OpenNx is a client software to connect to remote desktops as a replacement for NoMachine’s client.

It has precompiled packages ready for different distributions as presented in its Download page.

Specifically in ArchLinux there is an entry in its documentation reference which stands for the NoMachine named as FreeNX. It contains the package for the server/client functions via nx3-all or nomachine. However, for the client it suggests using the AUR package opennx. It will be our choice.

Starting with the AUR package opennx

Normally, packages can be installed by issuing the command (if using a package manager that search in AUR packages):

$ yay -S opennx

It will install the opennx package from the AUR repositories. It has several dependencies, some of them also AUR packages. If the package was fine, it will be the only step that we will requiere. However, as the last update in the AUR was in 2017 it has some issues that should be fixed.

Issues with the original AUR package

The issues that I found trying to install the package are the following:

  • Sources not found in nx-common. It is a dependency from opennx. It downloads two source packages from a mirror, however the original url ftp://ftp.uni-duisburg.de/ not respond.

  • Sources fails to compile. Once fixed the mirror, there are two moments which output errors:

    • Error with the compiling flags
    g++ -o libXcompsh.so.3.5.0 -Wl,-O1,--sort-common,--as-needed,-z,relro,-z,now -Wl,-soname,libXcompsh.so.3 System.o Socket.o Logger.o Runnable.o Process.o Listener.o Connector.o Dispatcher.o Request.o Display.o  -shared
rm -f  libXcompsh.a
ar clq libXcompsh.a System.o Socket.o Logger.o Runnable.o Process.o Listener.o Connector.o Dispatcher.o Request.o Display.o
ar: libdeps specified more than once
make: *** [Makefile:145: libXcompsh.a] Error 1
make: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
  Aborting...
    • Error with the arc4random_stir reference.
    gcc -o nxsshd sshd.o auth-rhosts.o auth-passwd.o auth-rsa.o auth-rh-rsa.o sshpty.o sshlogin.o servconf.o serverloop.o auth.o auth1.o auth2.o auth-options.o session.o auth-chall.o auth2-chall.o groupaccess.o auth-skey.o auth-bsdauth.o auth2-hostbased.o auth2-kbdint.o auth2-none.o auth2-passwd.o auth2-pubkey.o monitor_mm.o monitor.o monitor_wrap.o kexdhs.o kexgexs.o auth-krb5.o auth2-gss.o gss-serv.o gss-serv-krb5.o loginrec.o auth-pam.o auth-shadow.o auth-sia.o md5crypt.o audit.o audit-bsm.o platform.o -L. -Lopenbsd-compat/ -Wl,-O1,--sort-common,--as-needed,-z,relro,-z,now -L/usr/lib/openssl-1.0 -lpthread -lssh -lopenbsd-compat     -lcrypto -lz -lnsl  -lcrypt
/usr/bin/ld: sshconnect1.o: in function `ssh_kex':
/home/luighi/.cache/yay/nx-common/src/nxssh/sshconnect1.c:546: undefined reference to `arc4random_stir'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [Makefile:139: nxssh] Error 1
make: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
/usr/bin/ld: sshd.o: in function `generate_ephemeral_server_key':
/home/luighi/.cache/yay/nx-common/src/nxssh/sshd.c:411: undefined reference to `arc4random_stir'
/usr/bin/ld: /home/luighi/.cache/yay/nx-common/src/nxssh/sshd.c:411: undefined reference to `arc4random_stir'
/usr/bin/ld: sshd.o: in function `main':
/home/luighi/.cache/yay/nx-common/src/nxssh/sshd.c:1618: undefined reference to `arc4random_stir'
/usr/bin/ld: sshd.o: in function `server_accept_loop':
/home/luighi/.cache/yay/nx-common/src/nxssh/sshd.c:1238: undefined reference to `arc4random_stir'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [Makefile:142: nxsshd] Error 1
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
  Aborting...

  • Fail compiling opennx. The PKGBUILD has some issues to detect the source folder once it is downloaded.

    ==> Starting build()...
/home/luighi/.cache/yay/opennx/PKGBUILD: line 18: cd: too many arguments
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
  Aborting...

