David R. Heffelfinger

  Ensode Technology, LLC

 
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Installing Amazon MP3 Downloader under Ubuntu 64 bit


Being a child of the 80's, I love listening to music I grew up with. Unfortunately, it seems most of the 80's compilation CDs out there made a conscious effort to find the suckiest songs of the 80's and put them together in a CD. It seemed like the really good music from that era had just but disappeared.

Today while browsing Amazon I ran into some MP3 downloads for some songs I hadn't heard in about 20 years, the good stuff that I thought had dissappeared, I, of course, became very eager to add these songs to my collection.

When downloading individual songs in Amazon, no special software is needed, however, the Amazon MP3 downloader is needed to download complete albums.

They have a few Linux versions for Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu. The only version of Ubuntu they support is Gutsy Gibbon, which is two versions behind the latest, Intrepid Ibex.

Feeling brave, I tried to install the Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon Amazon MP3 Downloader under Intrepid Ibex, unfortunately the installer failed, telling me that the architecture was wrong. The deb package available on Amazon is for i386, and I run the 64 bit version of Ubuntu Linux.

I googled around to see if there was a way to install 32 bit packages under 64 bit Ubuntu, I ran into getlibs.

getlibs is a script that downloads any missing libraries for any installed package.

In summary, what I had to do to install the Amazon MP3 Downloader under 64 bit Ubuntu was to get getlibs from http://www.boundlesssupremacy.com/Cappy/getlibs/getlibs-all.deb. Simply clicking on the link results in the package opening in GDebi, it should install without issues.

Once getlibs is installed, the Amazon MP3 Downloader needs to be installed, passing a parameter to ignore the architecture difference:

sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture amazonmp3.deb

This will install the package, it will be placed under /usr/bin/amazonmp3, however at this time it won't run properly because of missing libraries. In order to get the libraries, we need to run the getlibs script:

sudo getlibs /usr/bin/amazonmp3

At this point the application should be "good to go" and able to download MP3 albums from Amazon MP3 Downloads.

 
 
 
 
Comments:

Thanks David. Your solution worked great for me. I am happily shopping Amazon MP3s on my fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10 x64. I just upgraded today from 8.10 x86.

Posted by Scotty Delicious on December 06, 2008 at 06:22 AM EST #

Thank you very much for that information. I was up and running inside of 5 minutes.

Posted by 76.187.28.16 on December 19, 2008 at 12:03 AM EST #

Thanks David. Downloading within a couple of minutes.

Posted by UnklePhunky on December 19, 2008 at 06:53 PM EST #

Thanks man. Now my move to linux can be complete. ;)

Posted by Stephen Cox on December 21, 2008 at 02:49 AM EST #

Thanks for the work. Amazon MP3 is a great source for songs. Cheaper than Itunes for albums and no DMR. This hack will help my move to Ubuntu as well.

Posted by bobxnc on December 29, 2008 at 06:17 AM EST #

Great info! This should be posted on Amazon's site.

Posted by Tim on December 30, 2008 at 10:00 PM EST #

Hi, thanks for the much-appreciated information; it would have taken my son a reasonable amount of time longer to figure it out all alone. Now, we just need Debian/Ubuntu to support multiarch finally.

Posted by Jane Reed on January 05, 2009 at 11:23 AM EST #

Thanks. I'm glad they've got something for Intrepid Ibex now. Now if they can get the video downloader working in Linux, that would be great...

Posted by Aaron on January 19, 2009 at 01:29 AM EST #

You're awesome. I figured there would be some brave, intelligent soul out there with the same problem as me and an elegant solution. Many thanks!

Posted by Alex on February 10, 2009 at 07:52 PM EST #

Thanks David for your write-up. I ran into the same problem and reached the same conclusion with getlibs. I contacted Amazon's support and asked them to consider providing 64-bit packages in the future and gave them a link to this page to help them understand the problem. I'd recommend to anyone having this issue to contact Amazon with their 'Contact Us' link and specifying it's an Amazon Downloader Application issue asking for 64-bit support. I can't imagine it's all that hard to do since the work-around isn't difficult, just annoying.

Posted by Brion on February 11, 2009 at 07:43 AM EST #

What a music junkey!

Posted by jurica on February 11, 2009 at 03:29 PM EST #

Heya, thanks for the instructions! Amazon now has a deb download for Ubuntu 8.10, but still not for 64 bit. Your instructions worked perfectly and I'm listening to my new music right now.

Posted by Russ on February 11, 2009 at 08:44 PM EST #

At the time I wrote this entry, there was no Amazon MP3 Downloader for Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. Amazon has now provided one. One of these days I may update the entry. The information is still valid though.

Posted by David R. Heffelfinger on February 21, 2009 at 12:49 PM EST #

Excellent! Thanks for taking the time to post this.

Posted by Andy on March 04, 2009 at 05:10 AM EST #

Works like a charm! Exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!

Posted by 97.100.140.97 on March 27, 2009 at 03:30 AM EDT #

Excellent 8.10 Ibex, Perfect!

Posted by Andrew on March 31, 2009 at 07:37 PM EDT #

btw - Your link for getlibs at boundlesssupremecy.com is broken. Readers can get getlibs at:
http://frozenfox.freehostia.com/cappy/getlibs-all.deb

Thanks again for the tip.

Posted by bobxnc on May 26, 2009 at 08:49 AM EDT #

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