Technology Tales

What to do an error appears when using pip to install Python packages on Linux Mint 22

After upgrading to Linux Mint 22, the following message appeared when attempting to install Python packages using the pip command:

error: externally-managed-environment

× This environment is externally managed
╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install
python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to
install.

If you wish to install a non-Debian-packaged Python package,
create a virtual environment using python3 -m venv path/to/venv.
Then use path/to/venv/bin/python and path/to/venv/bin/pip. Make
sure you have python3-full installed.

If you wish to install a non-Debian packaged Python application,
it may be easiest to use pipx install xyz, which will manage a
virtual environment for you. Make sure you have pipx installed.

See /usr/share/doc/python3.12/README.venv for more information.

note: If you believe this is a mistake, please contact your Python installation or OS distribution provider. You can override this, at the risk of breaking your Python installation or OS, by passing --break-system-packages.
hint: See PEP 668 for the detailed specification.

This will frustrate anyone following how-tos on the web, so users will need to know about it. On something like Linux Mint, the repositories may not be as up-to-date as PyPI, so picking up the very latest version has its advantages. Thus, I initially used the unrecommended --break-system-packages switch to get things going as before, since doing never broke anything before. While the way of working feels like an overkill in some ways, using pipx probably is the way forward as long as things work as I want them to do.

There is wisdom in using virtual environments too, especially when AI models are involved. For most of what I get to do, that may be getting too elaborate. Then, deleting or renaming the message file in /usr/lib/python3.12/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED is tempting if that gets around things, as retrograde as that probably is. After all, I never broke anything before this message started to appear, possibly since my interests are data related.

Upgrading a web server from Debian 11 to Debian 12

While Debian 12 may be with us since the middle of 2023 and Debian 13 is due in the middle of next year, it has taken me until now to upgrade one of my web servers. The tardiness may have something to do with a mishap on another system that resulted in a rebuild, something to avoid it at all possible.

Nevertheless, I went and had a go with the aforementioned web server after doing some advance research. Thus, I can relate the process that you find here in the knowledge that it worked for me. Also, I will have it on file for everyone's future reference. The first step is to ensure that the system is up-to-date by executing the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt dist-upgrade

Next, it is best to remove extraneous packages using these commands:

sudo apt --purge autoremove
sudo apt autoclean

Once you have backed up important data and configuration files, you can move to the first step of the upgrade process. This involves changing the repository locations from what is there for bullseye (Debian 11) to those for bookworm (Debian 12). Issuing the following commands will accomplish this:

sudo sed -i 's/bullseye/bookworm/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo sed -i 's/bullseye/bookworm/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*

In my case, I found the second of these to be extraneous since everything was included in the single file. Also, Debian 12 has added a new non-free repository called non-free-firmware. This can be added at this stage by manual editing of the above. In my case, I did it later because the warning message only began to appear at that stage.

Once the repository locations, it is time to update the package information using the following command:

sudo apt update

Then, it is time to first perform a minimal upgrade using the following command, that takes a conservative approach by updating existing packages without installing any new ones:

sudo apt upgrade --without-new-pkgs

Once that has completed, one needs to issue the following command to install new packages if needed for dependencies and even remove incompatible or unnecessary ones, as well as performing kernel upgrades:

sudo apt full-upgrade

Given all the changes, the completion of the foregoing commands' execution necessitates a system restart, which can be the most nerve-wracking part of the process when you are dealing with a remote server accessed using SSH. While, there are a few options for accomplishing this, here is one that is compatible with the upgrade cycle:

sudo systemctl reboot

Once you can log back into the system again, there is one more piece of housekeeping needed. This step not only removes redundant packages that were automatically installed, but also does the same for their configuration files, an act that really cleans up things. The command to execute is as follows:

sudo apt --purge autoremove

For added reassurance that the upgrade has completed, issuing the following command will show details like the operating system's distributor ID, description, release version and codename:

lsb_release -a

If you run the above commands as root, the sudo prefix is not needed, yet it is perhaps safer to execute them under a less privileged account anyway. The process needs the paying of attention to any prompts and questions about configuration files and service restarts if they arise. Nothing like that came up in my case, possibly because this web server serves flat files created using Hugo, avoiding the use of scripting and databases, which would add to the system complexity. Such a simple situation makes the use of scripting more of a possibility. The exercise was speedy enough for me too, though patience is of the essence should a 30–60 minute completion time be your lot, depending on your system and internet speed.

