latest vnstat (1.17) has fixes for Mint 18.2 Xfce's vnstat 1.14

[pepperminty]

I'm on Mint 18.2 xfce 64-bit. My vnstat is version 1.14.According to humdi.net/vnstat/CHANGES, the latest version is 1.17. There have been fixes that have been introduced after 1.14.

Question 1: How can I get the people in charge of the Mint repository to consider updating the Mint repo's vnstat to 1.17?

Question 2: How do I manually upgrade my vnstat to 1.17?
Q3: Are there any negative knock-offs for upgrading from 1.14 to 1.17? (For example, Will my OS have instability? Will there be dependency problems? )

[Hoser Rob]

I'm on Mint 18.2 xfce 64-bit. My vnstat is version 1.14.According to humdi.net/vnstat/CHANGES, the latest version is 1.17. There have been fixes that have been introduced after 1.14.

Question 1: How can I get the people in charge of the Mint repository to consider updating the Mint repo's vnstat to 1.17?

Like any Ubuntu based distro I know of, all that comes from upstream i.e. the ubuntu repos. No point in complaining to the Mint devs.

Q3: Are there any negative knock-offs for upgrading from 1.14 to 1.17? (For example, Will my OS have instability? Will there be dependency problems? )

I've moved this up because it's more important. Yes, installing a newer version can break stuff. There is actually very little backwards and forwards compatibility in Linux. That's why you don't get the newest versions of software in Long Term Support Linux distros. It's not laziness. This is always a compromise in Linux, and can be solved by using a rolling release distro. But those are only suited to the very knowledgeable.

Question 2: How do I manually upgrade my vnstat to 1.17?

Well, it's possible, but they don't provide a .deb file. I'm reluctant to install something in a Ubuntu based distro that doesn't even come in a .deb file or ppa. Ubuntu is the largest distro by user base and to me this indicates a lack of proper suppoprt.
You have to compile and build it from source, and the last time I did that was for a backported driver for the wireless in my netbook. I.e. something I actually need. But here it is:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/938293/ ... at-to-1-17

[pepperminty]

Like any Ubuntu based distro I know of, all that comes from upstream i.e. the ubuntu repos. No point in complaining to the Mint devs.

Okay, I'll tell Ubuntu devs about this. If a Ubuntu person asks me which Ubuntu version this affects, what is the answer? And how can I check what vnstat that Ubuntu version uses?

Wed Aug 9 22:37:28 PDT 2017 update: from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Min ... on_history, I learned that the Ubuntu equivalent is Ubuntu 16.04

Wed Aug 9 22:39:26 PDT 2017 update: I got to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases and leraned that there are various subversions for ubuntu 16.04:
I then learned that the vnstat version on ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) is 1.14.1. (https://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/vnstat). So it's the same as Mint 18.2.

Wed Aug 9 23:01:30 PDT 2017 update: If I had gone to https://linuxmint.com/download_all.php, I'd immediately learn that Mint 18.2 Sonya has Ubuntu Xenial as its package base.

[pepperminty]

Question 2: How do I manually upgrade my vnstat to 1.17?

Well, it's possible, but they don't provide a .deb file. I'm reluctant to install something in a Ubuntu based distro that doesn't even come in a .deb file or ppa. Ubuntu is the largest distro by user base and to me this indicates a lack of proper suppoprt.
You have to compile and build it from source, and the last time I did that was for a backported driver for the wireless in my netbook. I.e. something I actually need. But here it is:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/938293/ ... at-to-1-17

The instructions look simple. So, what are the downsides or negative side effects for upgrading to vnstat 1.17 while on mint 18.2? (I did read the general caution you gave, but I'd like to hear about vnstat spefically.)

[jimallyn]

Doesn't seem likely to me that you're going to find somebody who wants to add the newest version to the repos right away. I've been using Linux for 15 years, and I don't think I had even heard of it before. My guess would be that there is only a very small number of Mint users that are concerned about which version of vnstat they have, so, not likely to be near the top of anybody's priority list. But now that I know about it, I think it might be good to be able to how much is going in and out of my computer, so I'll probably try to compile it and install it in the next few days. Just for amusement.

[pepperminty]

But now that I know about it, I think it might be good to be able to how much is going in and out of my computer, so I'll probably try to compile it and install it in the next few days.

Jim,

Have I told you how much I appreciate your help? You not only share the knowledge you've acquired over 15 years, but also, if you don't know something, you wear the OP's shoes and seek the answer.

Looking forward to your post-compilation report.

Just for amusement.

How happily fortuitous that your amusement is beneficial.

[Hoser Rob]

Like any Ubuntu based distro I know of, all that comes from upstream i.e. the ubuntu repos. No point in complaining to the Mint devs.

Okay, I'll tell Ubuntu devs about this. ...

They will simply consider it spam.

[pepperminty]

Like any Ubuntu based distro I know of, all that comes from upstream i.e. the ubuntu repos. No point in complaining to the Mint devs.

Okay, I'll tell Ubuntu devs about this. ...

They will simply consider it spam.

OK. I won't.

[jimallyn]

Give this a try:

allynelectronics.com/Mint/vnstat/vnstat_1.17-1_i386.deb

It wasn't difficult to compile, I just followed all the steps on that askubuntu page. Except that I installed build-essential and checkinstall (with Synaptic) before I started doing the command line stuff. After doing checkinstall, I tried to run vnstat from the command line, and it told me that the daemon vnstatd, wasn't running. So I ran that, and it told me it couldn't find a config file. I didn't pursue it any further, but I assume since you have already been running an earlier version of vnstat, you will know how to do the config file and such? Let us know how it turns out.