HOW TO: Install Visual Boy Advance-M (with GUI) on i386 and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu

*Notice: This howto makes use of the awesome app getlibs, which is bundled in the download provided for this post. For more info, go here:[[http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=474790]]* _Introduction_ Visual Boy Advance (A gameboy advance emulator) in the Ubuntu repos, even when installing the GUI versions from Synaptic Package managers, is old and leaves a lot to be desired. Needless to say, if you enjoyed VBA on Windows and want the same experience on Ubuntu, like several Windows-to-Linux ports (and vice versa) it sometimes requires an annoying bit of know-how. Well no longer!

This tutorial will show you how to get the best possible VBA setup on Ubuntu, regardless of whether or not you use the i386 (32-bit) or Intel/AMD64 (64-bit) version.

_Getting the stuff you need_ The version of Visual Boy Advance supplied with this howto is called VBA-M. The "M" stands for "merger", as in VBA-M is a merger of most forks from the original Open Source VBA project.

In addition, a simple (but mighty) app is included in the package, known as getlibs. What getlibs does, is it installs 32-bit libraries for any program that depends on them. On a 32-bit system, this is good if the installer is missing that info (It is, in this case). On a 64-bit system, you're not gonna be able to install a 32-bit .deb file and make use of the program most of the time unless you install the 32-bit libraries, and getlibs can handle this easily as well.

So, where to get all this good stuff? [COLOR="Navy"][[CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD MIKE_IRONFIST'S VBA-M ALL PLATFORM INSTALLATION PACKAGE!]][/COLOR]

And now, onto the show!

_32-bit (Most) Users_ Unless you consciously chose to download and install the 64-bit version of Ubuntu, you're a 32-bit user, so follow these instructions.

1. Copy both .deb files to the desktop.

1. Double-click the getlibs deb file to install it. Follow the onscreen instructions and let it install. When it's done, close the window.

1. Double-click the Visual Boy Advance deb file to install it. Once again, follow the instructions, let it install, and when it's done, close the window.

1. Open a terminal, and in the terminal, type:

getlibs /usr/local/bin/gvbam

The terminal will list the library files that the program needs, and then ask you if you want to proceed with installing them. Of course you do, so enter in "y" (without quotes) and press enter.

Once the libraries are done installing, clicking on VBA-M (located under the "Games" section of your applications menu) should launch the application with no problems! Enjoy!

_64-bit Users_ If you installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu, you might be in a bit of a pickle with installing 32-bit applications. However, if you follow these instructions, and you're not afraid to copy-paste some commands into the terminal, you'll be on your way to using VBA-M in no time.

1. Copy both .deb files to the desktop.

1. Double-click the getlibs deb file to install it. Follow the onscreen instructions and let it install. When it's done, close the window.

1. Open a terminal and type in the following command:

cd ~/Desktop

1. Next, type (or paste) this into the terminal, carefully:

sudo dpkg --force-architecture -i visualboyadvance-m_1.8.0.877-1_i386.deb

You will be prompted for your password. Remember that the terminal doesn't show your password as you type - just enter in the password correctly and press enter.

1. Lastly, type this into the terminal:

getlibs /usr/local/bin/gvbam

The terminal will list the library files that the program needs, and then ask you if you want to proceed with installing them. Of course you do, so enter in "y" (without quotes) and press enter.

Once the libraries are done installing, clicking on VBA-M (located under the "Games" section of your applications menu) should launch the application with no problems! Enjoy!

_Enjoy VBA-M!_ I hope you found this installation process very easy. The main purpose of this FAQ was to help users get the most up-to-date version of VBA (while also allowing 64-bit users to make use of it). I made this FAQ in hopes that it is absolutely fool-proof, but if I made a mistake that doesn't quite make things clear, let me know and I'll be glad to clear it up for you.

im using vba-m with mednafen as the frontend, is this the same set up?

