Installing RealProducer Plus 6.0 in Red Hat Linux 6.0

by Charlton Rose

To install, configure, and run RealProducer Plus 6.0 on a Red Hat Linux 6.0 machine, you must follow a complicated though managable process. These instructions may be obsoleted by newer versions of RealProducer for Linux. Please send feedback if you discover anything interesting.

  1. First of all, make sure you have the two distribution tarballs: the original program and the patch.

    If you don't have these files, you cannot continue. Obtain them from the RealNetworks web site. You can download the patch from

    http://docs.real.com/docs/rprodg2_patch.tgz.

    I'm not sure where to find the other file (please tell me if you know).

    These instructions will assume you have both files and that you have placed them in root's home directory (typically /root).

  2. Now, log into your system as root:

  3. Unpack the file rprodg2_linux.tgz into a temporary directory:

    mkdir /tmp/rprod
    cd /tmp/rprod
    tar xzvf ~/rprodg2_linux.tgz
  4. From the temporary directory, run the installer:

    ./install
  5. Follow the instructions from the installer. Accept all of the defaults.

  6. After the installer has finished, believe it or not, the application is still not ready to run. You'll need to patch it. Patching is a two part process. (For more information on patching RealProducer for Red Hat Linux 6.0, see http://service.real.com/help/faq/reg2faqa1.html#linux.)

  7. For the first phase of the patch, unzip the patch tarball into the directory where you installed RealProducer.

  8. cd /usr/local/rprod
    tar xzvf ~/rprodg2_patch.tgz
  9. For the second phase of the patch, run the patch program that was just deposited into RealProducer's bin directory:

    cd bin
    ./patchrprod
  10. Now, if you want to run RealProducer as a non-root user (and you should), then you need to make a few more changes to your system.

    Start by creating a new group of authorized RealProducer users called "rprod":

    groupadd rprod
  11. Next, give group write permission to the RealProducer run-time library "lib/enceng.so.6.0" (after making a copy file of the file you are about to compromise):

    cd /usr/local/rprod/lib
    cp enceng.so.6.0 enceng.so.6.0.bak
    chgrp rprod enceng.so.6.0
    chmod g+w enceng.so.6.0

    I have not figured out why this file needs to be writable by the user, but I suspect is has something to do with limiting the number of simultaneously executable copies (when you are running the free version).

  12. Lastly, add the users authorized to run RealProducer to the new group.

  13. And that should be it. Log out and back in as a new user and give it a try:

    xrealproducer

    (Don't forget to load your sound and video drivers first.)

Happy producing!

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