Fixing issues

Fixing nx-common package

To fix the issues before we have to first download and try to install the problematic dependency nx-common.

$ yay -S nx-common

Normally, the packages download by yay are stored in ~/.cache/yay. We can enter there and locate the nx-common folder which contains the PKGBUILD

Then we can use this patch:

diff --git i/PKGBUILD w/PKGBUILD
index 132d485..687de52 100644
--- i/PKGBUILD
+++ w/PKGBUILD
@@ -11,8 +11,8 @@ license=('GPL')
 url="http://nomachine.com/"
 depends=('libjpeg-turbo' 'libpng' 'openssl-1.0' 'gcc-libs' 'libxcomp') 
 makedepends=('xorg-server-devel' 'nx-headers')
-source=(ftp://ftp.uni-duisburg.de/X11/NX/sources/$pkgver/nxcompsh-$pkgver-1.tar.gz
-        ftp://ftp.uni-duisburg.de/X11/NX/sources/$pkgver/nxssh-$pkgver-2.tar.gz        
+source=(https://ftp.disconnected-by-peer.at/NX/sources/$pkgver/nxcompsh-$pkgver-1.tar.gz
+        https://ftp.disconnected-by-peer.at/NX/sources/$pkgver/nxssh-$pkgver-2.tar.gz
         nxcompsh-gcc43.patch)
 options=('!libtool')
 md5sums=('84ade443b79ea079380b754aba9d392e'
@@ -24,12 +24,13 @@ build() {
   cd ${srcdir}/nxcompsh
   patch -Np1 -i ${srcdir}/nxcompsh-gcc43.patch
   ./configure --prefix=/usr/lib/nx
+  sed -i "s/ar clq/ar cq/g" Makefile
   make
 
   # nxssh
   cd ${srcdir}/nxssh
   sed -i "s:NX.h:nx/NX.h:g" clientloop.c packet.c proxy.c
-  ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --libexecdir=/usr/lib --with-cppflags=-I/usr/include/openssl-1.0 --with-ldflags='-L/usr/lib/openssl-1.0 -lpthread'
+  ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --libexecdir=/usr/lib --with-cppflags=-I/usr/include/openssl-1.0 --with-ldflags='-L/usr/lib/openssl-1.0 -lbsd -lpthread'
   make
 }

Save this as PKGBUILD.patch in the same directory as the original PKGBUILD. Then apply changes by:

$ git apply PKGBUILD.patch

For more information about how to apply patches you can see the references section.

Then you can execute the installing procedure:

$ makepkg -i

Fixing opennx package

Although it is probably not the best way to address this issue, in this case we have hard-coded the folder name where the source files are located, using this patch:

diff --git i/PKGBUILD w/PKGBUILD
index cf9d29c..c6e2116 100644
--- i/PKGBUILD
+++ w/PKGBUILD
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ source=(http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/opennx/opennx/CI-source/opennx-
 md5sums=('5271a2430693858803f2e1ca860e5a6c')
 
 build() {
-  cd "$srcdir"/opennx*
+  cd "$srcdir"/opennx-0.16
   ./configure --prefix=/usr \
     --enable-usbip \
     --with-wx-config=wx-config-2.8
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ build() {
 }
 
 package() {
-  cd "$srcdir"/opennx*
+  cd "$srcdir"/opennx-0.16
   make DESTDIR="${pkgdir}" install
   make DESTDIR="${pkgdir}" install-man

Save as PKGBUILD.patch and then apply the patch via:

$ git apply PKGBUILD.patch

Finally, install by:

$ makepkg -i

After it, the executable should be ready as:

$ opennx

In the specific case of ArchLinux don’t forget to exec rehash before if you want to execute the command in the same terminal just after installing it.

Update 2023-01-07

After an update, the client OpenNx stops working, and retrieves this error if running in console:


opennx: error while loading shared libraries: libtiff.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

After a bit search on Internet we identified that there is a missing package which is required for OpenNx to work, libtiff5. It can be installed via:

$ yay -S libtiff5

Once it is installed, the interface can open normally.

References