： debain lenny how to install emerald? (no network!)

Lately, I’ve been trying to add some eye-candy to my Debian Lenny installation by using Compiz-Fusion and Emerald. On my old Ubuntu setup, this was not a problem, as the Ubuntu repositories contain both Compiz and Emerald packages. Unfortunately, Debian repositories have only Compiz. If one wants to use Emerald, it needs to be installed from source.

So, I decided to try to install Emerald from source. It was reasonably smooth, but there were some small hitches. This tutorial will hopefully be of assistance to those who want Emerald on their Debian system.

Step 1: Install Compiz

This command will install all the necessary Compiz packages, along with development files for compiling Emerald:

su

apt-get install compiz compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-dev fusion-icon libdecoration0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libpango1.0-dev libcairo2-dev libxrender-dev libwnck-dev build-essential

After installation, you will find the Compiz Fusion Icon under your Gnome Menu -> System Tools. This is a system tray applet which allows switching between Metacity and Compiz, select a window decorator, and also allows access to the Emerald Theme Manager when Emerald is installed later. You will also find the CompizConfig Settings Manager in the System -> Preferences menu, which can be used to set options for Compiz.

Step 2: Get Emerald source

Firstly, determine what version of Compiz you are running by using this command:

compiz --version

The last line will show the version number (eg. compiz 0.7.6).

Go to http://releases.compiz-fusion.org and click on the link for your Compiz version number. So, if the Compiz version is 0.7.6, you will click on the “0.7.6/” link.

Scroll to the emerald-[your version number].tar.bz2 file, and download it. If your Compiz version is 0.7.6, the appropriate file will be emerald-0.7.6.tar.bz2. (Alternatively you can download the tar.gz file if you wish, instead of the tar.bz2 file. It’s up to you.)

Step 3: Extract the source archive, compile, and install Emerald

Extract the downloaded source archive to a directory, and enter into that directory using the command-line terminal. If the directory is ~/temp/emerald-0.7.6, then you will use this command to enter into that directory:

cd ~/temp/emerald-0.7.6

Now, the INSTALL file will say you can configure the installation directory using the –prefix option, but this didn’t work when I tried it and caused quite a bit of grief. So if you aren’t confident, don’t try it. By default, the installation script will place the files in the /usr/local/ directory.

To install, simply enter these commands:

./configure
make
su
make install

If you are unfamiliar with the autotools build process, this is a basic description of what the commands do:

./configure: Checks for dependent library and header files in the system, and “configures” the build process.
make: Compiles all the source files into libraries and binary executables.
make install: Installs the necessary files. Because the installation takes place in /usr/local, it requires root privileges (hence the su command).
There are two resulting executable files: “emerald” and “emerald theme manager”. By default, these are installed into /usr/local/bin. The library files are installed into /usr/local/lib. Other files are installed in their appropriate sub-directories in /usr/local.

Step 4: Symlink the executables

In order to be able to allow the system to find the emerald and emerald-theme-manager executables, links to those files must be created in the /usr/bin directory.

This is easy:

cd /usr/bin
su
ln -s /usr/local/bin/emerald
ln -s /usr/local/bin/emerald-theme-manager

Done!

Step 5: Reboot!

Reboot the computer. I mean actually restart the whole system, not just log-out and log-in.

Step 6: Start Compiz and Emerald

After the reboot, go to the Gnome menu, System Tools, and click on Compiz Fusion Icon. You will now see a little blue box and cursor icon in your system tray. Right-click on it, go to Select Window Manager and click Compiz. Right-click the Fusion Icon applet again, go to Select Window Decorator, and click Emerald.

At this stage, you may or may not see your window borders change. If you find that the borders have simply disappeared, then you are probably having a library problem. If your borders have disappeared entirely, then try this command:

emerald

If the output is “error while loading shared libraries: libemeraldengine.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory“, then you have a problem with the library file. To fix the problem, run this command:

su
ldconfig

… and reboot again.

Once you are able to activate Compiz and change the window decorator to Emerald (and see that the window borders have been replaced by semi-transparent red borders and title bars), proceed to the next step.

Step 7: Automate Compiz and Emerald startup

This step will get Compiz and Emerald to start up automatically at boot, so you don’t need to run them manually.

Go to your Gnome menu: System -> Preferences -> Sessions.

Click the Add button. In the Name field, type “Fusion Icon”. In the Command field, type “/usr/bin/fusion-icon”. No quotation marks! Click OK, and then Close.

Mission accomplished!

Done! From now on, you can download and install Emerald themes, make your own themes, and enjoy some good eye-candy on your Debian desktop.

A word of caution: do NOT delete the Emerald source directory (the directory where you extracted the Emerald source archive to). This is because if you want to uninstall Emerald later, you will need to go into that directory and run this command:

su
make uninstall

But until then… enjoy.


http://releases.compiz-fusion.org/0.8.2/