How to install Autodesk Maya 2011 on Debian / Ubuntu

How to install Autodesk Maya 2011 on Debian / Ubuntu

27th April 2010 |

Last update: 10.08.16 – Minor typo correction

This tutorial have been made for Debian Sid but it should work on Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu.If you encounter any problems, please, contact me with a description of the problem and I will see if I can find a solution (and update this tutorial for the others who may encounter the same problem).

In this tutorial the commands that are required to be launched as root are prefixed by sudo, if you aren’t in the sudoers or don’t have a sudoers group, just launch them as root without the sudo prefix. I will use exempleuser as the user name, just substitute exempleuser with your user name.

Preparation

1.Copy installation files

First, copy all the linux installation files to a temporary folder in your home (in this exemple it will be /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall ).

mkdir /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall
cp -R /InsertPathToMayaInstallationFiles/* /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall

If you have priviledges problems when you copy them (I encounter the problem in previous Maya versions when I wanted to copy the installation files from the DVD-Rom to a directory as a non-root user), Use the same command but as root :

sudo cp -R /InsertPathToMayaInstallationFiles/* /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall

Here is a list of the installation files (note that the versions may be different for you, don’t worry it will work the same way)  :

• EULA = Directory with the License in different languages
• adlmapps-1.3.34-0.x86_64.rpm = NEEDED in order to activate Maya and the other softwares bundled with it
• adlmflexnetclient-1.3.34-0.x86_64.rpm = NEEDED in order to activate Maya and the other softwares bundled with it
• adlmflexnetserver-1.3.34-0.x86_64.rpm = NEEDED in order to activate Maya and the other softwares bundled with it
• autodesk.backburner.monitor-2011-377.i386.rpm = Web-based Monitoring software for Backburner, not needed to install Backburner
• backburner.sw.base-2011-1470.i386.rpm = The actual Backburner, install this if you want to have backburner
• backburner_webmonitor.sw.base-2011-1470.i386.rpm = Web-based Monitoring software for Backburner, not needed to install Backburner
• Composite2011-2011.0-2459.x86_64.rpm = Install this if you want Toxic
• INSTALL = Backburner install shell script
• MatchMover2011_0_64-2011.0-177.x86_64.rpm = Install this if you want Matchmover
• Maya2011_0_64-2011.0-271.x86_64.rpm = NEEDED, It’s the actual Maya package
• Maya2011_0-docs_en_US_64-2011-88.x86_64.rpm = Install this if you want the Maya documentation
• MID.txt = Some informations about the Maya version
  
• setup = NEEDED, Maya setup
• setup.xml = NEEDED in order to activate Maya and the other softwares bundled with it
• setupbar.png = NEEDED, part of the Maya setup

2.Install required packages

Next, you need to install the following packages :
sudo apt-get install alien tcsh fam libxp6 libxpm4 libxprintapputil1 libxprintutil1 cpio rpm ia32-libs

If you don’t find the libxp6, libxpm4, libxprintapputil1 and libxprintutil1 packages, use this command instead :
sudo apt-get install alien tcsh fam libxp libxpm libxprintapputil libxprintutil cpio rpm ia32-libs

3.Symlink Tcsh to Csh

Now, symlink Tcsh to Csh :
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/tcsh /bin/csh

Convert/Extract and install RPMs

There is two methods to install Maya from the RPMs on a debian based Linux system.You can convert the packages to .deb or you can extract them and install them manually, I personnaly use the later method.

Before converting or extracting the RPMs, you need to go to the directory who contains the Maya installations files:
cd /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall

1.Deb Method :

Using Alien, convert the RPMs to DEBs (see the list above to known what you need to convert and install) with this command:
for i in *.rpm; do sudo alien -cv $i; done

Install the deb you want either by double-cliking on them or with:
sudo dpkg -i nameOfThePackage.deb

2.Extracting Method:

With the cpio package, we will extract the differents RPMs (again, see the list above to known what you need to extract and install) :
rpm2cpio nameOfThePackage.rpm | cpio -idmvu

When you have extracted all the needed packages, copy the extracted contents to the corresponding directories (like /usr, /var, …) with the sudo cp -R command :

sudo cp -R /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall/etc/init.d/* /etc/init.d
sudo cp -R /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall/opt/* /opt
sudo cp -R /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall/usr/* /usr
sudo cp -R /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall/var/* /var

Post-Installation

There is a few things you need to do before launching and activate Maya.

