Johan Pennanen Installing CISCO Packet

© 2009 Johan Pennanen Tracer on Ubuntu 9.04 1(4)

GNU General Public Lisence
e-mail: johan.pennanen@myy.haaga-helia.fi

30.9.2009

Installing CISCO Packet Tracer on Ubuntu 9.04

If you have an user account and passwork for CISCO Networking Academy
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/netacad/index.html
you can download Cisco Packet Tracer for studying purposes. The application
can be found at Student home page at left, clicking download link.
The problem with the bin-file available is, that it is for 32-bit processor
architecture, designed for Ubuntu version 7.10. Your computer will most likely
be using 64-bit architecture (AMD64). This article is about installing this bin-
file on your 64-bit Ubuntu. It is based on thread at UbuntuForums:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7905399
However, I have made some minor clarifications here, concerning some
problems I ran into while installing.

Installing bin-file
First download the bin-file for Ubuntu, with or without documentation. When
done, open terminal, go to the folder where you downloaded the file and type
according to the instructions at Cisco download page:

chmod +x PacketTracer52_*.bin

This will make The Linux BIN packages executable by giving permissions. Now,
if you try to run the package, giving a command

sudo ./PacketTracer52_i386_installer­deb.bin
will not work. During the installation, you will be informed, that the processor
achitecture of your computer is not compatible with the package. To solve this
problem I found the UbuntuForums thread helpful.
dpkg: error processing PacketTracer­5.2­u.i386.deb (­­install):
 package architecture (i386) does not match system (amd64)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 PacketTracer­5.2­u.i386.deb
./PacketTracer52_i386_installer­deb.bin: line 12: cd: /media/disk/PacketTracer: 
No such file or directory
Johan Pennanen Installing CISCO Packet
© 2009 Johan Pennanen Tracer on Ubuntu 9.04 2(4)
GNU General Public Lisence
e-mail: johan.pennanen@myy.haaga-helia.fi

30.9.2009

To make things work, open 2 Terminal windows. On one, type again the
command

sudo ./PacketTracer52_i386_installer­deb.bin

Wait for some time and the bin-file is downloaded to /tmp/-folder. When
done, you will see this:

Welcome to Packet Tracer 5 Installation

Now, go to the another Terminal. It's important to left the installation run on
other Terminal to be able to locate right file at /tmp/. To use Terminal as a
root type

sudo su

Go to the /tmp/-folder and type ls. You will get a list of folder contents.
There you should find a folder named something like
selfextract.ADu978

The suffix of the folder may vary, so use one that you have. Now go to that
folder.

cd selfextract.ADu978

ls

You should see a file

PacketTracer-5.2-u.i386.deb

Copy this file to your Desktop by typing

cp PacketTracer­5.2­u.i386.deb /home/homefolder/Desktop/
Johan Pennanen Installing CISCO Packet
© 2009 Johan Pennanen Tracer on Ubuntu 9.04 3(4)
GNU General Public Lisence
e-mail: johan.pennanen@myy.haaga-helia.fi

30.9.2009

Where homefolder is the name of your homefolder. Now you can stop the
installation at another Terminal window by CTRL+C. Go to your Desktop in
Terminal and type

sudo dpkg ­i ­­force­architecture PacketTracer­5.0­
u.i386.deb

This worked for me, forcing the installation on my system.

dpkg ­ warning, overriding problem because ­­force enabled:
 package architecture (i386) does not match system (amd64)
Selecting previously deselected package packettracer.
(Reading database ... 175811 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking packettracer (from PacketTracer­5.2­u.i386.deb) ...
Setting up packettracer (5.2­1) ...
Installed files. Please wait for post­install operations to finish..
gtk­update­icon­cache: Cache file created successfully.

Running the program

Running the program didn't work for me by clicking the icon on menu
Applications → Internet → Cisco Packet Tracer

The application didn't install where I expected it would (at /opt/-folder). To

run the program in Terminal type

sudo /usr/local/PacketTracer5/packettracer

Alternately, you can allow the application to run as a program. Open Terminal
and type
Johan Pennanen Installing CISCO Packet
© 2009 Johan Pennanen Tracer on Ubuntu 9.04 4(4)
GNU General Public Lisence
e-mail: johan.pennanen@myy.haaga-helia.fi

30.9.2009

sudo nautilus

This command opens a root file browser. Navigate to

/usr/local/PacketTracer5/
Right-click on packettracer-icon and choose Properties → Permissions. Select
Allow executing file as a program.

Now close the root file browser. Now you can run Cisco Packet Tracer from
Applications-menu.