Resolving "repository doesn't support architecture i386" error when checking for updates to Brave Browser on Linux

Recently, I started to observe the following message when doing my usual update routine on Linux Mint (Debian, Ubuntu and their variants are likely affected as well):

N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'main/binary-i386/Packages' as repository 'https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com stable InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'i386'

As the message suggests, there was something amiss with the repository set up for Brave, a browser that I added for extra privacy. Since Firefox remains the main one that I use, Brave is something that I have in hand for when I need it. Handily, its installation routine adds in repository information for keeping it up to date. However, there is an issue with what you find in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list. By default, the line appears like thus:

deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main

To avoid the i386 error, it needs to look like this instead:

deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main

The difference between the tow is the presence of arch=amd64 in the second version. This stops the search for non-existent i386 files, the 32 bit version in other words. With Y2K2038 in the offing, the days of 32 bit computing architectures are numbered because there is a real limit to the magnitude of the dates that can be represented in any case. Thus, sticking with 64 bit ones is both the present for many and the future for all.

Creating a VirtualBox virtual disk image using the Linux command line

Much of the past weekend was spent getting a working Debian 10 installation up and running in a VirtualBox virtual machine. Because I chose the Cinnamon desktop environment, the process was not as smooth as I would have liked, so a minimal installation was performed before I started to embellish as I liked. Along the way, I got to wondering if I could create virtual hard drives using the command line, and I found that something like the following did what was needed:

VBoxManage createmedium disk --filename <full path including file name without extension> -size <size in MiB> --format VDI --variant Standard

Most of the options are self-explanatory, apart from the one named variant. This defines whether the VDI file expands to the maximum size specified using the size parameter or is reserved with the size defined in that parameter. Two VDI files were created in this way and I used these to replace their Debian 8 predecessors and even to save a bit of space too. If you want, you can find out more in the user documentation, but this post hopefully gets you started anyway.

Installing Citrix Receiver 13.0 in Ubuntu GNOME 13.10 64-bit

Installing the latest version of Citrix Receiver (13.0 at the time of writing) on 64-bit Ubuntu should be as simple as downloading the required DEB package and double-clicking on the file so that Ubuntu Software Centre can work its magic. Unfortunately, the 64-bit DEB file is faulty, so that means that the Ubuntu community how-to guide for Citrix still is needed. In fact, any user of Linux Mint or another distro that uses Ubuntu as its base would do well to have a look at that Ubuntu link.

For the sake of completeness, I still am going to let you in on the process that worked for me. Once the DEB file has been downloaded, the first task is to create a temporary folder where the DEB file's contents can be extracted:

mkdir ica_temp

With that in place, it then is time to do the extraction, and it needs two commands with the second of these need to extract the control file while the first extracts everything else.

sudo dpkg-deb -x icaclient- ica_temp
sudo dpkg-deb --control icaclient- ica_temp/DEBIAN

It is the control file that has been the cause of all the bother because it refers to unavailable dependencies that it really doesn't need anyway. To open the file for editing, issue the following command:

sudo gedit ica_temp/DEBIAN/control

Then change line 7 (it should begin with Depends:) to: Depends: libc6-i386 (>= 2.7-1), lib32z1, nspluginwrapper. While there are other software packages in there that Ubuntu no longer supports, they are not needed anyway. With the edit made, and the file saved, the next step is to build a new DEB package with the corrected control file:

dpkg -b ica_temp icaclient-modified.deb

Once you have the package, the next step is to install it using the following command:

sudo dpkg -i icaclient-modified.deb

If it fails, then you have missing dependencies and the following command should sort these before a re-run of the above command again:

sudo apt-get install libmotif4:i386 nspluginwrapper lib32z1 libc6-i386

With Citrix Receiver installed, there is one more thing that is needed before you can use it freely. This is to put Thawte security certificate files into /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts. What I had not realised until recently was that many of these already are in /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla and linking to them with the following command makes them available to Citrix Receiver:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/* /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/

Another approach is to download the Thawte certificates and extract the archive to /tmp/. From there they can be copied to /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts and I copied the Thawte Personal Premium certificate as follows:

sudo cp /tmp/Thawte Root Certificates/Thawte Personal Premium CA/Thawte Personal Premium CA.cer /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/

Until I found out about what was in the Mozilla folder, I simply picked out the certificate mentioned in the Citrix error message and copied it over like the above. Of course, all of this may seem like a lot of work to those who are non-tinkerers and I have added a repaired 64-bit DEB package that incorporates all of the above and should not need any further intervention aside from installing it using GDebi, Ubuntu's Software Centre, dpkg or anything else that does what's needed.

