Run TeamViewer on Raspberry Pi

TeamViewer is a pretty popular remote access software but unfortunately it is not available for ARM-based devices such as Raspberry Pi 2. Luckily, there is a way to run TeamViewer on Raspberry Pi 2 using ExaGear Desktop, which allows to run x86 apps on Raspberry Pi devices.

We also successfully tested TeamViewer on Raspberry Pi 3 with ExaGear Desktop.

Below is a simple instruction on how to run TeamViewer on your RPi 2 or RPi3. Instruction is the same for both devices, you just need to use the right version of ExaGear Desktop. You can also find 2 more ways of running Remote Desktop on Raspberry Pi in one of our other posts.

Raspberry Pi test stand configuration

Model	Raspberry Pi 2 Model B	Raspberry Pi 3
Frequency	900 MHz	1200 MHz
Memory	1 GB RAM	1 GB RAM
Operating System	Raspbian from May 2015	Raspbian from May 2016
Software	TeamViewer v10, v11 Eltechs ExaGear Desktop for Raspberry Pi 2	TeamViewer v10, v11 Eltechs ExaGear Desktop for Raspberry Pi 3

TeamViewer installation instruction

Install ExaGear Desktop

1. Download ExaGear Desktop archive with installation packages and license key. Open Terminal (command line) and unpack the downloaded archive using the following command:

$ tar -xvzpf exagear-desktop-rpi2.tar.gz

2. Install and activate ExaGear on your ARM device by running install-exagear.sh script in the directory with deb packages and one license key:

$ sudo ./install-exagear.sh

Launch guest x86 system

3. Enter the guest x86 system using the following command:

$ exagear Starting the shell in the guest image /opt/exagear/images/debian-7-wine2g

4. Now you are in x86 environment that can be checked by running the ‘arch’ command:

$ arch i686

5. It is recommended to update apt-get repositories on the first launch of the guest system:

$ sudo apt-get update

Install TeamViewer

6. Download TeamViewer:

$ sudo apt-get install wget $ wget http://download.teamviewer.com/download/teamviewer_i386.deb

7. Install TeamViewer:

$ sudo dpkg -i teamviewer_i386.deb ; sudo apt-get install -f

8. Download wine1.6-2g-2g.tar.gz:

$ wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/wine1.6-2g-2g/wine1.6-2g-2g.tar.gz

9. Unpack and run teamviewer-fix-2g.sh script:

$ tar -xzvf wine1.6-2g-2g.tar.gz $ sudo ./teamviewer-fix-2g.sh

Run TeamViewer

Please note that TeamViewer doesn’t work properly at the first launch if you access Raspbian desktop via any remote access program. To overcome the issue please connect Raspberry Pi to monitor, then run TeamViewer.

You will see TeamViewer GUI, will be asked to accept license agreement and then will have TeamViewer ready to connect. Please setup unattended access and save the ID and password. After that you can disconnect Raspberry Pi from the monitor and you will have remote access to Raspbian desktop using saved ID and password. You will be able to connect remotely even after the device reboot (as teamviewer daemon will autostart automatically).

Final notes

There are two tricky and not obvious steps in the instruction above: 8 and 9. The fact is that TeamViewer for Linux is based on Windows version of it and uses Wine to run TeamViewer for Windows on Linux OS. Also there are two OS configurations of splitting of 4g virtual memory: (i) 3g for application and 1g for Linux kernel; (ii) 2g for application and 2g for Linux kernel. They are called 3g/1g and 2g/2g memory split respectively. In x86 world all Linux systems use 3g/1g memory split but Raspbian uses 2g/2g from March 2015 release. Unfortunately Wine does not support 2g/2g memory split and fails on that kernel.

We patched Wine to support 2g/2g memory split and built it. We placed the patched version of Wine in the archive wine1.6-2g-2g.tar.gz (Step 8) and attached teamviewer-fix-2g.sh script (Step 9) which copies all the necessary files. That patched Wine avoids fails of Wine and TeamViewer.

Please note that on Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi 1 we strongly recommend to set swap size at least 1GB (otherwice there might be not enough RAM for running TeamViewer). Here’s the instruction on how to set up swap space.

It is worth to note that with ExaGear Desktop you can run many other x86 apps on Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3. ExaGear also supports the first generation of Raspberry Pi and another ARM-based devices, such as Odroid, Banana Pi, Beagleboard, Cubox, Jetson, Cubieboard etc.