635 probes
^C
  rt_sigreturn                                                      1
  brk                                                               2
  getdents                                                          2
  select                                                            6
  stat                                                              8
  nanosleep                                                        11
  rt_sigaction                                                     16
  munmap                                                           18
  close                                                            21
  fstat                                                            21
  mmap                                                             21
  inotify_add_watch                                                26
  open                                                             32
  rt_sigprocmask                                                   32
  ioctl                                                            49
  write                                                           195
  poll                                                            525
  read                                                            736
  futex                                                          1283
#
# dtrace -n 'fbt:e1000e::entry { @num[probefunc] = count(); }'
dtrace: description 'fbt:e1000e::entry ' matched 373 probes
^C
  e1000_clean                                                      17
  e1000_clean_rx_irq                                               17
  e1000_clean_tx_irq                                               17
  e1000_desc_unused.clone.26                                       17
  e1000_intr_msi                                                   17
  e1000_irq_enable                                                 17
  e1000_watchdog                                                   17
  e1000_watchdog_task                                              17
  e1000e_get_laa_state_82571                                       17
  e1000e_has_link                                                  17
  e1000e_update_adaptive                                           17
  e1000e_update_stats                                              17
  napi_schedule_prep                                               17
  test_and_set_bit                                                 17
  e1000_ioctl                                                      34
  e1000_get_stats                                                 411

Here is the 'instr' provider in action:

# dtrace -n 'instr:e1000e:: { @num[probefunc] = count(); }'
dtrace: description 'instr:e1000e:: ' matched 3472 probes
^C

  e1000_get_drvinfo-je                                              1
  e1000_get_drvinfo-jne                                             1
  e1000e_get_sset_count-ja                                          3
  e1000_get_drvinfo-callr                                           5
  e1000_clean_rx_irq-callr                                         27
  e1000_clean_rx_irq-je                                            27
  e1000_desc_unused.clone.26-jbe                                   27
  e1000_irq_enable-je                                              27
  e1000_watchdog-callr                                             27
  e1000e_get_laa_state_82571-jne                                   27
  e1000e_update_adaptive-jbe                                       27
  e1000e_update_adaptive-je                                        27
  e1000e_update_adaptive-jne                                       27
  e1000e_update_stats-jbe                                          27
  napi_schedule_prep-callr                                         27
  napi_schedule_prep-jne                                           27
  test_and_set_bit-lock                                            27
  e1000_clean-jne                                                  54
  e1000_intr_msi-callr                                             54
  e1000_intr_msi-je                                                54
  e1000e_has_link-je                                               54
  e1000e_update_stats-ja                                           54
  e1000_clean-callr                                                81
  e1000_clean-je                                                   81
  e1000_watchdog_task-jne                                          81
  e1000_clean_tx_irq-je                                           108
  e1000_watchdog_task-je                                          108
  e1000_watchdog_task-callr                                       189

One of the aspects that Paul has been developing recently is a suite of test programs that can be used to stress test the system, and expose any problems with the DTrace for Linux port. To try this out, run 'make test'.

Ok, I'm out of time for tonight. Hopefully I can find time for some more post to this blog soon.