LightScribe On Linux and AMD64

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Here we go with more work on my Alienware box where I ripped out Windows Vista and installed Ubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron).  I haven’t looked back since … ok, I do miss some games that don’t like Cedega or Crossover, but it’s a small price to pay for all of the other benefits I get from running Linux, and especially Ubuntu which is based on Debian.

One of the things that I got with this box was a LightScribe compaible DVD-R/CD-R.  This is great, except I didn’t have any clue how to get it to work in Linux.  After some digging on the net and reading all around, I got it working and boiled the steps down to a concice recipe.

These steps are listed below.  Please note that these *should* work for 32 or 64 bit distros, but specifically I am running AMD64, so part of this was to get over that hump.  Details are below with the commands.

First, if you don’t already have the ia32-libs or alien packages, you need to install those.

apt-get install ia32-libs
apt-get install alien

Also, if you are running Ubuntu 7.04 or newer, you might need to get an older C library.

apt-get install libstdc++5

Next, let’s download the latest LightScribe software.  Luckilly, they now have Debian (.deb) packages available.

wget http://download.lightscribe.com/ls/lightscribe-1.14.25.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb

Now we need the tool that actually allows us to create and write the labels from LaCie.  Notice that all they have for you is a RPM package, this is where the tool alien comes in.  Alien can convert it to a Debian package, but that’s later.

wget http://www.lacie.com/download/drivers/4L-1.0-r6.i586.rpm

OK, now that we have everything downloaded, let’s install the LightScribe Debian package.  Here is where we add an option if we are on the AMD64 platform (like I am).  If you just use -i like normal with dpkg, the install will fail because it’s looking for i386.  However, when we add the –force-all, it’ll ignore the error and install anyway.

dpkg -i --force-all lightscribe-1.14.25.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb

Next, since we don’t have a Debian package for the label maker, we need to use alien to convert it to something we can work with.  Again, if we just tell alien to make a Debian package it will fail if you are on AMD64.  Therefore, we tell alien to make a plain tar/gzip (.tgz) package using the -t option.

alien -t 4L-1.0-r6.i586.rpm

Then we use alien again to convert the tar/gzip package to Debian package format.

alien 4L-1.0.tgz

Now we install it!

dpkg -i 4l_1.0-2_all.deb

Run the tool …

4L-gui

If all went well, you are done, it’s just that easy.

8 thoughts on “LightScribe On Linux and AMD64”

  1. The Lacie 4l does not appear to work on Kubuntu 9.10 AMD64 system, although the LightScribe Simple Labeler does recognize the drive.

    Even though libstd++5 is installed and symlinks in appropriate location I receive the error message that libstd++5 is not found when running $sudo 4L-cli enumerate.

  2. I pulled this off of an archived Ubuntu forums website. Before following these steps ensure that a symlink libstd++.so.5 is in the /usr/lib directory and points to libstd++.so.5.0.7. These files should be placed into the directory after installing the package libstd++5. In (K)ubuntu 9.10 this package must be downloaded and installed manually from the Ubuntu 9.04 package list.

    1. Download the LaCie labeling application: http://www.lacie.com/download/drivers/4L-1.0-r6.i586.rpm

    2. use fakeroot (or sudo) to convert the rpm to a deb.
    fakeroot
    alien -d 4L-1.0-r6.i586.rpm
    exitIt won’t do so cleanly since I’ve found no way to tell alien to ignore the architecture of an rpm file. At any rate, this step leaves you with a folder called 4L-1.0

    3. Go into the 4L-1.0 folder.
    3a. Rename debian to DEBIAN
    3b. Go into the DEBIAN folder inside.
    3c. Trash the “4l” folder you find there.

    4. Edit the control file in the DEBIAN folder. Change the architecture to amd64 and depends to getlibs.
    Dependencies don’t really matter since you already took care of that in AI’s install above.
    4a. Add the following line to the file if it’s not there already:
    Version: 1.0-1

    5. Save the control file, cd back to your Desktop, and build and install the deb file.
    dpkg –build 4L-1.0
    dpkg -i 4L-1.0.deb

    6. Can be run with
    4L-gui

  3. Pingback: lightscribe on amd64 – Moep . Com

  4. Hi,

    I’m getting a different error. I did all the steps you specified, except I installed the latest version of light-scribe, since I assumed this guide may be a bit old.

    I’m running Ubuntu 9.10 on AMD 64. The installation went through fine, with –force-all flag of course, and I have libc++5 installed as well.

    4L-gui runs fine, but I get an error from 4L-cli :
    4L-cli: error while loading shared libraries: liblightscribe.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    The gui works but when I attempt printing stuff it doesn’t recognise any drives.

    I checked /usr/lib and it contains liblightscribe.so.1 so don’t know why it can’t find it.

    Any suggestions will be appreciated.

    cheers,
    Shuku.

  5. The only things that come to mind immediately are checking permissions on the lib file, just in case. Also, is it possible that it’s looking somewhere else for the library and not in /usr/lib? Maybe it has something to do with the new version of the lightscribe software. If I can find anything, I post another reply here.

  6. Ubuntu 11.04 AMD64
    4L-gui seems to work if you use the principia .deb package and –force-all. Must be run as root (sudo).

    sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
    cd /dist
    wget http://download.lightscribe.com/ls/lightscribe-1.18.23.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb
    sudo dpkg -i –force-all lightscribe-1.18.23.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb
    sudo wget http://download.lightscribe.com/ls/lightscribeApplications-1.18.15.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb
    sudo dpkg -i –force-all lightscribeApplications-1.18.15.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb
    wget http://download.lightscribe.com/ls/lightscribePublicSDK-1.18.6.1-linux-2.6-intel.rpm
    /opt/lightscribeApplications/SimpleLabeler/SimpleLabeler &

    sudo wget http://principialabs.com/files/4l_1.0-r6_i386.deb
    sudo dpkg -i –force-all 4l_1.0-r6_i386.deb
    sudo 4L-cli
    sudu 4L-gui

Tell me what you are thinking?