problem with gdebi (SolydX, ee) [SOLVED]

[amnesix]

Hi, there ...

I'm relatively new to ee. I have a few very minor problems, and I —for me— major : gdebi doesn't work. It starts normal, but when I click on «install package», gdebi closes.

When I try to launch gdebi through a terminal, it goes so :

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olivier@bigleon:~/dwnld$ sudo gdebi skypeforlinux-64.deb 
[sudo] password for olivier: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
Reading state information... Done

Do you want to install the software package? [y/N]:
/usr/bin/gdebi:113: FutureWarning: Possible nested set at position 1
  c = findall("[[(](\S+)/\S+[])]", msg)[0].lower()

[ilu]

You are not alone, It's this bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=926633. No reaction so far so itdoesn't seem to be widespread - that's why I think it's skype not gdebi. The report doesn't say which package the guy tried to install. Maybe try to install another package to check?

If you don't feel up to bug hunting - and if you really insist on installing that spyware (have you read their (no)privacy notice?) - I'd say try the flatpak or snap. I'm not a friend of neither snap nor flatpak but in this case it might be an acceptable solution. Both systems establish a MS Win alike software system (you could say appstore) on Linux.

The flatpak version is newer and I'd prefer flatpak anyway. You need to install the flatpak package from the repo first. If you decide to try snap, the repo package name ist snapd.

Maybe wait if anybody else here has some better advice. I'm not a skype user as you probably guessed

[amnesix]

Ho, it is definitely gdebi. In my custom setup, I have 6 .debs,that are not in repository, and none of those installed through gdebi. dpkg -i plus the occasional sudo apt --fix-broken install *do install them.

I don't like skype either. But my mother lives 1600 kms away, so ...

[nuts2u]

I just checked and skype is available on Flatpak. It is ver 8.44.0.40 It is in the Flathub repository (which is the official Flatpak repository). I installed it via Flatpak on my system and it works just fine. I've also removed it from my system as I do not use skype.

[kurotsugi]

gdedebi is redundant and buggy. I thougt it was obsolete but perhaps I'm wrong. it's just a front end so it doesn't really matter. you can use dpkg for that purpose

[Arjen Balfoort]

In /usr/bin/gdebi
Replace

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c = findall("[[(](\S+)/\S+[])]", msg)[0].lower()

with

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c = findall("\[(\S+)/\S+\]", msg)[0].lower()

I don't know if it's worth the effort but if someone could make a sed command to do that, I could possibly implement it in solydxk-system's adjust script which runs on every boot.

[ilu]

gdebi seems to be abandoned, so probably no upstream fix.
Arjen proposed a fix for the faulty line in /usr/bin/gdebi here viewtopic.php?p=70087#p70087 so if you feel adventurous - it can't hurt to try. It's line 113 in the stable version. You can use sudo nano.

Actually, it would be good if somebody on EE could test this. I could try to find a way to get this patched in debian. I'm not familiar with the proceedings there but I know people who are.

[amnesix]

It didn't quite work, but near !

When I try «normally», it crashes she same way : when I click on «install package», the window just closes.

when I try with a terminal, it changes the end , it installs the package !

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$ sudo gdebi qomui_0.8.2_amd64.deb 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
Reading state information... Done

Qt OpenVPN Management UI
 Qomui is an easy-to-use graphical frontend for OpenVPN and WireGuard featuring some advanced functionalities such as leak protection, double-hop connections and application-based routing. It supports auto-downloading configurations for Airvpn, Mullvad, ProtonVPN, Windscribe and PIA as well as manual imports for all other providers.
Do you want to install the software package? [y/N]:y
Selecting previously unselected package qomui.
(Reading database ... 291679 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack qomui_0.8.2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking qomui (0.8.2) ...
Setting up qomui (0.8.2) ...
Job for qomui.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status qomui.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.62) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.31.4-3) ...
Warning: /etc/gnome/menus.blacklist cannot be opened
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.23-4) ...
Processing triggers for dbus (1.12.12-1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.17-2) ...

Well it didn't exactly install the package, but this another problem. gdebi with a terminal seems to work. I'll be testing more and report.

[amnesix]

I tested with two packages of which I was sure they install, and it worked :

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sudo gdebi libxfce4util6_4.10.1-2_amd64.deb 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
Reading state information... Done

Utility functions library for Xfce4
 This package contains libxfce4util6, the basic utility
 function library for Xfce4. If you intend to run Xfce4,
 you need this library.
Do you want to install the software package? [y/N]:y
Selecting previously unselected package libxfce4util6.
(Reading database ... 291839 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack libxfce4util6_4.10.1-2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libxfce4util6 (4.10.1-2) ...
Setting up libxfce4util6 (4.10.1-2) ...
olivier@bigleon:~/dwnld$ sudo gdebi xfce-theme-manager_0.3.2-1_amd64.deb 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
Reading state information... Done

<insert up to 60 chars description>
 <insert long description, indented with spaces>
Do you want to install the software package? [y/N]:y
Selecting previously unselected package xfce-theme-manager.
(Reading database ... 291845 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack xfce-theme-manager_0.3.2-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking xfce-theme-manager (0.3.2-1) ...
Setting up xfce-theme-manager (0.3.2-1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.5-2) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.62) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.31.4-3) ...
Warning: /etc/gnome/menus.blacklist cannot be opened
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.23-4) ...

But the gui will not work.

[Arjen Balfoort]

Right, it seems that this line fixes gdebi-gtk:

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c = findall("[\[(](\S+)/\S+[\])]", msg)[0].lower()

[EDIT]
This sed command correctly changes that line:

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sed 's|"\[\[.*\]"|"[\\[(](\\S+)/\\S+[\\])]"|' /usr/bin/gdebi

But when I try to run gdebi I get this error:

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$ sudo gdebi *.deb
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/gdebi", line 38, in <module>
    from GDebi.GDebiCli import GDebiCli
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'GDebi'

I checked with the original gdebi script and the findall line was the only thing that was changed.