A little look at Debian 7.0

Having a virtual machine with Debian 6 on there, I was interested to hear that Debian 7.0 is out. In another VM, I decided to give it a go. Installing it on there using the Net Install CD image took a little while but proved fairly standard with my choice of the GUI-based option. GNOME was the desktop environment with which I went and all started up without any real fuss after the installation was complete; it even disconnected the CD image from the VM before rebooting, a common failing in many Linux operating installations that lands into the installation cycle again unless you kill the virtual machine.

Though the GNOME desktop looked familiar, a certain amount of conservatism reigned too, since the version was 3.4.2. That was no bad thing, since raiding the GNOME Extension site for a set of mature extensions was made easier. In fact, a certain number of these were included in the standard installation anyway and the omission of a power off entry on the user menu was corrected as a matter of course without needing any intervention from this user. Adding to what already was there made for a more friendly desktop experience in a short period of time.

Debian's variant of Firefox, IceWeasel, is version 10 so a bit of tweaking is needed to get the latest version. LibreOffice is there now too, and it's version 3.5 rather than 4. Shotwell too is the older 0.12 and not the 0.14 that is found in the likes of Ubuntu 13.04. As it happens, GIMP is about the only software with a current version and that is 2.8; a slower release cycle may be the cause of that, though. All in all, the general sense is that older versions of current software are being included for the sake of stability and that is sensible too, so I am not complaining very much about this at all.

The reason for not complaining is that the very reason for having a virtual machine with Debian 6 on there is to have Zinio and Dropbox available too. Adobe's curtailment of support for Linux means that any application needing Adobe Air may not work on a more current Linux distribution. That affects Zinio, so I'll be retaining a Debian 6 instance for a while yet, unless a bout of testing reveals that a move to the newer version is possible. As for Dropbox, I am sure that I can recall why I moved it onto Debian, but it's working well on there so I am in no hurry to move it over either. There are times when slower software development cycles are better...

Using a variant of Debian's Iceweasel that keeps pace with Firefox

Left to its own devices, Debian will leave you with an ever ageing re-branded version of Firefox that was installed at the same time as the rest of the operating system. From what I have found, the main cause of this was that Mozilla's wanting to retain control of its branding and trademarks in a manner not in keeping with Debian's Free Software rules. This didn't affect just Firefox but also Thunderbird, Sunbird and Seamonkey with Debian's equivalents for these being IceDove, IceOwl and IceApe, respectively.

While you can download a tarball of Firefox from the web and use that, it'd be nice to get a variant that updated through Debian's normal apt-get channels. In fact, IceWeasel does get updated whenever there is a new release of Firefox, even if these updates never find their way into the usual repositories. While I have been known to take advantage of the more frozen state of Debian compared with other Linux distributions, I don't mind getting IceWeasel updated so it isn't a security worry.

The first step in so doing is to add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list using root access (using one of sudo, gksu or su to assume root privileges) since the file normally cannot be edited by normal users:

deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main
deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ squeeze-backports iceweasel-release

With the file updated and saved, the next step is to update the repositories on your machine using the following command:

sudo apt-get update

With the above complete, it is time to overwrite the existing IceWeasel installation with the latest one using an apt-get command that specifies the squeeze-backports repository as its source using the -t switch. While IceWeasel is installed from the iceweasel-release squeeze-backports repository, there are dependencies that need to be satisfied and these come from the main squeeze-backports one. The actual command used is below:

sudo apt-get install -t squeeze-backports iceweasel

While that was all that I needed to do to get IceWeasel 18.0.1 in place, some may need the pkg-mozilla-archive-keyring package installed too. For those needing extra information beyond what's here, there's always the Debian Mozilla team.

