OK So I have been reading the upgrade guide as Myron suggested I do. One thing that has me very nervous is the snippet about 32 bit no longer being supported. I have several Linux Mint 32 bit boxes and several Windows 7 embedded 32 bit boxes running in an industrial setting. SO, am I to assume I need to update ALL of my clients that run vision HMI applications to 64bit OS’s? Someone jump in and clarify this for me. I understand the need to “keep pace” with technology like deprecating windows XP. (been there in our enterprise). Out of all the stuff in the guide this would certainly be the silent show stopper for me…
You’re not misinterpreting it, 8.0 drops any support for 32-bit systems because we don’t have any 32-bit JREs to distribute.
edit: paging @jcoffman to see if there’s a way to BYO 32-bit JRE and run the launchers and client
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As a workaround, we’re gonna try to put together batch and shell scripts that can be used in conjunction with a copy of launchclient.jar to launch a client on 32-bit systems. There won’t be any way to use the launchers though.
Not sure there’s much more we’ll be able to do.
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@tailfire I am attaching a batch and bash script which should help with spinning up clients on 32-bit systems. Note that these are as-is and unsupported. You can edit and use these as you see fit. They take up to 3 arguments currently:
- The full gateway address (i.e. “http://gateway:8088”)
- The scope (‘d’ for designer, ‘c’ for vision client)
- The name of the project if launching a vision client
Note that the bash script requires curl to download the launch client and windows makes an attempt to download from the gateway (untested against a gateway which requires SSL and will likely require modification). You must also specify your JAVA_HOME environment variable in their current state.
legacyLaunch.zip (3.1 KB)
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Using this script is there a way to select fullscreen by default?
Trying to use on Raspberry PIs
I think just change
BOOTSTRAP_MAIN=com.inductiveautomation.ignition.client.launch.BootstrapSwing
to
BOOTSTRAP_MAIN=com.inductiveautomation.ignition.client.launch.BootstrapSwingFS
in order to use the full-screen version of the class.
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Hello,
I am also trying to launch a vision client using this script, however; I am getting Execption: Error unpacking java-cup-10k.jar when the client tries to start up. I have a 32 bit Windows 10 client PC that needs to launch a vision client from an Ignition 8 Gateway. The launchclient.jar file I am using is created in Ignition 7.9.10. The JRE version loaded on the client PC is 1.8.0_191-b12. I’ve been trying to get this to work for a while now…any suggestions would be much appreciated!
You need to use a launchclient.jar from an Ignition 8.0 install if you want to launch a client against it.
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Hi Kevin,
Thanks for your reply. I did try using the launchclient.jar from Ignition 8 but I got a different error regarding my JRE version doesn’t support class file version 55.0. I then looked into upgrading the JRE version on the client PC but from I’ve found online it looks like the jre version that supports class file 55.0 only comes in 64bit version so I stopped there. Do you have any suggestions on that? Thanks a lot.
Ignition 8 requires Java 11, you mentioned you have Java 8 installed.
Have just downloaded Java 11 JDK onto the client machine and pointed the windows environment variable to Java 11 java.exe but when I execute the shell script it says the java.exe can’t be executed because the OS doesn’t support it. I don’t quite understand how this would work if Ignition 8 launchclient.jar needs Java 11 to unpack it but Java 11 won’t run on a 32-bit machine? Am I misunderstanding something here? Sorry I am quite new at all these…
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It sounds like you downloaded a 64-bit JDK. Where did you get it from?
That small little snippet in the guide is actually a much bigger issue in the field.
“as-is and unsupported” is not real good terminology to be using either, when you IA imposed this on your customers. I am not saying its a deal breaker but it doesn’t please anyone. As long as everyone of your customers have a 64 bit solution ready to go everything is A Okay right…Well, I wont put my job at risk by upgrading to 8. At least I read the one line statement that could have caused me heartache. I have pc’s in the field that are still functional and are not “available to upgrade” for a while still. No upgrades in my future for a while… but I keep paying thousands each year to keep support…feels counter intuitive.
Not trying to really rant but this is a forum so maybe a little. Hats off to those of you that do try to help.
If you were not helpful you would lose customers. I will stop ranting now. Back to work…
FWIW, the improved versions of the shell scripts we’re shipping with 8.0.2 8.0.3 are upgraded to semi-supported 
There’s not a lot we can do. 32-bit x86 is a dead/dying tech. Oracle doesn’t even have 32-bit JDK 11 for download, and we don’t have a license for any 32-bit x86 builds to ship with Ignition 8 even if we wanted to.
The scripts will allow you to directly launch a Vision Client or Designer with a BYO 32-bit JDK, and that’s about as good as the situation will get.
(AdoptOpenJDK.net is the only place I know of to get a 32-bit x86 JDK 11)
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Sorry for the rant. I have been through several forced conversions/ in the enterprise. More than 1 person complained then. You are certainly correct about dying tech. Its impossible to be on the cutting edge and support everything at the same time. A big thank you for the forum support I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. We all have stressful days. I use ignition everyday and I am happy to see progress. Sometimes to progress you have to shed some of the old to usher in the new.
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I know you said this is semi-supported… So what are the steps we need to do to get an ignition 8 Vision client running on a 32bit machine.
Use the batch or shell scripts from the post @JordanCClark pointed to.
In Ignition 8.0.3 these scripts can be found in the lib/core/launch folder wherever Ignition is installed.
It should be noted that the 8.0.3 versions support fullscreen/windowed mode and attempt to grab an updated launchclient.jar from the gateway. You can also retrieve them via URL. for example: http://localhost:8088/system/nativelaunch?type=legacy&os=windows the applicable OS args are windows, osx, and linux
Cheers,
Jonathan C
If I’m not mistaken, the new RPi 4s use a 64 bit, quad-core processor. Specs are here. For those running 32-bit RPis, this would simplify things by going to the RPi 4. The only problem is they keep selling out of them, it maybe a little while before they are easily acquired.