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RPi Imager 1.6.1 (and above) can't be installed on Ubuntu 18.04 #197
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Am afraid 20.04 LTS is new minimum, because I upgraded to that. :-) |
I'm sure I can't be the only person still running Ubuntu 18.04 😉 And whilst I can run debuild, I'm sure there are many less-technical users who can't? |
I maintain a snap of rpi-imager, and have just bumped it to build on Ubuntu 20.04, but it's installable on Ubuntu 18.04 (indeed even 14.04 & 16.04) and other distros too. As an interesting datapoint on the "who still runs 18.04?" question, there's still a fair number on it. Among RPI Imager snap users, ~13% are on Ubuntu 18.04, with ~56% on 20.04 and even ~2.7% on Ubuntu 16.04! |
Unless https://github.com/popey/imager-snap/issues/8 has been resolved, unfortunately the snap doesn't support the full set of Imager's features. IIRC, you also need to enable some additional permissions to prevent other errors. It's not obvious that you need to do that or how to. Given that the imager is meant to simplify things, the snap seems to introduce hurdles. Ideally, it would be great to it in the normal apt repos instead. |
Is it working any better under 1.6.1 ? Sneaked in a commit ( c8409d7 ) that may workaround it, but didn't had time to figure out how to build a snap to test it. Code previously assumed that as soon as udisks2 (to which we talk over DBus) told us the removable volume (FAT32 partition) is mounted, we are able to write to the mount folder. |
Just tried it and no, it seems to be worse. At first it said it couldn't mount the partition, so I enabled the relevant permission.
Overall, not the experience you'd want any user to have. |
Is /var/lib/snapd/hostfs/media/shift/F28E-8BF1 not writable by the user snap runs Imager as? |
Shall we move this over to https://github.com/popey/imager-snap/issues/8? |
Regardless of any problems with Snap packages, I still think that the
EDIT2: For anyone else still using Ubuntu 18.04, here's a build of RPi Imager 1.6.1 after applying the patch from #200 |
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/README.md also says "Ubuntu 18.04" 😉 So if RPi Imager definitely won't be supporting Ubuntu 18.04 going forwards, I guess we ought to update that documentation too? 🤷 |
Not sure what the official support policy is. Just be aware that the overall usefulness of Ubuntu 18 for developers is rapidly decreasing.
And Ubuntu 20 LTS has been out for a year. What is the reason you are still using 18? |
I bought a new Dell XPS laptop just over a year ago which came with Ubuntu 18.04 pre-installed, and I'm reluctant to try upgrading it to a newer version, especially as it's still an actively-supported LTS version. Also, running an older-but-still-supported OS is useful for uncovering edge cases like this 😉 |
LTS releases are 'enterprise grade' and focused on stability. They are for those who don't want new versions of software. The software updates you get for LTS releases are security and bug fixes only. Supporting old software doesn't come for free, it takes work and it limits your ability to move forward. It's not reasonable to expect an old LTS to remain a supported platform a year after the current one is released. |
Yeah, that's a reasonable position to take; I'd have no problem with e.g. RPi Imager 1.7.x only supporting Ubuntu 20.04+, with Ubuntu 18.04 being restricted to the older RPi Imager 1.6.x. It just felt weird to me that the compatibility-break happened in the change from 1.6.0 to 1.6.1 🤷♂️ |
I agree that it's odd for that to happen silently on a point release. That should at least be added to the 1.6.1 changelog. But you know... there's been a year grace period! If it's any interest to you, my XPS (13) runs 20.04 perfectly :) |
thx. worked on debian buster for me, while original download and snap failed |
Just an FYI that this is an issue on ChromeOS too. If you have Linux Developer mode enabled 1.6.1 shared by @lurch works while the download from https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/ doesn't. |
For the benefit of anybody following this issue... I just tried compiling the v1.6.2 tag on Ubuntu 18.04 and it fails to build with:
because that function was added in Qt 5.10, but Ubuntu 18.04 only includes Qt 5.9.5. |
No. I use LTS because upgrading or installing new release is a huge time consumer. After install a lot has to be modified/tweaked, installed, set up etc. It takes a lot of time. The LTS gives the opportunity to use a system for a much longer time. As of my current 18.04 I'm not going to use Ubuntu anymore (but that is another story). I use several PPAs + some appimages. For things like PHP I install it myself. |
I believe this whole "18.04 too old" discussion is missing a huge, deeper issue with the project: why the build process is tied your particular version? Are you compiling and publishing it yourself? Doesn't As long as that tool supports 18.04 (and the sources are compatible), @maxnet 's personal OS should be irrelevant. A PPA can build for all current Ubuntu versions. Travis-CI and Github can build for many platforms. You can even use Windows for development and let the cloud build for Fedora, Mac, BSD, ARM, no matter how ancient or bleeding edge the platform is. That said... |
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And Ubuntu 18 is still supported for more two whole years. Your point?
