Google Earth 5 crashes on Linux

Posted on by acme

Google Earth 5 for Linux crashes. You can solve this problem by renaming libcrypto.so.0.9.8 to something else. But be careful, there are probably more than one file with this name on your hard disk drive.
Be sure, the file you rename resides in the googleearth folder.
Do the following:

find / -xdev -name "libcrypto.so*" | grep google

change into the directory you found above, and rename the libcrypto.so.0.9.8 file into
something else:

cd <googleearth directory>
mv libcrypto.so.0.9.8 libcrypto.so.0.9.8.nouse

Another problem may be, your google installation claims you don’t have an appropriate driver installed. Most likely the libGl.so library can’t be found by googleearth, and so it thinks you don’t have on OpenGL capable GFX card running, or you didn’t installed the graphics drivers for you card correctly.
This can happen, if you’ve e.g. followed the instructions on this site and installed new non-repository Nvidia driver in order to use the new VDPAU functionality (hardware accelerated H.264 decoding (MPEG4/AVC))

You can solve this problem by removing the manually installed driver and install the newest Nvidia driver (180.27) from a experimental repository.
Remove the old driver first by:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-180.25-pkg2.run --uninstall

and add this line into /etc/apt/sources.list:

## nvidia
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/ubuntu intrepid main

Perform an apt-get update and a

apt-cache search nvidia | egrep -i "(180|vdpau)"

and install the repos from your search result.
Restart KDE or Gnome.
Attention:
I didn’t manage to compile mplayer-vdpau. It gave me a lot of errors. But I could still use the previously compiled mplayer-vdpau.
As soon as I know what’s wrong with the compilation, I will report back, because I intent to use the Nvidia driver from the repo, since it’s the cleanest way.
Consider:
Please consider, that I’m using a x86_64 Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, and that the described Howto might not work for you, and your distro.
UPDATE
I had trouble to compile mplayer-vdpau-3402051 since I installed the new binary Nvidia driver 180.27 from repository (see above).
I’ve found how to fix the problem, but I don’t have the slightest clue, what causes this mistake.
I’ve simply deleted in libvo/vo_vdpau.c all behind line 1339. All below seems to be double.
If you don’t have more lines than this, then your code isn’t affected I think.
This is what I got on the command line:

libvo/vo_vdpau.c: At top level:
libvo/vo_vdpau.c:1412: error: redefinition of 'info'
libvo/vo_vdpau.c:72: error: previous definition of 'info' was here
libvo/vo_vdpau.c:1419: error: redefinition of 'video_out_vdpau'
libvo/vo_vdpau.c:79: error: previous definition of 'video_out_vdpau' was here

And here’s the full compilation output.

19 thoughts on “Google Earth 5 crashes on Linux”

  1. Works great . the problem was libcrypto as you said.

    ”
    ./googleearth-bin: relocation error: /usr/lib/i686/cmov/libssl.so.0.9.8: symbol BIO_test_flags, version OPENSSL_0.9.8 not defined in file libcrypto.so.0.9.8 with link time reference
    ”

    renaming the file => problem solved.
    Thanks

  2. renaming libcrypto.so.0.9.8 solved my issue on Jaunty 9.4 alpha 4 x86_64 – thanks!

  6. I can’t do this fix of changing the libcrypto because the folder is locked. Can you offer some advice on that?

  8. Thanks for the help. Renaming the file worked and now Google Earth 5 works great in ubuntu 8.0 with the Nvidia 9500GT graphics card. Thanks a million.

    Dick in Arizona

  9. Thanks!
    Tip 1 (renaming libcrypto.so.0.9.8) worked for me with Intrepid 8.10 on a Dell Inspiron 8500 with Nvidia.

  10. renaming the libcrypto file worked for me too on Kubuntu 8.10 with kde4.2 from the ppa

    thanks!

  11. I must be real special. Renamed libcrypto as recommended. Now, instead of start/crash, I get nothing, nada, no effort, no message. Am working on installing Nvidia 180.29. Jury’s still out. Ubuntu 8.10, Nvidia GeForce 9400.

  12. @Tom
    Sorry for the silly question, but are you launching googleearth from command line?
    And which user are you using to start googleearth?
    If you are on Ubuntu, don’t try to install NVIDIA 180.29 manually. Please use this repository:
    https://launchpad.net/~anders-kaseorg/+archive/ppa

    Regards,
    Andreas

  13. Cheers. Renaming libcrypto in google folder did the trick. Usin Intrepid 8.10, Nvidia 9300 driver 180.11

  14. There is another simple way to resolve the problem:

    1 Put the router (or modem) OFF
    2 Open Google Earth
    3 Go to “TOOLS”
    4 “OPTIONS”
    5″GENERAL”
    6 Undo “SHOW STARTUP TIPS”
    7 OK
    8 Close the program
    9 Put the router on
    10 Open Google Earth… and have a nice tour..!!

  17. when i rename libcrypto.so.0.9.8 nothing at all happens when i try to start GE.

    undoing “show startup tips” doesn’t work either.

    the program starts, goes for maybe 5 secs (just before globe appears on “space” screen), then closes. no error msg.

  18. sorry…should have said: running latest linux version of GE on Ubuntu 8.04 (all updates) on a Thinkpad x60. A few months ago, sometimes it would work, sometimes not. now never works.

    thx.

  19. Carson’s trick worked for me on Ubuntu 10.04 and Google Earth 5.2. However, it crashes before I can even change the options. What I did instead was un-check ‘Show these tips at startup’ and clicked ‘OK’ really quickly before it crashed. On next run, it worked fine.

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