Running swing client on RPM-based Linux distributions (RHEL, CentOS)

This guide might help users of Red Hat-based distributions (Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS,...) to get the swing client running.

When you download the swing client and try to run it by ./adempiere-client you will see the following message on stdout:

Jun 13, 2012 8:04:00 AM org.restlet.ext.net.HttpClientHelper start
INFO: Starting the HTTP client
Started service locator: org.adempiere.base.equinox.EquinoxServiceLocator@52234265
Loading...

Unfortunately, no window will pop up. There will be a log file under config/12345.log which will tell you that Java is missing some fonts (java.lang.Error: Probable fatal error:No fonts found.) Indeed, you will have to install the msttcorefonts-package. Since msttcorefonts is not in the standard software repositories we will have to build the package by yourself.

Prerequisites

First of all, make sure you have downloaded and unpacked the swing client. Will we need to have X installed on the machine where you want to run the client. If your using the client on a headless server and you connect to the server via SSH make sure to have X11 forwarding enabled on the SSH server. Since the package we have to built has lots of dependence, it is a good idea to include the ATrpms repository into your repository list first. Create a file /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo with following content:

[atrpms]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/el$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1

Import the ATrpms' signing key:

rpm --import http://packages.atrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
Now install chkfontpathand rpm-built:
yum install chkfontpath rpm-build

We will also need carbextract:

wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/cabextract/cabextract-1.4-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
rpm -ivh carbextract-1.4-1.el6.rf.x_86_64.rpm

Note that the download link is for 64-bit RHEL and CentOS. You may need another package, depending on you platform and your OS.

We'are now ready to built and install the msttcorefonts package!

Build Package

Download the source-RPM:

cd ~
wget http://www.elders.princeton.edu/data/puias/unsupported/5/SRPMS/msttcorefonts-2.0-1.src.rpm

Unpack the source-RPM:

rpm -ivh ~/msttcorefonts-2.0-1.src.rpm

Built the package:

cd ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/
rpmbuild -bb msttcorefonts-2.0-1.spec

Install RPM:

cd ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/noarch/
rpm -ivh msttcorefonts-2.0-1.noarch.rpm

Congratulations, you have installed msttcorefonts! Start the swing client and the window will pop up.

We have a German version of this tutorial hosted under our company blog