Install an Application correctly

Support and Help
,
1

Ubuntu Version:
25.10 latest

Desktop Environment :
Ubuntu desktop

Problem Description:
I have created a new user ….my wife and prepared her desk top which she is itching to learn. I do however have one question that is a minor problem.

I have to install on her “side / local user” the following Desktop Application “IBKR Trading Desk” which is for Linux. ntws-latest-standalone-linux-x64.sh

Does her “local” account need to have install permission? If this is the case how do I activate for this occasion.?

I downloaded package to the general location designated “Download folder” I have tried to install via Terminal but all her Terminal shows is sw ~/Downloads (cd~/Downloads as shown on IBKR instructions.)

This is what is shown on IBKR website for Linux instructions.

a.) Go to the directory where the installer was downloaded: cd , for example cd ~/Downloads.

b.) Make the installer executable: chmod u+x , for example chmod u+x tws-latest-standalone-linux-x86.sh

c.) Run the installer to start the wizard: ./, for example ./tws-latest-standalone-linux-x86.sh

How do I install the correct way ? …..

What is the process and method? ……

What am I doing wrong? ….

The programme only needs to be on her user account and not on my Admin account.

Many thanks in advance,

Relevant System Information:
Standard full Ubuntu install….Own dedicated Samsung EVO SSD (no dual boot from shared Windows OS drive)

1 Like
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Are you saying you cannot find tws-latest-standalone-linux-x86.sh?

Where did you download it? Have you checked your own /Downloads folder? If you downloaded this file when you were logged in as user it would download to your download folder unless you directed the web browser to download it to somewhere else.

When your wife logs in to her account she will be able to download files. But she will not be able to install applications or run files like this one because she does not have the authority you have.

I suggest two things. 1) the file should be in your wife’s Home folder in her Downloads folder or a folder created just to hold that file and into which you want the application to be installed in. 2) Your wife logs in but you run the tws-latest-standalone-linux-x86.sh file and you enter your password when the system asks for authentication.

Regards

3

Hi, graymech thanks for assistance, apprciated.

Are you saying you cannot find tws-latest-standalone-linux-x86.sh? No, we have it.

Where did you download it? Direct from IBKR download OS system site. LInux version

Have you checked your own /Downloads folder? Yes and it is not in there as I did not download it to my account as I will not be using it. I downloaded it whilst in her Local account when logged in and there it is.

If you downloaded this file when you were logged in as user it would download to your download folder unless you directed the web browser to download it to somewhere else. No I downloaded it from IBKR website whilst in my wifes Local account into Downloads folder and there it resides.

I suggest two things. 1) the file should be in your wife’s Home folder in her Downloads folder . It is.

A folder created just to hold that file and into which you want the application to be installed in. That means I am just creating another folder.

2) Your wife logs in but you run the tws-latest-standalone-linux-x86.sh file . OK ….how.b.) Make the installer executable: chmod u+x , for example chmod u+x tws-latest-standalone-linux-x86.sh

.) Run the installer to start the wizard: ./, for example ./tws-latest-standalone-linux-x86.sh How?

and you enter your password when the system asks for authentication. No issue done many times already.

How do I install the correct way ? ….

What is the process and method? ……

What am I doing wrong? ….

The programme only needs to be on her user account and not on my Admin account. Thanks so far.

4

I’ll try to use code blocks so it’s easier for you to understand what to do and how.

a.) Go to the directory where the installer was downloaded:

cd ~/Downloads

b.) Make the installer executable:

chmod u+x tws-latest-standalone-linux-x86.sh

c.) Run the installer to start the wizard:

./tws-latest-standalone-linux-x86.sh

Does that help?

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6

Just out of curiosity I downloaded and installed the program … It’s very simple actually.

cd ~/Downloads                                   # go to the directory
chmod u+x ntws-latest-standalone-linux-x64.sh    # make the file executable
./ntws-latest-standalone-linux-x64.sh            # run it

(do not type in the ‘#’ or anything after it, those are comments meant for you, not for your computer …)

The installer downloads a specific Java Runtime it needs and then starts an ‘install4j’ wizard.
At this point it complained about ‘libxcb-cursor’ not being installed and aborted. I ran ‘sudo apt install libxcb-cursor0’ (and entered my password) to install that missing library. If your wife’s account isn’t allowed to run ‘sudo’ you might have to log out at this point and login in with your administrator account. Might not happen on your machine, but if it does, that’s how to fix it. I than re-ran the installer.
It asked where to install to (defaulting to a directory named ntws inside my home directory) and proceeded
to put everything there. It even installed a desktop icon (probably not all that useful on mainline Ubuntu, but
I’m running XUbuntu and the XFCE Desktop environment works just fine with icons on the desktop) and
a .desktop file in ‘~/.local/share/applications/’ so it would come up in the application overview in Gnome.

