ShowEQ. Official Homepage http://www.showeq.net

Installing ShowEQ for Project1999 in 2020

Last updated: January 22, 2020

4 min readNov 2, 2018

October 17, 2019 Update: Free free to join our Reddit community.

This is part of a multi-part series:

Preface

Installing ShowEQ in 2019 is, well, a strange thing to do. However, if you have also fallen into depression lately, and want to relive a simpler time from 1999, continue reading:

Step 1: Downloading ShowEQ

First, Download the following file from ShowEQ’s official SourceForge and extract it using the following command.

$: tar xvf showeq-5.2.2.0.tar.bz2

Step 2: Download & Install Qt3

ShowEQ relies on the Qt development SDK, unfortunately the version of Qt used by ShowEQ, Qt3, has been discontinued since 2012. For this, you have two options. If you are really lazy, you can use an old version of Linux from 2012 or 2014 back when packages were still available. I do not recommend this approach for security reasons in general.

The option that I will cover is building Qt3 from scratch on Linux Mint 19.

First download Qt3 from it’s official site. The final version of Qt3 is 3.3.8B. Please ensure you have the following packages installed on your system, which will give you libc, gcc, g++, make, and other tools necessary for building packages from scratch on Linux.

$: apt install build-essential
$: apt install libx11-dev libxext-dev

Then you should be able to execute the following commands. Important: if you do not run configure with the “-thread” option, libqt-mt will not be built and installation of ShowEQ will fail.

$: wget https://download.qt.io/archive/qt/3/qt-x11-free-3.3.8b.tar.gz
$: tar xvf qt-x11-free-3.3.8b.tar.gz
$: cd qt-x11-free-3.3.8b/
$: ./configure -threadThis is the Qt/X11 Open Source Edition.You are licensed to use this software under the terms of either
the Q Public License (QPL) or the GNU General Public License (GPL)
versions 2 or 3.Type 'Q' to view the Q Public License.
Type '2' to view the GNU General Public License version 2.
Type '3' to view the GNU General Public License version 3.
Type 'yes' to accept this license offer.
Type 'no' to decline this license offer.Do you accept the terms of either license? 
yes<Many messages generated>$: make

The package should produce many individual compile messages after this and some warnings, which are OK.

Finally, after waiting for about 2 months…

The Qt library is now built in ./lib
The Qt examples are built in the directories in ./examples
The Qt tutorials are built in the directories in ./tutorialEnjoy!   - the Trolltech team

Take this entire compiled directory and move it to /usr/local/qt3.

$: cd ..
$: sudo mv qt-x11-free-3.3.8b /usr/local/qt3

Now, we need to update our library config to see the QT3 binaries. We will edit the system’s /etc/ld.so.conf file, to include our new library directory. Finally run “ldconfig” to update the system’s library cache.

$: sudo pico /etc/ld.so.conf
<< Add "/usr/local/qt3/lib" to the bottom line >>
<< Press Ctrl-X, then Press 'Y' and Enter to exit and save >>$: sudo ldconfig

Adding “/usr/local/qt3/lib” to /etc/ld.so.conf

Step 3: Patch & Install ShowEQ

Now, we will go back to installing ShowEQ. First, there’s some additional dependencies for ShowEQ. Specifically, the libraries libpcap-dev, libz-dev, and libgdbm-dev. Install them with the following command.

$: apt install libpcap-dev libz-dev libgdbm-dev

After that, we need to apply a patch to ShowEQ just to make it install. This is mostly due to changes in the C library throughout the years, in which previously acceptable syntax is now ambiguous.

There is a patch available by user ‘cnelson’ on github that fixes this issue. To apply the patch, perform the following commands.

$: wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/cnelson/9b42986d3e98ee7431bf/raw/70670d9ad7609753d087ec6f85663b6bbcd4a9fa/showeq5220.patch
$: patch -p1 < showeq5220.patch

We need to add one more minor patch, specifically comment out line ‘2211’ in ‘src/everquest.h’. You can use the following commands for this:

$: pico src/everquest.h
<< Ctrl+Shift+_ to open the GOTO Line Option, Type '2211' then Enter>>
<< Prepend '//' to comment out the line >>
<< Press Ctrl-X, then Press 'Y' and Enter to exit and save >>

Finally, compile and install ShowEQ.

$: ./configure
$: make
$: sudo make install

Step 4: Configure & Run ShowEQ

Now, ShowEQ is installed in /usr/local/bin/showeq. If your ethernet adapter is not ‘eth0’ you will need to edit the configuration file in /usr/local/share/showeq/seqdef.xml. Specifically, edit the “string value” with the name of your ethernet adapter.

<?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE seqpreferences SYSTEM "seqpref.dtd">
<!-- ============================================================= -->
<!-- NOTE: You'll save yourself a LOT of grief if you don't edit this 
     file, it should only need to be edited by developers and those
     that run multiple ShowEQ instances who are trying to maintain site 
     default preferences -->
<!-- ============================================================= -->
<seqpreferences version="1.0" >
<!-- ============================================================= -->
 <section name="Network" >
  <property name="Device" >
   <string value="eth0" />
   <comment>your network device</comment>
  </property>

Now, you should be able to launch ShowEQ. Use the following command:

$: sudo showeq

Now you have a working version of ShowEQ running on a modern Linux distribution. Stay tuned for additional blogposts on how to use the tools and how to make it work for choice private servers.

Did that work for you? Find it helpful? Please leave a comment below!

Installing ShowEQ for Project1999 in 2020

Last updated: January 22, 2020

Written by Eratosthenes