That's... not how to handle this issue. @lurch 's particular reasons for using 18 should not matter. There are many. As you had yours to switch to 20.04, while some already jumped on 21.10.
It is. It's called an LTS for a reason! Long-Term Support.
False. The "year grace period" will only begin on April 2022, where we'll then have a whole year until 2023 to migrate to Ubuntu 22.04, entirely skipping 20.04, while still using a fully-supported system. I really don't want the hassle of upgrading the whole OS every 2 years |
Come on guys... Ubuntu has just fully embraced Raspberry, releasing not only a Server edition but also Desktop, Core, the whole family. They added all Raspberry-specific packages to their repositories, no more PPAs needed for Please fully support it too for a long and happy marriage 🥇 |
"Supported" does not mean you get to have newer versions of software. |
Doesn't Raspberry (the company / organization) provide you any infrastructure or guidance on this? I mean... IMHO
Given the high profile of this project, I'm really surprised that there's no official policy on that. |
Fair point, and I agree. I don't mind using an outdated version, as long as my current version keeps working. And that's not what happened here.
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Then you can try the older 1.6.0: https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/imager/imager_1.6_amd64.deb
Snap issues can be reported here: https://github.com/popey/imager-snap/issues |
Some possibly relevant clarifications:
Maybe it broke earlier. I've been using it regularly for moths, but always using the same (cached) image. Yesterday I tried some new ones, so maybe that's why only now the problem manifested. Installed version is 1.6.2, and IIRC it's been so for at least a few weeks.
It's not that I don't care. I do. But I'm aware I'm not entitled to anything. I just wished some projects took a more conservative approach when it comes to adopting new API that might break older (but still not EOL'd) releases. I, for example, do a lot of Python development, and face the same dilemma a lot: if there's a new, gorgeous feature in Python 3.9, I refrain from using it even if I'm already at Python 3.11, because older distros like CentoOS still ships with the ancient 3.6. At least they have 3.8 available, so I can bump my minimum source version to that. Can a similar approach be taken here? |
Digging deeper into the logs, I believe we're dealing with 2 distinct, independent issues here:
For anyone coming here with problems such as "An AppArmor policy prevents this sender from sending this message ...", "Could not open network socket", or "operation not permitted", go to this issue, not here. It's just there are a lot of issues with 18.04 in its title :-) |
I think snap is a "self-contained" packaging format? So it's probably able to include a newer version of the Qt libraries than are included with Ubuntu 18.04 ? (which the
@maxnet We seem to get quite a few problem-reports about the snap version of RPi Imager (probably because that's the version that Ubuntu's "software store" installs), which we obviously can't do anything about. Maybe it's worth making use of GitHub's issue-template feature, to direct people having problem with the snap version of RPi Imager directly to popey's repo? 🤷 |
The older version 1.6.0 (referenced by @maxnet) installed good on Linux Mint 19.3 (bionic repo). Thx |
I have just snap installed rpi-imager ver. 1.7.3 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and it is working perfectly:
rpi-imager 1.7.3 from Dave Jones (waveform) installed |
Sounds like this is resolved. |
My existing installation of RPi Imager 1.6 works fine.
EDIT: The latest version that can run on Ubuntu 18.04 is RPi Imager 1.6.1 - you can find a custom build in my comment below.
RPi Imager 1.6.2 (or newer) won't build for Ubuntu 18.04.
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