The .tar.gz file linked to doesn't seem to work. When I download it, it only says: "This does not look like a tar file. Skipping header." and then nothing happens.

miniyak said: im using vba-m with mednafen as the frontend, is this the same set up?

Nope, the frontend for this version of VBA-M is roughly identical to the Windows GUI.

Nevon said: The .tar.gz file linked to doesn't seem to work. When I download it, it only says: "This does not look like a tar file. Skipping header." and then nothing happens.

How are you downloading it? What browser, etc?

I'd love to try it out. It seems the website thats linked to doesn't like how the file was posted. Here is what im seeing

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
Location: http://cid-0a1b309241732506.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/visualboyadvance-m%5E_1.8.0.877-1%5E_x86-64.tar.gz
Line Number 120, Column 20:for (var i = 0; i < selfPageData.items.length; i++)
-------------------^

sorry, just my browser. Firefox must be allergic to windows live. Chrome found it just fine

vba-m in this incarnation works great. Ive got a game working at 350% vs. 220% on the old vba with express front-end. Thanks!

I only have one issue. I can't find the option for RTC(real time clock). Is there a way to turn this on?

It works at about %700 on a fresh start, but decreases to about 300 when i resume from suspend or close vba-m then restart within the same session.

An idea why?

oh, and thanks again, VBA-M works awesome beside the whole absence of RTC deally

miniyak said: It works at about %700 on a fresh start, but decreases to about 300 when i resume from suspend or close vba-m then restart within the same session.

An idea why?

oh, and thanks again, VBA-M works awesome beside the whole absence of RTC deally

Hi. Sorry for my super-late response, I really neglected maintaining this thread, huh? I don't know why it's lacking RTC. This particular one was snagged straight from the developer's site, so it might be leaving that out for now.

I just installed VBA M, using your instructions here (Which, I might add, were very simple and well done!). It all installed seemingly correctly, however whenever I try to load a ROM, it just freezes. I know it's not the ROM itself, since they worked when I used VBA Express. Any idea?

i know this sound windowsish... but restart, i had the same issue

if that fails reinstall vba-m (i might have.. idr)

i have this working fine in 64bit karmic except for occasional freezes

Could someone tell me if it is possible to install VBA on a flash drive for portable use? If so, how do I do it?

never tried but, i can play stepmania from external media so i sure its possible.

stepmania ships as a binary thats why its so easy just to drop the folder onto an external drive then run the executable file to start it (by creating a launcher)

maybe copying the folder from it location in the file system will work? (you'll need to access as root)

miniyak said:

I only have one issue. I can't find the option for RTC(real time clock). Is there a way to turn this on?

I have the same issue. Does anyone know how to have this option, or perhaps have something separate that could act similarly?

Regular "vbam" has a --rtc option. Maybe gvbam does too, but I haven't tried it.

Sorry for replying to an old thread, but in 10.10 vba doesnt show up in the games menu, or anywhere I look. It worked in 10.4, and was the best way I found to get vba working on ubuntu.

Great tut, :)

yeah i couldn't get it to work in mavrik or lucid

and it seemed to stop working reliably in karmic

so i haven't used it in a couple of months

any reports on the health of the project?

hey, i'm kinda new here and i dont know where else to post this, so here it is. i've got one problem: ive allready installed VBA-M and i'm using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. When i try to open VBA-M it just doesn't open, what can i do? or what i have to do to make this work ok?? i wanna play jazz jackrabbit 1 and i've installed Wine. So i don't know what else to do... please help. Thanks!;)

Hi! I know probably no one will reply, but I keep getting:

libcairomm-1.0-1 was not found in your repositories

Make sure you have all repositories enabled and updated libglibmm-2.4-1c2a was not found in your repositories Make sure you have all repositories enabled and updated libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a was not found in your repositories Make sure you have all repositories enabled and updated libpangomm-1.4-1 was not found in your repositories Make sure you have all repositories enabled and updated

And VBA-M does not appear at Games. Any ideas?

