Install Biosemi Actiview on 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu)

Biosemi is a lazy EEG company…

Biosemi developed their Linux recording software (Actiview) based on Labview 8.5 (32-bit). Actiview, therefore, has to run in a LabVIEW run-time engine (8.5) environment. It seems that they didn’t update this after release.

A big problem is, who still use a 32-bit system?

My lab currently builds a series of experimental equipment based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (which is 64-bit Linux). I got a lot of problems when we decided to run Biosemi Actiview on Ubuntu.

Here is the solution for sharing.

1, Firstly, you need to install Alien. Open a command window, input:

sudo apt-get install alien fakeroot

Reference: INSTALL 32BIT SOFTWARE ON 64BIT UBUNTU. http://psgplacement.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/installing-i386-32-bit-rpm-files-in-amd.html

2, Run following on command to install the 32-bit compatibility libraries

sudo apt-get install lib32z1 lib32ncurses5 lib32bz2-1.0

3, Then we need to convert the rpm to tgz (tar.gz) format.
Straightforward conversion from rpm to deb format can cause issues if the package was meant for i386 and you are trying to install in amd64 bit. It will say architecture is incompatible like “<filename.rpm> is for architecture i386 ; the package cannot be built on this system”. This is because the package is built for i386 but we are trying to install in amd 64 bit. To overcome this, we need to first perform the conversion from rpm to tgz.

sudo alien --to-tgz labview85-rte-8.5-1.i386.rpm
sudo alien --to-tgz labview-rte-aal-1.1-1.i386.rpm

4, The above step gives us tgz file. This can be then converted to deb format by using alien command again.

sudo alien --to-deb labview85-rte-8.5.tgz
sudo alien --to-deb labview-rte-aal-1.1.tgz

5, Then the usual procedure to install deb can be used

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

6, Then add to the lib

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/LABVIEW-8.5

7, Then run the Actiview in the hosting folder

./Actiview707-Linux

Tips:

To run the program, probably you need to follow the following steps:

1, enter into sudo su mode

2, locate to the Actiview folder,

3, add the library,

4, run the program,