[Qgis-user] GRASS support lost (again) on Ubuntu/Mint
Patrick Dunford
blackwhitekez at gmail.com
Tue Sep 26 06:30:18 PDT 2017
You have cited that the issue is with Ubuntugis. Ubuntugis is not hosted
by Qgis, and they have therefore no direct control over the versions of
packages there. Hence the packages there are causing issues.
The issue with support for Xenial is not directly a Qgis responsibility.
It is relying on (a) the lack of support from the Ubuntu official
repositories and (b) the lack of timely updating of the third party
Ubuntugis repository. Neither of those is under the control of Qgis.
The question is whether the LTS support for Ubuntu 16.04 is a guarantee
that every available piece of software will work on it for the LTS
period. I doubt that is absolutely guaranteed.
The only versions of Qgis that require Ubuntugis are those built for
Xenial and earlier versions of Ubuntu. It is not required for later
versions of Ubuntu as the required packages are included in those
distros standard repositories.
So if you have an issue that is caused by Ubuntugis then one possible
solution is to have a distro that is based with a later version of
Ubuntu than Xenial. Linux Mint 18.x is based on Xenial. When Mint was
first launched they used to be up to date with releases based on up to
date Ubuntus, now they are falling so far behind that the latest Mint,
18.x, is based on Xenial. Since Xenial, Ubuntu has released Yakkety,
Zesty and is about to release Artful.
I have verified that Qgis 2.18.13 runs without any problems with this
GRASS plugin on Ubuntu 17.04 and Debian 9.1. None of these require
Ubuntugis and I have not used it in the list of repositories for
installing the software from.
To solve your problem you have basically three choices
1. Install a suitable version of [a]Ubuntu or Debian on your PC
2. Install a desktop hypervisor like VirtualBox and build a virtual
machine for a suitable version of [a]Ubuntu or Debian to run Qgis in
3. Wait until Ubuntugis works.
I don't see particularly a problem with recommending either 1 or 2 as
options, just because Ubuntu is supporting Xenial as an LTS doesn't mean
everything available is guaranteed to work on it. The fact you have to
use ubuntigis is because the standard Ubuntu repositories don't contain
the required packages. There are other issues with the Xenial packages
for Qgis, including an older version of Qt on that platform that causes
rounding issues when displaying floating point numbers.
Feel free to contact the developers or report a bug if you are still
concerned. You may also wish to contact the ubuntugis maintainers.
On 27/09/17 01:50, Micha Silver wrote:
> Hi Patrick
>
> On 09/26/2017 02:10 PM, Patrick Dunford wrote:
>>
>> The issue is, even the latest version of Mint is based on Xenial -
>> you don't have the means to upgrade the base.
>>
>>
>> If I have a later version of Ubuntu or Debian than Xenial I don't
>> need to use the ubuntugis repository - problem solved. Qgis do not
>> provide the ubuntugis repository so they obviously have limited means
>> to ensure the packages there are up to date. So the best solution is
>> not to use ubuntugis if there are issues like this.
>>
> Not sure I follow you. From the QGIS download page the recommended
> repo for ubuntu *is ubuntugis* and has been for ages, if I'm not
> mistaken. That's where all the recent packages are. There are tons of
> mails in the archive regarding ubuntugis-unstable vs ubuntugis-nightly
> vs ubuntugis. But the discussion is always around ubuntugis. Please
> correct me if I'm wrong.
>
>
> If I remove that repo (from Mint or Ubuntu) I go back to QGIS 2.14.x,
> which is now no longer the LTS version, and will probably not be
> supported any longer.
>
>
> I don't think it's reasonable to say that Xenial - only 1.5 years old
> - is not going to be supported. Many people don't need or want the
> bleeding edge software, be we do expect that an OS and applications
> will work for several years. All we ask is not to push out new
> versions until the whole stack is ready. Since this problem with GRASS
> has happened before and always has been fixed within a few days, it's
> obvious to me that somehow packages are pushed out to the repo before
> the whole system has been checked thoroughly. So I don't think there's
> a problem with the underlying OS, or which repo to use.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Micha
>
>> There is not a guarantee to support every distro out there and the
>> most stable option is to use a supported distro.
>>
>>
>> On 26/09/17 23:27, Bernd Vogelgesang wrote:
>>> Am 26.09.2017, 10:40 Uhr, schrieb Patrick Dunford
>>> <blackwhitekez at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> There are some issues supporting xenial, are you able to test on
>>> a more recent version of Ubuntu or Debian, maybe in a virtual
>>> machine. I am going to have a look at my 17.04 vm with the
>>> latest 2.18 to see.
>>>
>>> I wonder why xenial should have support issues, being the LTS-version.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I would not recommend Mint - apart from being not an officially
>>> supported distro, the most recent version is based on what is
>>> now relatively old Ubuntu xenial, because the Mint people are
>>> falling behind in development. I switched to Xubuntu to avoid
>>> the Unity controversy.
>>>
>>> Mint also has updates, so I do not see the point switching to
>>> somewhere else. The main problem here is imho that
>>> ubuntugis-unstable and the qgis repositories are very often out of
>>> sync. But a QGIS without all the bells and whistles from ubuntugis
>>> is quite useless for me.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Bernd
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 26/09/17 21:36, Micha Silver wrote:
>>>> After the recent update to QGIS 2.18.13, GRASS support is gone.
>>>> No plugin and no provider.
>>>>
>>>> My apt sources includes:
>>>> deb http://qgis.org/ubuntugis xenial main
>>>> deb-src http://qgis.org/ubuntugis xenial main
>>>> deb
>>>> http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable/ubuntu
>>>> xenial main
>>>> deb-src
>>>> http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable/ubuntu
>>>> xenial main
>>>>
>>>> The packages are installed:
>>>> $ dpkg -l | grep plugin-grass
>>>> ii qgis-plugin-grass
>>>> 1:2.18.13+24xenial-ubuntugis amd64 GRASS plugin
>>>> for QGIS
>>>> ii qgis-plugin-grass-common
>>>> 1:2.18.13+24xenial-ubuntugis all GRASS plugin
>>>> for QGIS - architecture-independent data
>>>> $ dpkg -l | grep provider-grass
>>>> ii qgis-provider-grass
>>>> 1:2.18.13+24xenial-ubuntugis amd64 GRASS
>>>> provider for QGIS
>>>>
>>>> More info:
>>>> $ gdalinfo --version
>>>> GDAL 2.2.1, released 2017/06/23
>>>> $ grass --version
>>>> GRASS GIS 7.2.2
>>>>
>>>> Running 'qgis --debug & ' does not show anything unusual.
>>>>
>>>> This is getting tiresome - every few months a routine system
>>>> upgrade trashes GRASS support.
>>>>
>>>> Any suggestions are welcome,
>>>> Thanks, Micha
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Micha Silver
>>>> Ben Gurion Univ.
>>>> Sde Boker, Remote Sensing Lab
>>>> cell: +972-523-665918
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Qgis-user mailing list
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>>>> List info:https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
>>>> Unsubscribe:https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Bernd Vogelgesang
>>> Siedlerstraße 2
>>> 91083 Baiersdorf/Igelsdorf
>>> Tel: 09133-825374
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
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>
> --
> Micha Silver
> Ben Gurion Univ.
> Sde Boker, Remote Sensing Lab
> cell: +972-523-665918
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