2 Likes
7

I was successful in getting further than before and got to the point where the install window was open and allowed me to install the IBKR Trading Desk. However when opening / launching I get the IBKR loading window and then it just snaps back shut / closes and that’s it. It’s there but wont open.

So I am now ….ALMOST….there.

I will be emailing IBKR to ask for assistance to get their take on situation………UNLESS this wonderful UBUNTU community has the solution.

8

Do not use sudo but run the script as the user that is supposed to later run the application, the script is clearly designed for exactly that purpose if you look inside and read what it does …

It will install its own copy of the Java runtime in the application directory, then install the executable .jar file and run the installer from this to put the application in place. If you do this with sudo, all permissions will be wrong and the application will not be able to run completely.

Clean up the directory the installer created and re-run the commands from the website by the letter (note that spaces and capitalisation matter on Linux so make sure what you have in the terminal matches exactly what’s on the website). That way all directories and files it creates will be owned by the user and should be runnable later on.

9

Thankfully I didn’t use sudo. I just followed the instructions to the letter and when entering commands double checked the input. As said, it all seemed to have worked and then did get my IBKR window with the IBKR logo running and the dialogue say it was loading the application,…..and then just stopped and closed.

I know that at some point it will work which is what gives me hope….Thanks

Do you think one should install the full Java package to cover all angles?…Further on after more research. I found…

Method A: Apt Installation for Ubuntu 25.04 and 25.10#

This method works exclusively on Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) and Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka). These are the only versions with officially documented OpenJDK 25 packages.

Skip this section if running Ubuntu 24.04 or earlier.

Install the Java Development Kit

The JDK includes the compiler, debugger, and all development tools:

sudo apt install openjdk-25-jdk

The package manager displays download size and disk space requirements. Press Y and Enter to confirm.

Install Only the Runtime Environment

For production systems running Java applications without development needs:

sudo apt install openjdk-25-jre

The JRE is smaller and excludes development tools, making it suitable forproduction deployments.

Verify Installation

Check Java runtime version:

java -version

For JDK installations, verify the compiler:

javac -version

Both commands should display Java 25 version information.

I found this above on

https://virtarix.com/blog/technical-guide/install-java-25-on-ubuntu-using-apt-get/

Would it do any harm just to install “The Run Time Environment 25-jre and see if the IBKR Linux application runs. I may be wrong but it may be that the current IBKR Linux distribution works happily in the v24.+ LTS of ubuntu but needs the new version of Java updated to reflect 25.10 Ubuntu (Questing Quokka).

Thanks

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I may be wrong but it may be that the current IBKR Linux distribution works happily in the v24.+ LTS of ubuntu but needs the new version of Java updated to reflect 25.10 Ubuntu (Questing Quokka).

Good guess! I don’t think your Java version needs to be any newer but I could be wrong too. Have a look at okoyl’s notes on running that software on Linux [1]. This is more of an IBKR issue and less of an Ubuntu-based issue, so you could also contact their support [2] along with solving the issue with us.

Good luck and let us know if you run into more troubles past Java that we could help you with!

1: GitHub - Okoyl/ibkr-desktop-linux: Run IBKR Desktop reliably on Linux by replacing the bundled 32-bit JVM with a modern 64-bit JVM under Wine. Improves stability, performance, and allows custom JVM tuning. · GitHub

2: https://brokerage.ibkr.com/en/support/individuals.php

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It surely will not do any harm (the jre is a fully supported Ubuntu package), but I’d expect that your app is designed in a way that it will always try to use the jre it installed itself anyway, so you are likely just wasting disk space by installing the jre from the archive…

Did you get any error message in the terminal window where you ran the installer after the window closed ?

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The program installs its own JRE into a subdirectory of ~/.local/share/i4j_jres/. Unless you set some options in the starter script (the file ‘ntws’ in the directory you installed the program into) it will use that and any other JRE on your system will be completely disregarded.

Try running the program from the command line. That will give it a place to show various warnings and error messages which would get hidden if you start the program graphically. To do that, change to the directory where you installed the program and then enter ./ntws

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OK, I had aresponse from IBKR. They say to…..

==

Dear Client, Thank you for contacting Interactive Brokers. The loading screen appearing and then quitting is a known issue on Linux. Most Commonly caused by a missing libxcb-cursor system library. Please follow the steps below to resolve it:

Step1. Install the required library Open a Terminal and run the following commands:

1. sudo apt-get update

2. sudo apt-get install libxcb-cursor0

Enter your sudo password when prompted.