Hi,

There seems to be a good ppa for installing VBA-M from here:

https://launchpad.net/~hunter-kaller/+archive/ppa

You should be able to install VBA-M easily by adding this ppa and installing the vbam package (it seems to be working fine for me on amd64, Ubuntu 10.10).

Running the following commands in a terminal should work

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:hunter-kaller/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vbam

The latest builds have an option to turn on the realtime clock for those who need it. It can be found under "Options > Game Boy Advance" in VBA-M.

Thank you! It works!

I was able to install VBA-M as suggested by mesilliac. I am also able to open the emulator itself, however when I tried to load a game in, it did not load. Instead, whenever I tried to select the game I wanted to run, it would not get selected and it would stay on the screen to select a game to run. I am still able to leave that screen by pressing esc, however neither the open nor cancel button seems to respond. I tried to figure out why that might be the case however I was not able to find anyone who had a similar problem as to mine own. I will still look around and see what I might have not done or done incorrectly though. Any help from here would be greatly appreciated!

I am relatively new to Ubuntu and the whole Linux community so I'm pretty sure I might have botched something up. I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 and using the Gnome Shell

EDIT: Upon running gvbam in the terminal, it loaded fine. However when I try to load a ROM I get this error after pressing escape from the load file screen:

(gvbam:4517): glibmm-CRITICAL **: 
unhandled exception (type Glib::Error) in signal handler:
domain: g-key-file-error-quark
code  : 5
what  : Key file contains key 'flashSize' in group 'AGSE' which has value that cannot be interpreted.

I know that there probably won't be an answer, but does anyone know what can be done?

http://cid-0a1b309241732506.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/visualboyadvance-m%5E_1.8.0.877-1%5E_x86-64.tar.gz

I have tried to load this in both Firefox and Chrome--neither load :(

agardner@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install vbam
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package vbam

mesilliac said: Hi,

There seems to be a good ppa for installing VBA-M from here:

https://launchpad.net/~hunter-kaller/+archive/ppa

You should be able to install VBA-M easily by adding this ppa and installing the vbam package (it seems to be working fine for me on amd64, Ubuntu 10.10).

Running the following commands in a terminal should work

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:hunter-kaller/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vbam

Try doing that ceil210. The link you posted has not been working for sometime. What I quoted seemed to work well enough for me and most of the ROMs that I run work.

Erenith said: I was able to install VBA-M as suggested by mesilliac. I am also able to open the emulator itself, however when I tried to load a game in, it did not load. Instead, whenever I tried to select the game I wanted to run, it would not get selected and it would stay on the screen to select a game to run. I am still able to leave that screen by pressing esc, however neither the open nor cancel button seems to respond. I tried to figure out why that might be the case however I was not able to find anyone who had a similar problem as to mine own. I will still look around and see what I might have not done or done incorrectly though. Any help from here would be greatly appreciated!

I am relatively new to Ubuntu and the whole Linux community so I'm pretty sure I might have botched something up. I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 and using the Gnome Shell

EDIT: Upon running gvbam in the terminal, it loaded fine. However when I try to load a ROM I get this error after pressing escape from the load file screen:

(gvbam:4517): glibmm-CRITICAL **: 
unhandled exception (type Glib::Error) in signal handler:
domain: g-key-file-error-quark
code  : 5
what  : Key file contains key 'flashSize' in group 'AGSE' which has value that cannot be interpreted.

I figured out the problem as to that error that I had earlier. If there are others that had a similar error, then consult this page: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3201910&group_id=212795&atid=1023154 However, I now have a different problem: I had to reinstall ubuntu due to hard drive failure and when i reinstalled VBA-M using the PPA above, I was given this error when I ran it from terminal: ``` terminate called after throwing an instance of 'Glib::FileError' Aborted

Could someone possibly re-upload this package somewhere else? I don't have a skydrive account and I don't feel like making one, especially after just having created this account. Also this is another reason why I stopped using most microsoft products and services.