Problems when upgrade Ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04

If you want to upgrade Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04 you might get stuck with the following problem:

Could not calculate the upgrade

An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade:

E:Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, caused by held packages.

This can be caused by:
* Upgrading to a pre-release version of Ubuntu
* Running the current pre-release version of Ubuntu
* Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu

If none of this applies, then please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bug report.


There is a Bug on Launchpad
( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/775289 ) which describes the problem and helped me to find a solution.

The problem had to do with Ubuntu 10.04 and newer versions of files there which made it impossible for the update-manager ( or do-release-upgrade in terminal ) to find a valid state because of broken dependencies.

So if you look at /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log and search for 10.04 you will find the packages which make troubles.

I had to manually download the following packages from
http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/n/nspr/libnspr4-0d_4.8.6-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/n/nss/libnss3-1d_3.12.9+ckbi-1.82-0ubuntu0.10.10.3_i386.deb
http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openjdk-6/openjdk-6-jre-headless_6b20-1.9.13-0ubuntu1~10.10.1_i386.deb
http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openjdk-6/openjdk-6-jre-lib_6b20-1.9.13-0ubuntu1~10.10.1_all.deb

In terminal in the directory where you downloaded the files you can install them with:

sudo dpkg -i filename1 filename2 ...

After that the upgrade went smooth!

Additional stuff to install on Ubuntu

This list features programs I install additionally in Ubuntu and it will grow from time to time! :)

adb - Android Debug Bridge
amarok - Music Player
aptitude - Menu-driven package manager (text-mode)
audacity - Audio Editor
avidemux - Video Editor
blender - 3D Program
calibre - Powerful and easy to use e-book manager
Dia - Diagram Creation Program
ekiga - SIP VoIP Client
Epiphany-Browser - Simple but powerful Web Browser (GNOME Web)
exFAT - Utilities for the proprietary Extended File Allocation Table filessystem
fastboot - Small tool to re-flash partitions on your android device
filezilla - FTP Client
freeplane - Mind mapping and knowledge management program
F3 - Check USB-Drives - Fight Flash Fraud, or Fight Fake Flash
gddrescue - GNU ddrescue data recovery tool
GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program
gparted - Partitioning Program
Grsync - GUI for Rsync, the command line directory and file synchronization tool
gtkterm - Serial Terminal
hardinfo - Displays information about your hardware, OS and Benchmarks
heimdall - Tool to flash firmware onto Samsung mobile devices
htop - An interactive process viewer
inkscape - SVG Graphics Editor
iotop - Shows how much I/O is going on
K3b - CD/DVD Burning Program
kdenlive - Video Editor (inofficial sucessor of kino)
KeePass - Password Safe
LibreOffice -  Free Office Suite
nfs-common - Network File System Clinent files
nmap - Network Monitor
okular - Additional PDF Viewer (KDE)
openvpn - Open Source VPN
p7zip - File Achiver
pidgin - Instant Messaging Client
samba - Cross-platform file and printer sharing
scribus - Desktop Page Layout Program
sshfs - Network filesystem client to connect to SSH servers
terminator - Terminal
TestDisk -  Powerful free data recovery software
tightvnc - VNC Client
UNetbootin - Create bootable Live USB drives
Viking - GPS Data Editor and Analyzer
vim - Nice Editor
Virtualbox - x86 and AMD64/Intel64 Virtualization
vlc - Video LAN Client, a nice Multimedia Player and Streamer
xsensors - Displays information like CPU temp. from your motherboard sensors

And for the lazy ones:
sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot aptitude audacity blender calibre dia epiphany-browser exfat-utils filezilla freeplane f3 gddrescue gimp gparted grsync gtkterm hardinfo heimdall-flash heimdall-flash-frontend htop inkscape iotop k3b kdenlive keepass2 libreoffice nfs-common nmap okular openvpn p7zip-full pidgin samba scribus sshfs terminator testdisk viking vim virtualbox vlc xsensors xtightvncviewer

I also recommend changing Nautilus to List view.

In Ubuntu 16.04 there is no install candidate for avidemux anymore.
In Ubuntu 18.04 there is no install candidate for UNetbootin anymore.

In Ubuntu 20.04 there is no install candidate for amarok and ekiga anymore.

