Thursday, October 4, 2018

Installing Cisco Packet Tracer 7.2 in Ubuntu 18.04

There are a few problems that occur when installing Cisco's Packet Tracer in Ubuntu 18.04, mainly permission issues and a missing dependency. Here are the steps I took to get it up and running.
  1. Log in to netacad.com (or register first, it's free)
  2. Go to Resources->Download Packet Tracer
  3. Click the link for "64 Bit Download" under Linux Desktop Version 7.2 English
  4. Move the downloaded file to the folder of your choice and extract it. Note that sudo is required to avoid permission problems (I know, this shouldn't be needed if the file was created properly).
    sudo tar xvzf Packet\ Tracer\ 7.2\ for\ Linux\ 64\ bit.tar.gz
  5. Run the install script
    sudo ./install
  6. Read the EULA and, if you agree to it, accept it by pressing "Y"
  7. Press "Enter" for the default installation directory
  8. Press "Y" to create a symbolic link to run Packet Tracer
  9. As requested, restart the computer (NOTE: logging out and back in may work instead of a reboot)
  10. At this point, Packet Trace is installed, but it is missing a dependency. If you try to run it, it will print "Starting Packet Tracer 7.2" and just drop you back to a prompt and nothing will happen. The "packettracer" command is a script that actually runs /opt/pt/bin/PacketTracer7. When running this directly, it complains about not finding libpng12.
  11. Get the libpng12 package
    wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libp/libpng/libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb
  12. Install the libpng12 package
    sudo dpkg -i libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb
  13. Type "packettracer" and Packet Tracer should start up normally

6 comments:

  1. I can't get step 12... please help me

    dpkg: regarding libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb containing libpng12-0:amd64, pre-dependency problem:
    libpng12-0 pre-depends on multiarch-support
    multiarch-support is not installed.

    dpkg: error processing archive libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb (--install):
    pre-dependency problem - not installing libpng12-0:amd64
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb


    I am using Ubuntu ver19.10

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm guessing since I'm not familiar with 19.10. Looks like libpng depends on multiarch-support package. Try installing it first: sudo apt-get install multiarch-support

      Delete
  2. I'm stuck at step 12... please help me.

    "dpkg: regarding libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb containing libpng12-0:amd64, pre-dependency problem:
    libpng12-0 pre-depends on multiarch-support
    multiarch-support is not installed.

    dpkg: error processing archive libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb (--install):
    pre-dependency problem - not installing libpng12-0:amd64
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    libpng12-0_1.2.50-2+deb8u3_amd64.deb"


    I'm using Ubuntu ver.19.10

    ReplyDelete