Anyone succuessfully run Vision 8.1 on a chrome book, chrome os?

Ignition
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Need a short term solution to run a Vision 8.1 client until we can get a full computer. Anyone have success running a Vision 8.1 client on a chrome book?

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You can't run Vision without a Java runtime. I don't think there's any available for ChromeOS, though maybe you could get something working by getting to the underlying Linux OS?

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Greetings. I've got 8.1 running on ChromeOS Flex running on a Dell laptop. The main trick is that you need to enable the Linux Developer Environment, then load JRE from the "penguin" command line. You'll then download the Linux version of the client launcher from your gateway and unpack it to the "Linux Files" directory, where it will then be available in your Linux user home directory. The rest of the necessary steps are nearly the same for a standard Linux install, and are covered in this forum thread:

Once I've done this a few times, I plan to document all of these steps in one place and post them here and in that thread.

Hope this is helpful.

Cheers!

Paul

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OK - Here are my fully fleshed out and tested instructions:

Installing Vision Client on ChromeOS and Chrome OS Flex

Prerequisites

  1. The machine should be running either ChromeOS or ChromeOS Flex
  2. Enable the Linux Developer Environment:
  • The following instructions are taken from this Google article, which also has tips for troubleshooting and installing other linux apps.
    • On ChromeOS/Flex, at the bottom right, select the time.
    • Select Settings and then About ChromeOS and then Developers.
    • Next to "Linux development environment," select Set up.
    • Follow the on-screen instructions. Setup can take 10 minutes or more
    • A terminal window opens to a Debian environment. You can run Linux commands, install more tools using the APT package manager, and customize your shell.
  • Some notes about the Linux Developer Environment.
    • Enabling this in ChromeOS creates a “virtual machine” that runs a limited version of LinuxOS Debian (called crostini) alongside ChromeOS. It is capable of running most of what is available in a typical Debian Linux installation, but not everything.
    • The virtual machine is named “Penguin” by default. So, when you run a terminal session, you will be username@penguin.
    • You can start a linux terminal session from the applications menu in Chrome OS (available via the little circle at the bottom left of the screen). The icon looks like… a penguin… sort of.
  1. Install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for Debian
  • From the wiki at debian dot org:
    • From the terminal run:
    sudo apt update
    Then run:
    sudo apt-get install default-jre

Install Vision Client Launcher

  1. Navigate to your Vision gateway and download the installer for Linux. The installer is compressed in a .tar package named visionclientlauncher.tar.gz

  2. Download the installer to the “Linux Files” directory in ChromeOS or move it there after you download it (use the ChromeOS “FIles” app to find it at My Files/Linux Files, or use the mv command from the Linux terminal to move it to your home directory).

    • Note: the “Linux Files” directory is a graphical view into your Linux user account’s home directory (for instance, in my case this is /home/paulc/). Thus, whatever you place in your Linux user home directory will appear in this folder, and vice versa.

The next few steps are based on the threads from this post at the Inductive Automation Users Forum:

  1. Unpack the visionclientlauncher.tar package:

    • From the Linux terminal, cd to your home directory and run:
    tar -xvf visionclientlauncher.tar.gz

  2. Move the unpacked visonclientlauncher/ folder to the appropriate location, depending on if you’re installing for all users or just one:

    • If you want to install it for all users, then:

      1. Move the visionclientlauncher folder somewhere in /usr/local/ or /usr/share/ or /opt/,
      2. Then copy just the visionclientlauncher.desktop file into /usr/share/applications/.

    • If you want to install it for just one particular user:

      1. Move the visionclientlauncher/ folder into the user’s home directory
      2. Then copy just the visionclientlauncher.desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications.

  3. Change the permissions visionclientlauncher folder:

    sudo chmod -R 775 visionclientlauncher

  4. Within visionclientlauncher/app, change the visionclientlauncher.sh and the launcher-vision-client-linux.jar file to be executable -

    sudo chmod +x visionclientlauncher.sh
sudo chmod +x launcher-vision-client-linux.jar

  5. Using Nano, vi, or your preferred text editor, edit the copied version of the visionclientlauncher.desktop file that you copied in step 3 above to change the paths accordingly (see below). Note that because these directories are protected, you'll need to invoke your text editor as sudo.

  6. You should now be able to load the Vision Client Launcher from the Applications pane (access from the circle icon at the bottom left of the screen)

  7. Add the icon shortcut to the taskbar.

Example edits for the visionclientlauncher.desktop file

The visionclientlauncher.desktop file is very important, as it provides the OS with the information needed to open the Vision Client Launcher when a user clicks on the icon in the applications folder in the Chrome OS GUI. Thus, if you don’t get this right, the application simply won’t load. The reference to the icon tells the GUI what icon to use in the applications folder and other locations. If you get this wrong then the GUI will simply choose the default “linux app” penguin icon.

I was using a shared machine, and needed the Vision program to be available just to me. So I moved the visionclientlauncher/ folder to the root level of my home directory at /home/paulc/. Then I edited the visionclientlauncher.desktop file to look like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.1
Type=Application
Terminal=False
Icon=/home/paulc/visionclientlauncher/app/launcher.png
Name=Vision Client Launcher
Exec=/home/paulc/visionclientlauncher/app/visionclientlauncher.sh -Dapp.h
Path=/home/paulc/visionclientlauncher/app/

If you’re installing for all users, and you’ve saved to /usr/local/ then your visionclientlauncher.desktop file should look like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.1
Type=Application
Terminal=False
Icon=/usr/local/visionclientlauncher/app/launcher.png
Name=Vision Client Launcher
Exec=/usr/local/visionclientlauncher/app/visionclientlauncher.sh -Dapp.h
Path=/usr/local/visionclientlauncher/app/

You get the idea. The paths for Icon, Exec and Path just need to match whatever location you’ve chosen.

Good luck!

6 Likes
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@Paul_Clearfire thanks for the excellent post!

I took the liberty of going through and doing some quick formatting operations to make things a little nicer to read, and made your other post a backlink to this post, so if you have to make any changes in the future you only have to do it once :smile:

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Thank you so much, Paul. Your edits look terrific. Much clearer. I hope others find this useful.

Cheers!

P

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You probably should revise your .desktop files to use Version=1.1. Some entries, like Path=, are ignored in 1.0 in most distros.

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Thanks for the tip!