How to: install uniCenta POS on Ubuntu

uniCenta oPOS is a proven, reliable Touchscreen Point Of Sale application that meets the needs of a wide-range of businesses.

This guide is intended as a relatively easy step by step guide to:

• Install uniCenta oPOS on Ubuntu.

Requirements:

• Ubuntu 12.04 or later installed.
• Touchscreen (optional)

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1. Install Oracle Java 7 JRE or JDK.

• uniCenta oPOS requires Oracle Java 7 JRE to be installed.
• More information about Java on Ubuntu available here.
• The easiest way I have found is to install Java on Ubuntu is via the Web Upd8 PPA .
• First add the PPA. Open a Terminal Window and enter :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update

• A good idea to minimise any Java conflicts is to remove OpenJDK.  open a Terminal Window and enter :

sudo apt-get remove --purge openjdk*

• To install Oracle Java 7 version open a Terminal Window and enter :

sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer

• Tip: Top check the Java version installed on your system open a terminal and enter :

java -version

2. Download and install uniCenta oPOS.

• As of writing this the latest version available is version 3.02, but this version does not seem to work on Ubuntu 12.04 or higher yet. 
• This guide will install version 3.01 which does work with Ubuntu.
• Open the Terminal window and enter :

mkdir /tmp/unicenta
cd /tmp/unicenta

• Then for 32bit systems download and install the 32bit version with :

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/unicentaopos/files/app/Linux/unicentaopos-3.01-linux-installer.run
sudo chmod +x unicentaopos-3.01-linux-installer.run
sudo ./unicentaopos-3.01-linux-installer.run

• For 64bit systems download and install the 64bit version with :

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/unicentaopos/files/app/Linux/unicentaopos-3.01-linux-x64-installer.run
sudo chmod +x unicentaopos-3.01-linux-x64-installer.run
sudo ./unicentaopos-3.01-linux-x64-installer.run

• Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the install.

3. Fix uniCenta oPOS launcher.

• uniCenta oPOS creates a fautly desktop launcher icon in Ubuntu.
• To fix this we need to first move and fix the launcher, open a terminal and enter:

cd ~/Desktop
sudo sed 's/Exec/#Exec/g' "uniCenta oPOS.desktop" > /tmp/.unicenta.desktop
sudo echo -e "\nExec=sh /opt/unicentaopos-3.01/start.sh" >> /tmp/.unicenta.desktop
sudo rm "uniCenta oPOS.desktop"
sudo mv /tmp/.unicenta.desktop "/usr/share/applications/uniCenta oPOS.desktop"

4. Fix start.sh

• As strange as it may seem, the start.sh file has control characters (^M) in that prevents the program from running correctly on Linux.
• To fix this we create a new start.sh file in the installation directory with the non printable characters removed.

sudo cat /opt/unicentaopos-3.01/start.sh | sed 's/\o015//g' > /tmp/.start.sh
sudo mv /opt/unicentaopos-3.01/start.sh /opt/unicentaopos-3.01/start-original.sh 
sudo mv /tmp/.start.sh /opt/unicentaopos-3.01/start.sh

• All that is left to do is to make the start.sh file executable:

sudo chmod +x /opt/unicentaopos-3.01/start.sh

• You will now be able to find uniCenta in the Dash and start the application.