Synchronising package selections between Linux Mint and Linux Mint Debian Edition

To generate the package list on the GNOME version of Linux Mint, I used the Backup Tool. It simply was a matter of using the Backup Software Selection button and telling it where to put the file that it generates. Alternatively, dpkg can be used from the command line like this:

sudo dpkg --get-selections > /backup/installed-software.txt

After transferring the file to the machine with Linux Mint Debian Edition, I tried using the Backup Tool on there too. However, using the Restore Software Selection button and loading the required only produced an irrecoverable error. Therefore, I set to looking around the web and found a command line approach that did the job for me.

The first step is to load the software selection using dpkg by issuing this command (it didn't matter that the file wasn't made using the dpkg command, though I suspect that's what the Linux Mint Backup Tool was doing that behind the scenes):

sudo dpkg --set-selections < /backup/installed-software.txt

Then, I started dselect and chose the installation option from the menu that appeared. The first time around, it fell over but trying again was enough to complete the job. Packages available to the vanilla variant of Linux Mint but not found in the LMDE repositories were overlooked as I had hoped, and installation of the extra packages had no impact on system stability either.

sudo dselect

Apparently, there is an alternative to using dselect that is based on the much used apt-get command, but I didn't make use of it so cannot say more:

sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

All that I can say is that the dpkg/dselect combination did what I wanted, so I'll keep them in mind if ever need to synchronise software selections between two Debian-based distributions in the future again. While the standard edition of Linux Mint may be based on Ubuntu rather than Debian, Ubuntu is itself based on Debian. Thus, the description holds here.

You always can install things yourself...

With Linux distributions offering you everything on a plate, there is a temptation to stick with what they offer rather than taking things into your own hands. For example, Debian's infrequent stable releases and the fact that they don't seem to change software versions throughout the lifetime of such a release means that things such as browser versions are fixed for the purposes of stability; Lenny has stuck with Firefox 3.06 and called it IceWeasel for some unknown reason. However, I soon got to grab a tarball for 3.5 and popped its contents into /opt where the self-contained package worked without a hitch. The same modus operandi was used to add Eclipse PDT and that applied to Ubuntu too until buttons stopped working, forcing a jumping of ship to NetBeans.

Of course, you could make a mess when veering away from what is in a distribution, but that should be good enough reason not to get carried away with software additions. With the availability of DEB packages for things like Adobe Reader, RealPlayer, VirtualBox, Google Chrome and Opera, keeping things clean isn't so hard. While your mileage may vary when it comes to how well things work out for you, I have only ever had the occasional problem anyway.

What reminded me of this was a recent irritation with the OpenOffice package included in Ubuntu 9.10 whereby spell checking wasn't working. While there were thoughts about in situ fixes like additional dictionary installations, I ended up plumping for what could be called the lazy option: grabbing a tarball full of DEB packages from the OpenOffice website and extracting its contents into /tmp and, once the URE package was in place, installing from there using the command:

dpkg -i o*

To get application shortcuts added to the main menu, it was a matter of diving into the appropriate subfolder and installing from the GNOME desktop extension package. Of course, Ubuntu's OpenOffice variant was removed as part of all this but, if you wanted to live a little more dangerously, the external installation goes into /opt which means that there shouldn't be too much of a conflict anyway. In any case, the DIY route got me the spell checking in OpenOffice Writer that I needed, so all was well and another Ubuntu rough edge eradicated from my life, for now anyway.

Adding Microsoft core fonts to Debian

When setting up Ubuntu, I usually add in Microsoft's core fonts by installing the msttcorefonts package using either Synaptic or apt-get. Though I am not sure why I didn't try doing the same thing for Debian until now, it's equally feasible. Just pop over to System > Administration > Software Sources and ensure that the check-boxes for the contrib and non-free categories are checked like you see below.

You could also achieve the same end by editing /etc/apt/sources.list and adding the non-free and contrib keywords to make lines look like these before issuing the command apt-get update as root:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main non-free contrib

All that you are doing with the manual editing route is performing the same operations that the more friendly front end would do for you anyway. After that, it's a case of going with the installation method of your choice and restarting Firefox or IceWeasel to see the results.