Using nano works fine.

[EDIT 2]
I found the same findall line in /usr/share/gdebi/GDebi/GDebiCli.py but changing that didn't solve the ModuleNotFoundError.

[Arjen Balfoort]

Finally solved it!

gdebi-core install a symbolic link from /usr/share/gdebi/gdebi to /usr/bin/gdebi. sed however, will remove the symbolic link /usr/bin/gdebi and create a new file with the change. Somehow that was a problem for the GDebiCli module.

This fixed it:

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sudo sed -i 's|"\[\[.*\]"|"[\\[(](\\S+)/\\S+[\\])]"|' /usr/share/gdebi/gdebi
sudo sed -i 's|"\[\[.*\]"|"[\\[(](\\S+)/\\S+[\\])]"|' /usr/share/gdebi/GDebi/GDebiCli.py

If this cannot be fixed upstream, I can always package our own version of gdebi-core.

[amnesix]

I must have missed something : doesn't work for me ...

[Arjen Balfoort]

I must have missed something : doesn't work for me ...

Make sure you haven't edited the gdebi file before:

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apt reinstall gdebi-core

[amnesix]

Still doesn't work. Sorry.

I mean : it works in the terminal, not with the GUI.

[Arjen Balfoort]

That's strange.

This is what I did without a problem:

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solydxk@solydxk:~$ sudo sed -i 's|"\[\[.*\]"|"[\\[(](\\S+)/\\S+[\\])]"|' /usr/share/gdebi/gdebi
solydxk@solydxk:~$ sudo sed -i 's|"\[\[.*\]"|"[\\[(](\\S+)/\\S+[\\])]"|' /usr/share/gdebi/GDebi/GDebiCli.py
solydxk@solydxk:~$ apt-get download usb-creator
Get:1 https://repository.solydxk.com solydxk-10/main amd64 usb-creator all 0.6.1 [189 kB]
Fetched 189 kB in 0s (638 kB/s) 
solydxk@solydxk:~$ gdebi-gtk *.deb

(gdebi-gtk:2296): Gtk-WARNING **: 14:51:48.062: Theme parsing error: gtk.css:337:24: Invalid name of pseudo-class

(gdebi-gtk:2296): Gtk-WARNING **: 14:51:52.315: Theme parsing error: gtk.css:337:24: Invalid name of pseudo-class
solydxk@solydxk:~$ sudo gdebi *.deb
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
Reading state information... Done

USB Creator
 Create a bootable USB with several ISO images.
Do you want to install the software package? [y/N]:y
(Reading database ... 207212 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack usb-creator_0.6.1_all.deb ...
Unpacking usb-creator (0.6.1) over (0.6.1) ...
Setting up usb-creator (0.6.1) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.62) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.31.4-3) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.23-4) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.17-2) ...
Processing triggers for menu (2.1.47+b1) ...

[amnesix]

In a terminal, again, it works. But with the GUI, it does not. The window closes as soon I hit the «install package» button (or the «remove package» button if the package was already installed).

I can live with this, so if I'm the only one with the problem, it's ok.

[EDIT 1]

We're both right. I did like you : sudo gdebi-gtk [package.deb], and it works. BUT the way I do usually do it (right-click on the .deb and then open with gdebi package installer, then it has the problem I described : it crashes when I hit the button.

[EDIT 2]
I only remarked only *now* that when I start gdebi from thunar, it does *not* ask for root password.

[grizzler]

BUT the way I usually do it (right-click on the .deb and then open with gdebi package installer, then it has the problem I described : it crashes when I hit the button.

That's odd. I recently did exactly that with the virtualbox-guest-additions-iso package (version 6.0.8-1, which is currently 'stuck' in unstable...) and it worked without issues. And that was even using the default gdebi packages from buster.

I only remarked only *now* that when I start gdebi from thunar, it does *not* ask for root password.

Hmmm... That could have something to do with it. I don't use thunar (which is a hopeless mess, in my opinion).

Edit
Yup. That's the problem. With thunar there's no password prompt, so gdebi aborts.

[Arjen Balfoort]

Probably because gdebi-gtk is not started with pkexec.

[grizzler]

Something like that, yes. It must be a thunar issue somehow, as caja manages to do it properly.

This is similar: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/492 ... ad-parents
I see the same error message in .xsession-errors. It's explained here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/608419/ ... ng-to-rend
Searching for that message produces several suggestions involving calling the relevant executable with sh -c "pkexec program" (like in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/issues/254).
No idea offhand how to make thunar do that, though...

[Arjen Balfoort]

I can confirm that this is a Thunar issue.

I've been debugging GDebi in Thunar and when it needs to install a package it runs this Python3 command (/usr/share/gdebi/GDebi/GDebiGtk.py:619):

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os.execv('/usr/bin/pkexec', ['pkexec', 'gdebi-gtk', '--non-interactive', '/home/solydxk/usb-creator_0.6.1_all.deb'])

It simply exits GDebi without an error.

If you run this in a python3 environment:

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python3
import os
os.execv('/usr/bin/pkexec', ['pkexec', 'gdebi-gtk', '--non-interactive', '/home/solydxk/usb-creator_0.6.1_all.deb'])

It will ask for your password and installs the package correctly. So, not a python3 issue.

Somehow, Thunar refuses the os.execv command to run because debug lines after that are never executed. Catching an error while executing os.execv didn't do a thing: no exception was thrown.

I'm afraid I cannot do anything about it.