Step 2: Re-launch IBKR Desktop

Once the linbrary is installed, try launching our application again via desktop short cut. Additional note on Installation permissions:

Please also ensure that our desktop application from launching or updating correctly. If the installation was performed as root, please reinstall using a standard user account.

System Compatibility: Ubuntu 25.10 uses a Linux Kernel well above our minimum requirement of Kernel 5.15, so your system is fully compatible with IBKR Desktop. Please also refer to this link….Why can I not run or update IBKR Desktop?:

==

So in Terminal as administrator run the command

sudo apt-get install libxcb-cursor0 This I have now done.

Then as the IBKR programme was intalled on Local account side and not on the adminstrator side ,run the same command. How ever one can’t do that unless one give permmision to that local acc/user (my wife) (NOTE she will never need to use terminal anyway).

So can a good soul give me or point me to the clear idiot proof newbie isnstructions on how to do this. At least I am somwht further down the line than I was before.

Much appreciated.

14

Anything you install as administrator with apt is available system wide to all users, your wife will not need any special permission, the package you installed will be available to her as well, just log in with her account and try to run the application, it should now start and keep running…

3 Likes
15

Hello all, Sorry for delay in updating. Personal things took over but thankfully all 100% back to normal.

So I know that the installation and running of Ubuntu v 25.10 latest is absolutely rock solid. My interaction with IBKR which is the sort of stumbling block is “almost there”. They recommend FULL installation of Java even though I did the …

==

1. sudo apt-get update

2. sudo apt-get install libxcb-cursor0

Enter your sudo password when prompted.

==

However would I need to install the above command on my wife’s Local account and bearing this in mind, if I did this sudo command on my Admin side ….is the relevance of this installation accessible on the local account ? or must I run this command on her Local account? and if so, how is this done.

So there are 3 methods for installing Java.

1.How to Install the Official Oracle Java on APT based Linux Distributions, 2.Install the Official Oracle Java on RPM based Linux Distributions, 3.Install the Official Oracle Java on other Linux Distributions

Question: Which is the easiest / simplest / recommended method.

If you can access this IBKR help page you can see more detail.

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/general/contact/newContact/contact.php

If not I can paste copy of content.

Next question: Admin v root

Like windows, there is always and “Admin” and then as in my case my wife has “Local Account” without “Admin rights”. I have created the same in Ubuntu. When we talk about “Admin” in windows and “root” in Linux…..are they the same thing just name difference ?…. because in the instructions from IBKR on the installation of Java they refer to “root” installation.

I ask, if when she opens her Local account and say, we have installed Java on my Admin / root as per your upcoming advice pertaining to my question, will a programme that needs Java automatically use what has been installed by the Admin / root. Because we know that if one tries to install or use terminal as Local it prevents you from doing so. (safety net).

Does / would a local account use the same resources (Java) that have been installed by the Admin ie should the IBKR application that has been installed on the Local account have automatic access to the Java application to run correctly on her Local desktop.

Thanks for your time on this as I am determined to solve this issue wit h your expert input.

16

In Ubuntu admin or root authority are given by ‘sudo’ group.

you may list your groups from terminal with command groups

If needed you may give admin authority (sudo group) to your wife with

sudo adduser <wife-userid> sudo

and then remove authority with

sudo deluser <wife-userid> sudo

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If you install something using sudo apt-get install then it’s a system wide installation and whatever you install is available to all users.

I’m a bit surprised that IBKR recommend an installation of Oracle Java, since the installation package they provide already installs a full OpenJDK JRE (Java Runtime Environment) into ‘~/.local/share/i4j_jres/<long random looking string that’s probably some kind of ID>/17.0.10.0.101-zulu-nojavafx_64/’. On the other hand Oracle really doesn’t like it if anyone redistributes their JVM, so …

Since Ubuntu uses apt for package installation, you should use the first option when installing Oracle Java. The second one is for Fedora and other distributions using packages in RPM-format. The third one is probably just an archive you have to unpack and manually put where it’s supposed to go; would probably work too, but is a lot more likely to cause problems later on.

‘root’ and ‘Admin’ refer to the same thing, usually. There are server programs that have their own account system and in some of them there’s a privileged ‘Admin’ account, but in general the user name ‘root’ on Linux based OSs refers to the privileged administrative account. When you run a command with ‘sudo’ then you’re switching to the root user for this one command (sudo=switch user and do).

As for getting the program to run using a specific JVM, that’s a lot more complicated. There’s a start script for the program named ntws. It’s an 800 line shell script. As far as I can tell it tries to find java in several places and then uses one of the found ones, but I haven’t followed it through to the point where I understand what it does and how. You might have to change some settings in this script to force it to use a specific JVM.

