[SOLVED]Update Manager doesn't show an update, Synaptic does

[mauromol]

Hello all,
I'm new to Linux Mint. I've just installed Linux Mint 10 KDE and I installed Opera browser. The following questions may appear quite specific, but they are quite general actually. Let's start.

I used the Software Manager to install Opera and version 10.62.6438 got installed. This made me think it was the latest version of Opera available for Linux Mint 10 KDE.

However, if I now run the Synaptic, I see that a newer version is available for the opera package, which is 11.50.1074.
So, my first question is: why installing through the Software Manager did not install version 11.50.1074, which is the latest version?

The second question is: why the Update Manager doesn't show me that there's an update for the Opera application available? If I hadn't a look at the Synaptic I would never know there's a most recent version available (except for Opera telling me through its website, of course). I already tried to make all updates visible (down to level 5), but the Opera update is not shown anyway.

Please note that after installing Opera 10.62.6438, I had to to follow the directions described at http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/20 ... lse-on-a-d to fix a signature checking problem that was shown every time I started the update manager. I followed the alternative way (just updated the key) because I preferred to keep on using the Linux Mint Update Manager rather than downloading the packages directly from the web. I don't know if this is related in some way to my previous questions.

Thanks in advance,
Mauro

[Terryphi]

Mauro,

If you want Update Manager to pick up the latest versions of Opera you must add the Opera repository to Software Sources>Other Software. This is the entry in my Mint:

Opera Browser (final releases) (http://deb.opera.com/opera/stable)

You also need the Opera Software Signing Key to authenticate the download. The first time you manually install an Opera deb the key is automatically added to Mint.

[sabto]

if you will use opera on your linux, you can download it from http://www.opera.com
and then install it using
$ sudo dpkg -i opera-xx.deb

and you will got your opera in your system

[mauromol]

If you want Update Manager to pick up the latest versions of Opera you must add the Opera repository to Software Sources>Other Software. This is the entry in my Mint:

Opera Browser (final releases) (http://deb.opera.com/opera/stable)

You also need the Opera Software Signing Key to authenticate the download. The first time you manually install an Opera deb the key is automatically added to Mint.

Hi Terryphi,
the specified repository is already in my Update Manager and it is checked. Moreover, I would expect the software sources to be shared among the Update Manager and Synpatic, but the former does not see the update, the latter does. Why?

if you will use opera on your linux, you can download it from http://www.opera.com
and then install it using
$ sudo dpkg -i opera-xx.deb

Thank you sabto. Actually, my question was more general. The real problem is not about installing Opera (for which I could use Synaptic too), but the reason for which the Update Manager does not show the Opera update while Synaptic does. I've updated the thread title to clarify this.

I know, I'm a bit tedious, but I want to understand the rational around this issue...

Thanks again,
Mauro.

[Inkit]

Hi mauromol,
I came across a post by Clem long back about this. Seems that there is something to do with permissions because of which synaptic shows updates while update manager does not. I don't rightly remember what exactly he said so I don't want to talk through my hat here. Maybe if you search through the forums you'll find it.

[mauromol]

Hi Inkit,
I found this topic:
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=69859

It may be the one you told about. However, mine seems not to be a permission problem, since the notification of the update is not shown even if the Update Manager is running as root.

On the other hand I read this from Clem:

if there's a particular update listed by Synaptic that doesn't appear in MintUpdate that should be considered a bug and we should find the cause for it

So, I'll try to add my reply there and see if we find the problem.

[SimonTS]

What level of updates have you got configured as visible within Mint Update Manager? If you leave it as default (the safe, normal way) then you only see levels 1-3 and not 4 or 5. Therefore if the update is classified as level 4 or 5 then you won't see it in MU, but Synaptic will still show it.

[mauromol]

Hi Simon, thanks for your help, however as I said in my first post I already tried to make all updates visible (down to level 5) but the Opera update is not there anyway.

Mauro.

[SimonTS]

Yep, missed that. I really should make myself a promise not to try and help people late evening after beer as it is far too easy to miss salient facts

OK, can you please post the contents of your /etc/apt/preferences file for us so we can see if you've got a Pin-Priority setup that might cause this?

[mauromol]

Hi Simon,
I don't have such a file, however I have an /etc/apt/preferences.d folder with two files in it: 10mint.pref and 05mindkde.pref.
Here are their contents:

10mint.pref

Code: Select all

Package: *
Pin: release o=linuxmint
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: origin packages.linuxmint.com
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: 500


05mintkde.pref

Code: Select all

Package: *
Pin: release a=julia-kde
Pin-Priority: 750


I hope this is what you were interested in.