1.Symlink Maya binaries

Symlinks the Maya binaries in /usr/local/bin to launch them with a simple command (like Render to do batch renders).Go to the /usr:local/bin directory and make symlinks to fcheck, imgcvt, Render and maya2011

cd /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64/bin/fcheck fcheck
sudo ln -s /usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64/bin/maya2011 maya
sudo ln -s /usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64/bin/imgcvt imgcvt
sudo ln -s /usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64/bin/Render Render

Please, note that you can change the maya2011-x64 to the one who will be created below if you want to have multiple Maya versions or don’t want the hassle of redoing theses symlinks if you install another Maya version.

2.Symlink maya2011-x64 directory to maya directory

Symlink a maya dir in /usr/autodesk to the maya2011-x64 one

cd /usr/autodesk
sudo ln -s maya2011-x64 maya

3.Get an icon

Now make some symlinks to have an icon
sudo ln -sf /usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64/desktop/Autodesk-Maya.desktop /usr/share/applications/Autodesk-Maya.desktop
sudo ln -sf /usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64/desktop/Autodesk-Maya.directory /usr/share/desktop-directories/Autodesk-Maya.directory
sudo ln -sf /usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64/desktop/Maya.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/Maya.png

5.Create a temporary directory for Mental Ray

Create a temporary directory for Mental Ray
sudo mkdir /usr/tmp
sudo chmod 777 /usr/tmp

6.Fix Maya UI launching bug

Here is the part that is specific to Maya 2011 (I have encountered it on the Betas versions and it’s still here).It may be a bug with non-US Debian installations (French in my case).If you don’t do it, a bug with one of the startup mel prevent the Maya UI to be launched.We will had a variable in the maya launcher to avoid that.Using nano (or your favorite editor), insert this : setenv LC_ALL en_US.UTF-8 In this file /usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64/bin/maya2011
You can also use this command:

sudo sh -c "echo 'setenv LC_ALL en_US.UTF-8' >> /usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64/bin/maya2011"

7.Export MAYA_LOCATION

And finally, export the MAYA_LOCATION variable
sudo export MAYA_LOCATION=/usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64

There is one more thing to do (symlinks the differents librairies), but we will do it after the next step in order to know wich librairies are needed

4.Install License

Here is the trickiest and most interesting part of this tutorial.In order to properly activate Maya, we will write and compile a fake rpm binary to launch the Maya Setup UI and have a proper license file to use during the activation.

1.Create a fake binary

Go to /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall and make a file called mayaInstall.c (the name of the file is not important) and put this code in it
int main (void) {return 0; }

You can also use theses commands:
cd /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall
sh -c "echo 'int main (void) {return 0; }' >> /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall/mayaInstall.c"

Now compile the file using gcc
cd /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall
gcc mayaInstall.c

2.Backup and replace the rpm binary

You should get a compiled binary called a.out.Backup you rpm binary in /usr/bin and replace it by the a.out file
sudo cp /usr/bin/rpm /usr/bin/rpm_backup
cd /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall
sudo cp a.out /usr/bin/rpm

3.Launch Maya setup

You can now launch the Maya supplied setup as if you were on a Red-Hat based system :
cd /home/exempleuser/MayaInstall
sudo ./setup

4.enter Serial and Product Key

Enter your serial (000-0000000 in this exemple) and product key and follow the rest of the UI.

5.Restore rpm binary

Revert the change made to the rpm binary in /usr/bin
sudo cp /usr/bin/rpm_backup /usr/bin/rpm

5.Symlink librairies

Open a terminal and launch maya with the maya command, you may encounter an error like this one:
/usr/autodesk/maya2011-x64/bin/maya.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libtiff.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This happen because Maya is looking for very a specific version of a librairy.You can fix it by making a symlink between your version of the library located in /usr/lib with the version required by Maya.Here is some of the symlinks I had to make :

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libtiff.so.4 /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libaudiofile.so.0 /usr/lib/libtiff/libaudiofile.so

Theses two ones are for PyMel :
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.8 /usr/lib/libssl.so.3
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.8 /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.3

Do this for each librairy Maya is asking for.

6.Activate Maya

You can now launch Maya to activate it with the maya command.

7.Enjoy !

You can now use Maya 2011 on Debian.Stay tuned for a post on how to fix the different bugs between Maya and Linux.