18

It’s even more surprising that they would recommend Oracle when they included Azul’s jre. If you need a system-wide java runtime installed why not download a jre directly from Azul? They’ve have java versions 8,11,17,21,25 and 26 as deb packages for ubuntu. And it’s known to work with IBKR. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to introduce another component that might not work with the application, adding complexity to the process and thus require even more technical support.

I installed the IBKR application as an standard user (unprivileged) and got as far as it needing an account login which I don’t have. The installation went off without a hitch (I already had libxcb-cursor installed for some reason).

19

Thank you all for the excellent information you have provided.
gpmitch, can you kindly tell me the process and what commands you used in sequence to install IBKR.

Now on a second point, can you give me the process / sequence / commands on how to uninstall the IBKR app I did install on her local account so that I can do a clean correct install as you did.

Where you said “I installed the IBKR application as an standard user (unprivileged) and got as far as it needing an account login which I don’t have.” does this mean as a “admin sole user” and not an additional “local user (wife) ” such as my set up.

I saw the point from hdd-gehrke about when using *sudo apt-get install “*it’s a system wide installation and whatever you install is available to all users.”

Would I need install the IBKR app on my admin side and then somehow have it show up on wife’s Local account to use and any input such as Logins / saved items / charts etc saved on her side so that it would work without me needing to login as main user. For example she turns on computer and is presented with 2 login check boxes …..I am not available and only she logs in as Local user.

Will she have access to the IBKR app.?

I am getting there :man_teacher:

This is quite a learning curve for me and am thankful for such a great community whose help is so valuable.

UPDATE: Sunday 12th April 14.45. I tried again to reinstall and I got as far as the small IBKR window attempting to launch but still no further along. I did allow for my wife Local acc to be able to sudo and in particular me so I could install and unistall when needed.

So can someone / tell / show me the terminal procedure input text on how to uninstall the IBKR application. At least I will be back to square one and take it further with IBKR.

Just why I cant get past the small black IBKR loading window is beyond me…..at present.!!!

20

First a bit of background: an administrative user is different from a normal user in one and only one way: he / she is allowed to use sudo to act as root. This is configured through the configuration file /etc/sudoers which says that members of the group ‘sudo’ are allowed to execute any command they want as root.

So if you’re an administrative user and don’t use sudo the results are the same as working as any other user. So whether @gpmitch and I used our normal (probably administrative) account or a completely new account we made just for trying the installation process doesn’t matter.

Regarding the newest state of affairs (splash screen for the program is shown but program doesn’t start): have you tried doing what I recommended in the second paragraph of post #10 (start the program from the terminal to see whether it prints any errors in the terminal) ?

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Yes, though I basically followed the same set of instructions that you posted earlier in the thread, However, could you post the instructions that IBKR gave to make their application work with a system-wide Oracle Java installation? The link you posted only went to IBKR’s contact page. I have an Oracle JRE installed and after removing the locally installed Azul’s Zulu JRE, I couldn’t get the program to launch with Oracle’s. I’m somewhat gobsmacked that they would even suggest using Oracle and now I’m curious what steps they recommended to make it work.

I don’t know what the state of the installation is now, so I would recommend manually deleting any IBKR files and directories in your wife’s home directory.

  1. $ rm ~/Desktop/'IBKR Desktop.desktop'
  2. $ rm -r ~/.cache/'IBKR Desktop' ~/.cache/install4j ~/.cache/JNA
  3. $ rm -r ~/ntws
  4. $ rm ~/.local/share/applications/install4j*.desktop
  5. $ rm -r ~/.local/share/i4j_jres ~/.local/share/'IBKR Desktop'

No. On my system I have set up a test-user standard account (no sudo privilege) that I use for troubleshooting issues, test configurations, tested local installs of applications, etc. That’s the account I used to install the IBKR application.

No. The only thing you would need admin privileges for is to manually install the libxcb-cursor0 package using apt or apt-get. I believe you mentioned already doing that upthread, so there is no further requirement for the use of admin privileges. From here on out everything should be performed with standard user privilege.

If it’s installed correctly in her home directory, yes.

There is a pop-under window that comes up (or under as it were) when attempting to login. You have to clear that window (mouse over it and click the “X”) before proceeding further.

IBKR with pop-under window
IBKR with pop-under window1248×702 385 KB

However, if you are getting this far then the installation succeeded. Any further issue then is within the application which IBKR will have to provide technical assistance with as I don’t suppose anyone here who has responded has an account with them.