[SimonTS]

That is fine, just a difference between Debian and Ubuntu in structure I guys. C
an you also please provide the output to the following command;-

Code: Select all

sudo apt-cache policy opera

[mauromol]

Here it is:

Code: Select all

opera:
  Installato: 10.62.6438
  Candidato:  10.62.6438
  Tabella versione:
     11.50.1074 0
        500 http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable/non-free amd64 Packages
 *** 10.62.6438 0
        700 http://linux-mint.froonix.org/ julia/import amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status


Translations:
- installato = installed
- candidato = candidate
- tabella versione = version table

[SimonTS]

And there is your reason. The version from the LinuxMiint source has a higher Pin-Priority, so the other version cannot simply override it/ This is how Mint Update decides what appears in the update list.
For a further explanation have a look here;-
http://linux.die.net/man/5/apt_preferences

It is entirely possible to get around this for individual packages, repos etc - I have to do this in LMDE to enable Thunderbird v5 to be installed and maintained. For your situation, you would want to add some lines to your 10mint.pref file. Make sure that you continue to leave a blank line between each instance that you ever add to these files. The lines you need will be, hopefully, these - but you may want to verify them yourself.

Code: Select all

Package: opera
Pin: origin deb.opera.com
Pin-Priority: 750

Then run

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update

That should then tell Mint Update to utilise deb.opera.com as a higher priority for the package opera than the other sources. You can verify this by re-running

Code: Select all

sudo apt-cache policy opera

to see which version your system thinks should be installed. If you have any particular plug-ins from the same source then you may want to add them as well. It may seem tedious to add packages individually, but it seems to be the safest way of not risking your system.

[mauromol]

Hi Simon,
this works, in fact. After adding that to 10mint.pref file, now the output of apt-cache is:

Code: Select all

opera:
  Installato: 10.62.6438
  Candidato:  11.50.1074
  Gancio del pacchetto: 11.50.1074
  Tabella versione:
     11.50.1074 750
        500 http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable/non-free amd64 Packages
 *** 10.62.6438 750
        700 http://linux-mint.froonix.org/ julia/import amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status


(note: I don't know how to translate "gancio del pacchetto", since it is a really bad Italian translation I cannot understand...)

Now the update manager shows the update for Opera and its level is 2. I was wondering whether the "2" level is in some way related to the pin priority assigned to 750 to the source site, or whether they are independent parameters.

Anyway, let's say it in another way (so I can see if I understood the issue): the problem here is that the opera package is present on the Opera repository but also on one of the official source repositories of Linux Mint. The fact that the latter site has higher priority than the former makes its version (10.62.6438) be preferred over the other (11.50.1074). This is why the application manager installed the older version and the update manager was not showing the newer one.
The output of apt-cache policy shows the priority of the sites that contain the opera package: there's the official mirror linux-mint.froonix.org with priority 700 and the Opera repository at deb.opera.com with priority 500. By changing the file 10mint.pref I increased the priority of deb.opera.com to 750 for the package opera. I would have expected to see apt-cache policy to give 750 as a priority to deb.opera.com then, however I still see 500 but 750 appears beside the newer version number: this is not perfectly clear to me... anyway it works.

Now two other newbie questions follow:
1) deb.opera.com source site was present "by default" in my installation, so I think it is somewhat trusted; since this is the official Opera Software repository, why its assigned priority is lower than that of the Linux Mint repository? Isn't it too much conservative? Or, put in another way: why is the older version of the opera package mirrored in the Linux Mint repository while the newer is not?

2) when I change the 10mint.pref file, I specify the new Pin-Priority for deb.opera.com to apply only to the opera package; can't I specify "*" as the package? In fact, since the deb.opera.com is the official Opera website, I would expect to find there only the Opera browser and some other packages from Opera Software, so I'm inclined to think that for those packages the official Opera repository should always be the best source... is this thought wrong?

And finally: you mentioned you had to do something similar to get Thunderbird 5 and its updates: what specifically?

Thanks again,
Mauro.

[SimonTS]

Hi Mauro,

I thought that should work. The English for "Gancio del pacchetto" is "Package pin" - or at least that's what my system displays. It refers to the version which is 'preferred' according to the current system configuration. I can't explain it precisely, which is why I gave you that link to read - and there are plenty more out there

The Pin Priorities are set by default to ensure that you should always have the 'approved' Mint versions running on your machine - any changes could, potentially, cause other issues with various packages etc, so you take it into your own hands if you want to modify them. The levels you refer to are different. If you look at the settings in Mint Update, you will see that the 5 different levels indicate whether they are safe, trusted etc. This is another way of Mint trying to ensure that people don't install software which could screw up the system unless they actively make that decision.

What you do with the 'deb.opera.com' pin is up to you. I am not certain what else may or may not be on that repo - but I prefer to specify exactly what packages I want, rather than go in wild-fire. I get my copy of Thunderbird from the MEPIS Community repo which holds hundreds of packages but unless I need an update for a particular reason I would rather stick with the versions that the Mint team trust and test.
My settings for Thunderbird v5 are;-

Code: Select all

Package: thunderbird
Pin: origin main.mepis-deb.org
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: thunderbird-gnome-support
Pin: origin main.mepis-deb.org
Pin-Priority: 700

however, this is a Debian based repo, so I cannot promise you that these will work correctly on your machine. I also ensured that I uninstalled Thunderbird totally from my system before I installed this version just to make sure there were no issues with the upgrade.

