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2008-05-21 13:22:33

Use the Amazon MP3 Downloader on Fedora 9

If you're like me, you've probably upgraded your Fedora 8 host to Fedora 9 only to find that half of the stuff you use doesn't work anymore. I found another thing today, Amazon's MP3 downloader. Since I refuse to give any money to the evil empire that is the Apple iTunes music store, I buy my music from Amazon. Why? They're non-DRM'd, 256kbps, and MP3.
If you buy one song at a time, you can just buy it and download it without any helper application. However, if you purchase an entire album you HAVE to use their download utility. There is no option for Fedora 9, only 8. So download the Fedora 8 RPM and install it. It should work, right? Wrong.
It's dynamically linked to the version of OpenSSL that comes with Fedora 8. Fedora 9 has a brand new version which slightly changes the filenames. Upon installing, you'll be greeted with this lovely message:
# sudo rpm -Uvh amazonmp3.rpm warning: amazonmp3.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 70e6adf9 error: Failed dependencies: libcrypto.so.6 is needed by amazonmp3-1.0.3-1.i386 libssl.so.6 is needed by amazonmp3-1.0.3-1.i386
We know that we can fix this little issue later, so go ahead and install it without dependency checking:
# rpm -Uvh amazonmp3.rpm --nodeps
Fedora 9 updated their symbolic links to libcrypto.so.7 and libssl.so 7. This, however, is an easy fix. As root, goto /lib and link the real library to the filename that the stupid Amazon client is looking for:
# ln -s libcrypto.so.0.9.8g libcrypto.so.6 # ln -s libssl.so.0.9.8g libssl.so.6
There ya go. `amazonmp3` will now run from the command line. There is one little thing to do though. When you click the link to start the album download you'll get a download dialog box. Save the file somewhere first, then from the Amazon program, open it. It usually doesn't work if you try to open the file straight from the browser.

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12 comments


2008-06-05 20:32:37


Bill D. says...
Hey man, good job on this. I was pulling my hair out of my head trying to get it to work. I was almost there (I linked libcrypto.so.7 to libcrypto.so.6)

2008-06-05 20:54:06


slonkak says...
No problem. I know Amazon is just trying to make their linux software easy to use, but I wish they would have just released a tarball. Then everyone, no matter what flavor, could just make;make install;clean.

2008-06-10 14:34:17


Jeff says...
Thanks for the tutorial that is a big help. I was having this issue as well. I was searching all over for the tarball of the program but could not find it.

2008-06-10 14:52:26


slonkak says...
You're welcome. I wish there wasn't a need for a client at all, but what can ya do...

2008-10-01 21:32:26


michel says...
I tried this and got this message error: open of amazonmp3.rpm failed: No such file or directory I downloaded it with firefox.I'm new to linux so not sure what i am doing wrong.

2008-10-01 21:51:54


slonkak says...
@michel First, make sure you are in the same directory where Firefox downloaded the file to. By default, I believe that is a folder in your home directory called Downloads. So, assuming your username is michel, you'd have to:

cd /home/michel/Downloads

If that's not where the file was downloaded, just `cd` to whatever directory contains the RPM file. Then you can run the first command I listed. Do an `ls` first (without the quotes) to make sure that the filename is the same. With newer versions, Amazon may have changed the name of the file.

2008-10-01 22:05:55


michel says...
Thanks.downloaded using Konqueror then followed your steps and it worked fine.dont know why it did not work with firefox.

2008-12-13 23:52:33


Tom says...

Umm... still doesn't seem to work (at least with 64bit). Other libraries are winding up missing - some stuff like gtkmm.

2008-12-14 14:33:00


slonkak says...
It is possible that the program doesn't work on 64bit Linux, though I don't have any 64bit machines to test. Try these things:

- Install the file using the "nodeps" command I listed above.
- Figure out where it was installed to with `which amazonmp3` (It should be in /usr/bin)
- Find what libraries it is looking for via `ldd /usr/bin/amazonmp3`

You'll see which are found and which are not found. For the ones that aren't found, see if you system has a different version (like above with libcrypto and libssl). You can either `rpm -qa | grep gtkmm` or `find / -name "gtkmm*" -print`. Once you find them, create a symbolic from the version you have to whatever name amazonmp3 is looking for. That may get it working for you.

2009-11-29 14:45:14


argonius says...
amazonmp3 for fedora9 is not really running on fc10.
major problem is the missing libboost_system *???*

someone have a clue?

2009-11-29 22:40:09


slonkak says...
See if you can install boost and boost-devel via yum. If that doesn't work, you should be able to find a tarball of boost and compile it yourself or find an RPM online for it. Just doing a google search for libboost_system brought up lots of sites with RPMs. I'd try yum first though before you go rogue.

2009-11-30 06:35:53


anonymous says...
Look for an rpm which provides boost or libboost C++ libraries. If your version of amazonmp3 needs an earlier version, check the repository of an earlier distro.

2009-11-30 06:56:32


anon-e-mouse says...
amazonmp3 wasn't recognized on my 64-bit Arch system, but it worked under the 32-bit sub-environment I set up (thanks, Archwiki!). After downloading and unpacking the Ubuntu version (using archive manager), I "appropriated" a couple of things from Ubuntu 9.04 (the missing libboost libraries, Arch's version is too high), created a symbolic link from libcurl.so.3 to libcurl.so.4 (from the curl package), and installed libcanberra and bug-buddy packages (which unfortunately also added a lot of cruft). After saving the .amz file, I ran a script which called amazonmp3 from my 64-bit environment:

chroot /opt/arch32 /usr/bin/amazonmp3

and presto, downloaded an album! Note that your download directory has to be recognized by the 32-bit environment as well.


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