In Firefox i recomend the following plugins:
Tab Counter
Tree Style Tab
uBlock Origin
Video DownloadHelper
Video DownloadHelper Companion App

Viking GPS data editor and analyzer

My last post was about open-gpstracker - an useful Android application that is able to export the tracks to the gpx format. Now i want to tell you about an application for Ubuntu Linux to view and edit the gpx files.

We are talking about Viking, a open source project hosted on SourceForge.net - with the possibility to import OpenStreetMap data. At the time of writing the actual version in the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS repository is 0.9.9-3, on the Viking page it is 0.9.93.

Using nmap to scan Ports

If you need to know, which ports are open on a system you can scan it with the open source tool nmap.

A simple
nmap [ip or domain]
will result in a list of open/filtered ports.

nmap -sT [ip or domain]
will scan the TCP-Ports.

nmap -sU [ip or domain]
will scan the UDP-Ports.

nmap -p 20-400 [ip or domain]
will check all ports between 20 and 400.

Upgrade to Ubuntu alpha or beta releases

If you want to upgrade to the newest and fanciest Ubuntu versions the easiest way is to enter this command:

sudo ubuntu-manager -d

In this case you don't have to alter /etc/apt/sources.list to the new version (for example from karmic to lucid) and then do a apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. Also it removes some unused packages too.

Disappearing Gnome panel

If you have problems with disappearing panels after booting up the system, which can be caused by taking too long for restoring the session or because your system is slow anyway, there is a simple method to restore them: simply type

pkill gnome-panel

into the shell. After that the Gnome panel is restarting automatically!

Ubuntu Distribution Upgrade in a OpenVZ Container

If you use Debain Lenny on your OpenVZ host and your Container is a Ubuntu 9.04 and you want to do a apt-get dist-upgrade to 9.10 you will end on the host with this error:

# vzctl enter 1234
enter into VE 1234 failed
Unable to open pty: No such file or directory

What happend? In Ubuntu upstart is responsible for the initialization process but therefore it needs some kernel specific stuff which is not in the 2.6.26 kernel from Debian Lenny. There is a bug report on Launchpad describing the problem.

So on the blog of bodhizazen, the person who started the bug report, you can find the needed upstart script of Stéphane Graber. Like written in bodhizazen blog entry do the following on the host:

cd /var/lib/vz/private/[VZID]/etc/init/
wget http://bodhizazen.net/openvz.conf

Now you can connect again to your virtual ubuntu machine. But if you upgrade from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04 you will receive the error message like above.

The solution was found fast, again from Stéphane Graber.

Simply edit /etc/init/openvz.conf and remove the two mount lines for /proc and /sys.

Now you can enjoy your Ubuntu 10.04 LTS container on a Debian Lenny host.

HTC Hero adb access under Ubuntu 9.10 amd64

When i connected my HTC Hero (formerly T-Mobile G2) with my Ubuntu 9.10 64bit to get shell access to it i had the following problem:

$ ./adb shell
error: insufficient permissions for device

$ ./adb devices
?????? no permissions

So i found a solution here: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/device.html
First you should generate a new udev rule:

sudo vim /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
---
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
---

Now you have to change the rights:

sudo chmod a+r /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

Also you have to reload the udev rules:

sudo service udev reload

Now if you reconnect your HTC Hero you will have access with adb from the Android SDK Tools!

Installing Andriod SDK under Ubuntu 9.10 amd64

If you want to install the Android SDK under Ubuntu 64 bit you first have to install the 32bit libs:

apt-get install ia32-libs

Also you need the sun-java:

apt-get install sun-java6-bin

Now you can proceed like written on http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

1) Download the SDK for Linux from here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/download.html?v=android-sdk_r05-linux_86.tgz and extract it to a place you like.

2) apt-get install eclipse

3) in Eclipse -> Help -> Install new Software add the following location: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ - most likely if you are using Ubuntu 9.10 and Eclipse from the repository you will suffer from this bug also: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eclipse/+bug/460944?comments=all - a empty plugin list. In this case add
The Eclipse Project Updates - http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/3.5 and Galileo - http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo also.

4) Now install all stuff from the https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ location and restart Eclipse.

5) Now in Eclipse go to -> Window -> Preferences -> Android and Point to your Android SDK root directory.

6) Now it's time to add an SDK for your Android Platform - therefore in Eclipse go to -> Window -> Android SDK and AVD Manager -> Available Packages and choose your Android SDK Version

Voila! :)