[mauromol]

Thank you again Simon for your help and explanation.

By the way, just to complete the picture, the mintInstall (Application Manager) still shows Opera version 10.62.6438 rather than 11.50.1074 if I search for the opera package. Anyway, that's not a problem, just to let you know. It seems like the change of PIN priorities was ignored by that component.

I know that now my remaining open questions are more "philosopical" than practical and they are the main reasons for which the Linux application installation procedure based on package management has never totally convinced me, although my repeated attempts to embrace Linux over the years. However, since this is off-topic here, I'm marking this thread as solved.

Thanks a lot for your support!
Mauro.

[SimonTS]

I assume that you mean the "Software Manager" application when you talk about mintinstall? Mine updates the listed application versions correctly according to the changes in my Pin Priority - I have just checked.
As for the Linux application install procedure being based on "Package Management", I for one far prefer this to the Microsoft way of "Work out what you want, find it on-line, download it from site X, install it, find that it is outdated, download from site Y, find that it is outdated..... ad infinitum, ad nauseum". For newbies it makes perfect sense as they will always get the version that the Mint / Ubuntu / Linux world has tested and 'approved', whereas those who know what they are doing, want certain features, or just enjoy trying the latest version to see if it borks their system can go ahead and do whatever they want to - as I do all the time

[mauromol]

Yes, I mean the Software Manager. Then, after doing some kind of action that caused a refresh, it also shows the latest version of Opera, so it must have been just a refresh problem (closing and restarting it was not enough).

Regarding the package management: I agree with you that it's very comfortable to have all the software available with just a few clicks. If you don't have particular needs to update your system frequently, that's it. And maybe this is the case for 90% of the software you install on your system. But what about the case when you absolutely want/need the latest version of an application and it is not made available by the distribution maintainers?

Take Firefox for instance. I recently installed Linux Mint KDE 10, which is the latest stable one. However, the latest version of Firefox available for it is 3.6.x (I can't remember precisely). No sign of Firefox 4 or 5. What should I do if I really want a newer version of Firefox? First of all I feel uncomfortable now, because I have to do something different from the "normal process"... and I have to learn something new. After passing the first psychological block, I start to think and search for a solution. The most natural way I can think of to solve the problem is to go to the official Firefox website and download the application from there. Then, some considerations follows:

• first of all, I am back to the "Windows way" of installing the software; so, the benefit of using the package management has been lost
• secondly, what often happens is that there's no single "Linux download" on the author website, but many of them... depending on your distribution; and what about the case when your distribution/version is not present? This is not the case of Firefox (which only presents you a single "Linux version")
• then, another problem: there's no standard way for packaging applications outside the world of package management: someone lets you download an executable with an installer (just like the Windows world, except for the fact that often the installer is text-only), someone gives you a tgz archive, someone else (like Mozilla) a tar.bz one, other times you're provided with .deb/.rpm packages, and so on...
• in any case, you have to remember to uninstall the package provided by your distribution before installing what you have downloaded by yourself; and what about those terrible cases in which you can't remove a package because it's needed by other packages? Or when you must remove other packages together with that you want to remove, with the possibility that something else breaks? (I don't know if such kind of problems still occur today, but they did in the past...)

One final problem I find is that often the package maintainers enjoy to move things around (some files here, other files there, etc.); so you find yourself in situations where you are trying to configure a software following an administration guide and you can't find things because you installed the software using the package management of your distribution and the files are placed in different directories... and this becomes annoying when the package maintainer, after moving things around, forgot to adjust something in order to make all work as it should (my most recent experience of this type was with the installation and configuration of Bugzilla on a Debian Sid... after one day of troubles, I removed the distribution package, downloaded and installed the application directly from the Mozilla website and in a couple of hours all was working fine...).

Sometimes also happens that some complex software is packaged the wrong way. For instance, with Linux Mint 10 KDE the Eclipse is packaged wrong: when I try to apply some updates from its own built-in update manager, I get conflicts. Moreover, I think that in cases like this, the distribution package management and the built-in Eclipse plugin management can hardly live together, so I find the distribution packages useless and even harmful in these cases.

So, my own experience makes me think that package management is a great idea in theory. It's also very powerful in practice as long as your distribution is maintained and kept up-to-date (and the maintainers do a good job). This is especially true for servers and for embedded devices (like NASes, routers, etc.). But when you're dealing with a desktop PC and your distribution starts to become old/unsupported (and, unfortunately, this happens quite rapidly, much more than in the Windows world...), troubles start to arise and the time I have to spend to administrate my system increases a lot. Even if I consider myself a "power" user (I work with PCs all the day, I'm a software engineer) and I like to experiment and get my hands dirty on computers, I can hardly accept to be forced to do that on my everyday use of a computer, especially since the time Windows became a stable and productive operating system (that is, from Windows 2000/XP on).

Nevertheless, today I'm here to give Linux another chance for my desktop (although just in a virtual machine) and my choice was to try Linux Mint 10 KDE. It seems like a good distribution and I like the intentions of the maintainers. So I follow their work with interest.

Cheers,
Mauro.