QGIS » QGIS Application

Thanks Jürgen

Some answers;

On checking the CL in the terminal I see that yes it was python-qgis not python-gis that was installed. They had cut and pasted from the QGIS website so got it right whereas I had written from memory and missed it, sorry.

I did feel guilty about not quoting the error messages but hadn't written them down as they happened. However I had googled them so I got the user to go back through the Firefox history for the past couple of days google searches and list them. In order of appearance they are;

The config file (/usr/share/qgis/grass/modules/default.qgc) not found 

Authentication System: DISABLED. Resources authenticating via the system can not be accessed

ImportError: No module named 'pyplugin_installer'

No error was given for the lack of CRS's or data handlers they just didn't show when you went to the relevant dialogue.

$ dpkg -S /usr/share/qgis/python
python-qgis-common: /usr/share/qgis/python
$ dpkg -S /usr/share/qgis/grass
qgis-plugin-grass-common: /usr/share/qgis/grass
$ dpkg -S /usr/share/qgis/svg
qgis-providers-common: /usr/share/qgis/svg
$ dpkg -S /usr/share/qgis/resources/cpt-city-qgis-min/
qgis-providers-common: /usr/share/qgis/resources/cpt-city-qgis-min
$ dpkg -S /usr/lib/qgis/plugins
qgis-provider-grass, qgis-plugin-grass, qgis: /usr/lib/qgis/plugins
$ dpkg -l qgis-plugin-grass qgis-providers qgis qgis-provider-grass python-qgis-common qgis-plugin-grass-common qgis-providers-common
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-=================================
ii  python-qgis-co 1:3.2.0+24xe all          Python bindings to QGIS - archite
ii  qgis           1:3.2.0+24xe amd64        Geographic Information System (GI
ii  qgis-plugin-gr 1:3.2.0+24xe amd64        GRASS plugin for QGIS
ii  qgis-plugin-gr 1:3.2.0+24xe all          GRASS plugin for QGIS - architect
ii  qgis-provider- 1:3.2.0+24xe amd64        GRASS provider for QGIS
ii  qgis-providers 1:3.2.0+24xe amd64        collection of data providers to Q
ii  qgis-providers 1:3.2.0+24xe all          collection of data providers to Q

Unfortunately this is all on the "patched" machine so we would have got a different result had I tried it first thing this morning.

Does that help?

Cheers
Kim

Remember that after the initial installation and re-installation there was no grass or python directory in /usr/share/qgis/ we had to add them manually.

$ dpkg -S default.qgc
qgis-plugin-grass-common: /usr/share/qgis/grass/modules/default.qgc
$ dpkg --contents /var/cache/apt/archives/qgis-plugin-grass-common_1%3a3.2.0+*all.deb | grep default.qgc
dpkg-deb: error: failed to read archive '/var/cache/apt/archives/qgis-plugin-grass-common_1%3a3.2.0+*all.deb': No such file or directory

Finally an error!

$ ls -l /var/cache/apt/archives/qgis*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6519822 Jan 20 12:37 /var/cache/apt/archives/qgis_1%3a2.18.16+24xenial_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6853746 May 19 09:52 /var/cache/apt/archives/qgis_1%3a3.0.3+24xenial-ubuntugis_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10898914 May 19 09:52 /var/cache/apt/archives/qgis-common_1%3a3.0.3+24xenial-ubuntugis_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3246386 May 19 09:52 /var/cache/apt/archives/qgis-providers_1%3a3.0.3+24xenial-ubuntugis_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  2527282 May 19 09:52 /var/cache/apt/archives/qgis-providers-common_1%3a3.0.3+24xenial-ubuntugis_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1759874 Jan 20 12:37 /var/cache/apt/archives/qgis-server_1%3a2.18.16+24xenial_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  2094140 May 19 09:52 /var/cache/apt/archives/qgis-server_1%3a3.0.3+24xenial-ubuntugis_amd64.deb

It's not there

I'm not sure why they decided to install the server but I hav't got them to delete it yet as I wasn't sure what its dependencies were.

Kim Frankcombe wrote:

Remember that after the initial installation and re-installation there was no grass or python directory in /usr/share/qgis/ we had to add them manually.

I thought you copied the files, because the files were missing. You also said that qgis-plugin-grass was installed without an error - which implies that qgis-plugin-grass-common was also installed. Which is also what your package listing shows:

ii  qgis-plugin-gr 1:3.2.0+24xe all          GRASS plugin for QGIS - architect

That should be qgis-plugin-grass-common. If it was a freshly (re-)installed, it should still be in the cache - unless you meanwhile ran apt-get clean or the like. Odd that it isn't there anymore.

I'm not sure why they decided to install the server but I hav't got them to delete it yet as I wasn't sure what its dependencies were.

qgis and qgis-server both depend on eg. qgis-providers corresponding to their version. So installing qgis should also have initiate an upgrade of qgis-server to 3.2.

The question still is, why qgis-plugin-grass-common among others was apparently installed, although the files were not there. Please run debsums -s qgis-plugin-grass-common which will verify the the installed files are available and unmodified (without the package name it'll check all packages).

Yes we copied the whole directories from my machine because they were missing from the clean machine. Also true that no errors were reported either to the terminal or dpkg log. No they did not run apt-get clean, I've been trying to encourage them to use apt rather than apt-get. They may have run apt autoclean after installing the new kernel update this morning though. However why would that selectively remove qgis-grass-plugin-common and not older packages like the V2.18 packages in there?

Could it be a typo or broken package list on the ubuntugis xenial repo?

I'll answer the last question tomorrow when I'm back in the office. Thanks for your attention to this.

Kim Frankcombe wrote:

OK. debsums -s qgis-plugin-grass-common returns nothing. On checking with my machine where I worked through from 2.18 to the early adopter to 3.2 successively I get the same result.

In case it helps I've attached the section of the dpkg log from the clean machine and it shows qgis-plugin-grass as installed. apt list sees ...-common

Not really. Except for qgis-common, which doesn't have any of the missing files, none of the -common packages are mentioned in dpkg.log - although they are installed in the current version. So it's an older problem…

For the benefit of anyone suffering from the same symptoms. Check the ownership of /usr/lib I can not be sure that this was the cause of this particular problem but I did notice that instead of being root:root it was local_user:local_user. At the time I though the user most likely responsible but over the next 3 months all of our four similarly configured systems had the same thing happen with mine being the second. I knew I had not changed the ownership so it has something to do with one of the packages we have installed. The final system to suffer the same problem only showed up last week so I'm at a loss to understand what it is that is is modifying the ownership. Either way if you see these symptoms check that all the key subdirectories of /usr are owned by root.

HTH
Kim