I’m having a problem installing BitTorrentsync on my daughters netbook from the developers ppa, I’ve added the ppa but when I try to install the package I’m told “cannot locate package”, at first I thought it was a problem with the developers website so I posted my issue on their help forums but so far haven’t had a reply, but I’m now thinking this may not be a problem at their end because I successfully installed it using exactly the same instructions on another PC following the instructions here
Oddly I can install the server version which comes from the same ppa and if I try to install to a PC that already has it installed It’s able to tell me I already have the latest version
I think you need to go slightly further down the page (locate this line and follow from there on):
If you are not using Ubuntu or you are using an [b]unsupported[/b] version or architecture or by any other reason you prefer the default repositories, continue here.
It looks like since the demise on 13.04 they’ve released a new version of btsync-user and for some reason manually removed the older version prior to building the new one but because of the way launchpad works it will no longer build packages against 13.04 so thought there are versions of all the other dependencies in the PPA (which obviously weren’t updated) that one’s missing.
If I’m being honest Mark I don’t understand any of that, I find it hard to believe the developers put their users through that, how the hell do they expect average users to work that out (“just add the yeasoft repositories”) unless they don’t want average users using their software
Anyway rant over
So does this mean I have to go through that anytime I want to install btsync on another PC or a fresh install ?
So does this mean I have to go through that anytime I want to install btsync on another PC or a fresh install ?
Only for 13.04 (and therefore Peppermint 4)
It’s neither the developers or the PPA owners fault “really”.
Let me try to explain…
Peppermint is released annually, Peppermint 4 is based on Ubuntu 13.04 … now prior to 13.04 non-LTS versions of Ubuntu were supported for 18 months, but with 13.04 Ubuntu cut this to 9 months … so Peppermint 4 effectively runs for 3 or 4 months after it’s parent distro has reached “end of life”
When an Ubuntu version reaches “end of life”, they remove suppolrt for it in launchpad which means you cannot use launchpad to build any packages for it from source … which in turn means you cannot add any new software to a PPA for that version of Ubuntu.
99.9% of the time this isn’t a problem, as attempting to build new software will fail and leave the old version in place … so there’s still a working version for 13.04
but for some reason the PPA owner (which is NOT the developer BTW) must have manually deleted the old versions before attempting to build the new version … so when the build for 13.04 failed, he had no way of putting the original back.
when you add a PPA to your system you tell it to look for versions for “raring” which means 13.04 … there was no package there for “raring”
Peppermint 5 will be fine because it’ll be based on an LTS … so PPA’s will continue to work for the full life of Peppermint 5 and beyond
Peppermint 6 on the other hand will have the same problem.
I gather we’re planning to have our own debian repository for Peppermint 6 for any updates to default packages, but any PPA’s will still have the same occasional problem.
At some point Peppermint will have to decide how best to deal with this, but it’s not currently a “major” problem … more of an occasional niggle.
Well I wasn’t looking for sympathy just a bit of help but I don’t really understand, in the case of Timeshift and btsync if I want to use these programs how can I do that if I don’t add their ppa’s I can’t find .deb packages for them anyplace ?
In the case of btsync according to the author, is just the case off using the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/btsync.list to add the raring repos (instead of the PPA’s)
As for TimeShift, according to this site following the lines “Other Linux Distributions” you can download the installer.
In the case of btsync according to the author, is just the case off using the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/btsync.list to add the raring repos (instead of the PPA's)
Yeah you’re probably right but that’s not the advice I was given by the author on their forums, obviously I still have a lot to learn, I’ve always tried to use PPA’s in the belief it would keep my software fully updated for bug fixes and security
As for TimeShift, according to this site following the lines "Other Linux Distributions" you can download the installer.
The term “Other Linux Distributions” prevented me even reading that section, anyway i hold my hands up it’s my own fault I’ll try to be smarter the next time
in either case (timeshift and btsync) downloading/installing the .deb for saucy will work … no dependencies that can’t be satisfied by raring.
Another option would be to change the “Distribution:” line for the PPA from raring to saucy … but I wouldn’t advise this unless you immediately disable/delete the PPA after installing the software you require.
(this is what we did by PM)
