installing packet tracer not launching on distrobox
before I begin starting to talk about the issue, I need to explain how far I got.
iffy but I found some solutions, first sticking to the ubuntu toolbox.
This may be outdated at somepoint, but installing packet tracer from cisco by itself showws that it can’t find certain libraries.
As one reply in this forum says “libgl1-mesa-glx has been a transitional package for a while and is now obsolete from Ubuntu 23.10 and onwards.”
The solution is to install these packages and what was recommended above.
sudo dpkg -i libgl1-mesa-glx_23.0.4-0ubuntu1.22.04.1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libgl1-mesa-glx_23.0.4-0ubuntu1.22.04.1_amd64.deb
which after actually installing packet tracer via this command
sudo apt-get install ./PacketTracerFileNameHere.deb
or
dpkg -i ./Packet_Tracer822_amd64_signed.deb
another issue props up, which is when trying to actually open packet tracer (which for the cli invocation is packettracer) doesn’t open anything other than it printing the text “Starting Packet Tracer 8.2.2”
Is there a way to actually start up and getting the GUI to open and to work?
This may sound silly, but have you queried chatgpt about your issue? I was curious, and just did, using the prompt: “what are the steps to install cisco packet tracer in a distrobox on a silverblue host system.”
It recommended a series of additional libs to install. Perhaps something to consider?
Hopefully someone here has the knowledge to help you, but it seems like a pretty specific need.
I have a personal ban on AI but for this case, I would have to concede. going ahead and copy and pasting the commands listed here, it now made it where packet tracer is now crashing with the error
/usr/local/bin/packettracer: line 8: 11664 Aborted (core dumped) ./PacketTracer "$@" > /dev/null 2>&1 which is concerning. And trying to go through you.com for answers I found some but it is still crashing, rather not rely on AI like this if there is a person who does know or could figure it out, as I don’t know how much time would be wasted with LLMS, but here. update the site unfortantely is not allowing me to send images.
I will try to figure something out and test it abit more,but right now I will be busy with other classes.
Ok I have made a new container and specifically downloaded the library via apt using these commands
sudo apt install ./libgl1-mesa-glx_23.0.4-0ubuntu1.22.04.1_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./libegl1-mesa_23.0.4-0ubuntu1.22.04.1_amd64.deb
which made two messages, but did install regardless
N: Download is performed unsandboxed as root as file '/home/deberian/Downloads/libegl1-mesa_23.0.4-0ubuntu1.22.04.1_amd64.deb' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied)
N: Download is performed unsandboxed as root as file '/home/deberian/Downloads/libgl1-mesa-glx_23.0.4-0ubuntu1.22.04.1_amd64.deb' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied)
went ahead and go to install packet tracer this method anyways.
sudo apt install ./Packet_Tracer822_amd64_signed.deb
And still doesn’t open, but it doesn’t crash anymore.
Looking up and asking you.com and it asked to install mesa-utils and running glxinfo gives this prompt Error: unable to open display
So it may just that the display isn’t able to open for packettracer to actually open?
Hope someone can step up to the plate and give you more authoritative help. In the meantime…
I downloaded packettracer and tried to install in a Ubuntu 22.04 distrobox and basically got the same error messge you did:
/usr/local/bin/packettracer: line 8: 33910 Aborted (core dumped)
./PacketTracer “$@” > /dev/null 2>&1
I once again asked chatgpt for assistance with this error message. Basically it comes down to missing libraries. It recommended the following ldd command to see what dynamic library dependencies are missing. Here is the command recommended and what I got.
Whatever you get should be an indicator of what it thinks you will need to install. However, if you look in /opt/pt/bin all the libraries are there. At least they are for me. So it looks like a path issue. packettracer doesn’t know where to look for the libraries.
For me, it would be another chatgpt question about how to deal with that. At this point I have to tap out since there is not anything more I can really help with. I’m way over my head as it is!
I was able to get packettracer running in a distrobox.
Here are the steps. I have tested them a couple of times on my bluefin system. They reliably work for me:
distrobox-create --name ubuntu2004 --image ubuntu:20.04
distrobox-enter ubuntu2004
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y \
wget libgl1 libxi6 libxtst6 libnss3 libx11-xcb1 libpulse0 pulseaudio \
libssl1.1 libqt5core5a libqt5gui5 libqt5widgets5 libqt5network5 \
libqt5xml5 libqt5script5 libqt5scripttools5 libqt5multimedia5 \
libqt5websockets5 libqt5svg5 libqt5sql5 libqt5webenginewidgets5 \
libqt5texttospeech5 libqt5printsupport5 libqt5webenginecore5 \
libqt5webchannel5 libqt5positioning5 libqt5quick5 libqt5qml5 \
libqt5networkauth5 qml-module-qtquick2 qml-module-qtquick-controls \
qml-module-qtquick-controls2 qml-module-qtquick-dialogs \
qml-module-qtquick-xmllistmodel qml-module-qt-labs-settings
sudo apt install -y <path to downloaded 8.2.2 packettracer deb file>
packettracer
Hopefully they will for you. 
1 Like
Works! Did you have a workaround for the login? Can’t make it open the browser.
If I turn the internet off, it won’t ask for the login. Currently, I removed the container network, and it’s working, but if anyone has a better way, I would love to hear it.
If you want to do it all in the container, you’ll need to install a brower and create a symlink:
sudo apt install firefox
ln -s /usr/bin/xdg-open ~/.local/bin/xdg-open
Then run packettracer and click on the link. That’s what works for me. Give it a whirl and see how it goes.
By the way, I don’t actually use packettracer. I’m just working through this container install as an exercise to learn more about how the whole container thing works.
1 Like
