AWS Workspace Client on Ubuntu 22.10

AWSUbuntu / 1 min read

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 22.10. Everything went very smoothly, but there are some minor teething problems. One of them is getting the AWS Workspace client to work. This is how I fixed that.

Installing the Client

First add the repository to the system.

wget -q -O - https://workspaces-client-linux-public-key.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ADB332E7.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://d3nt0h4h6pmmc4.cloudfront.net/ubuntu focal main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/amazon-workspaces-clients.list
sudo apt-get update

Now install the client.

sudo apt-get install workspacesclient

Try to Run the Client

The executable doesn’t end up on my PATH, so execute with an absolute path.

/opt/workspacesclient/workspacesclient

But this breaks with a mysterious error message.

Process terminated. Couldn't find a valid ICU package installed on the system.
Set the configuration flag System.Globalization.Invariant to true if you want to run with no globalization support.
   at System.Environment.FailFast(System.String)
   at System.Globalization.GlobalizationMode.GetGlobalizationInvariantMode()
   at System.Globalization.GlobalizationMode..cctor()
   at System.TimeZoneInfo.GetDisplayName(TimeZoneDisplayNameType, System.String ByRef)
   at System.TimeZoneInfo..ctor(Byte[], System.String, Boolean)
   at System.TimeZoneInfo.GetTimeZoneFromTzData(Byte[], System.String)
   at System.TimeZoneInfo.GetLocalTimeZoneFromTzFile()
   at System.TimeZoneInfo+CachedData.CreateLocal()
   at System.CurrentSystemTimeZone..ctor()
   at System.TimeZone.get_CurrentTimeZone()
   at GLib.Marshaller..cctor()
   at GLib.Marshaller.StringToPtrGStrdup(System.String)
   at GLib.Global.set_ProgramName(System.String)
   at Gtk.Application.SetPrgname()
   at Gtk.Application.Init()
   at WorkSpacesClient.Gtk.Program.Initialize()
   at WorkSpacesClient.Gtk.Program.Main(System.String[])
Aborted (core dumped)

The Fix

This error can be resolved by setting an environment variable.

export DOTNET_SYSTEM_GLOBALIZATION_INVARIANT=1

Now try again. The client should launch without further issues.

AWS Workspaces client.

I have added the environment variable definition to my .profile file.