Gnome is looping on me!

Ralf Mardorf silver.bullet at zoho.com
Sat Sep 9 13:29:04 UTC 2017


On Sat, 9 Sep 2017 07:49:26 +0100, Colin Law wrote:
>On 8 September 2017 at 20:13,  <s_s_shahin at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>> Hello Geeks!
>>
>> I was in the middle of trying to download Google Earth on Ubuntu
>> Gnome 16.02 LTS by following a script I came across somewhere, but I
>> terminated the session before succeeding. I logged off and the next
>> time I tried to log on I was allowed to login and waited for a
>> response. The attempt ended by being offered the log on screen
>> again. This thing repeats and I do not get in.
>>  
>
>From the login prompt hit ctrl+alt+F1 which should give you a
>terminal. Login there and run
>sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade
>that will check that everything is up to date. If you see any errors
>then post them here.
>If it does anything then go back to the login screen using
>ctrl+alt+F7. Then reboot and try again.
>
>If still no joy try logging in as the Guest user and see what happens.

After following some obscure hints it's dangerous just to fix the install,
without taking care what those obscure hints actually did.

However, I'll describe how to get the current Google Earth Pro or if it
shouldn't run properly, how to get the last quasi semi-legacy
Google Earth version.

Pro forma: I'm running the same release as the OP, just not Gnome and my
firefox is icecat, the graphics is an Intel, the kernel is from official
repositories and the architecture is 64bit.

[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ lsb_release -dc
Description:	Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
Codename:	xenial
[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ wmctrl -m | head -1
Name: Openbox
[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ ls -hl /usr/local/bin/firefox 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jan 12  2016 /usr/local/bin/firefox -> icecat
[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ hwinfo --gfx | grep Model
  Model: "Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller"
[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ uname -r
4.4.0-93-lowlatency
[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ uname -m
x86_64

First we ensure that the install is not broken and up-to-date.

[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ sudo apt update -qq
[sudo] password for weremouse: 
All packages are up to date.
[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ sudo apt install -f --no-install-recommends -o APT::Keep-Downloaded-Packages=1
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ sudo apt full-upgrade -o APT::Keep-Downloaded-Packages=1
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Now we get google-earth from the original Google website.

[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ firefox https://www.google.com/earth/index.html >/dev/null 2>&1

On the right top we click "RESOURCES".
In the "Earth Pro on Desktop" item we click "DOWNLOAD".
Now we need to select the Architecture and distro, so we either chose

  "32 bit .deb (For Debian/Ubuntu)"

or

  "64 bit .deb (For Debian/Ubuntu)"

depending on or install. 

If running

  uname -m

from command line returns

  x86_64

we check "64 bit", else "32 bit".

If there shouldn't be a selection read [1].

We push the "Agree and Download" button without or without taking care of

"1.  the Google Terms of Service (the "Universal Terms");
 2.  these Maps/Google Earth additional terms (the "Maps/Earth Additional Terms");
 3.  the Google Maps/Google Earth Legal Notices (the "Legal Notices"); and
 4.  the Google Privacy Policy (the "Privacy Policy")."

By default I download to /tmp just for this howto I download to
~/Downloads . If the browser doesn't ask you for the download location, it
much likely is /Downloads .

When finished we close firefox or what ever browser else we were using.

[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ ls -hAl ~/Downloads/
total 56M
-rw-rw-r-- 1 weremouse weremouse 56M Sep  9 14:58 google-earth-pro-stable_current_amd64.deb

To install Google Earth it's important that we run  _"apt"_  and  _not "apt-get"_.

[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ sudo apt install --no-install-recommends -o APT::Keep-Downloaded-Packages=1 ~/Downloads/google-earth-pro-stable_current_amd64.deb 
[sudo] password for weremouse: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'google-earth-pro-stable' instead of '/home/weremouse/Downloads/google-earth-pro-stable_current_amd64.deb'
The following additional packages will be installed:
  alien cups-bsd cups-client cups-common debugedit ed liblua5.2-0 librpm3 librpmbuild3 librpmio3 librpmsign3 lsb-core lsb-security ncurses-term pax rpm rpm-common rpm2cpio
Suggested packages:
  cups update-inetd xpp smbclient rpm-i18n elfutils rpmlint rpm2html
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  alien cups-bsd cups-client cups-common debugedit ed google-earth-pro-stable liblua5.2-0 librpm3 librpmbuild3 librpmio3 librpmsign3 lsb-core lsb-security ncurses-term pax rpm rpm-common rpm2cpio
0 upgraded, 19 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,310 kB/59.2 MB of archives.
After this operation, 249 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

If needed push enter.

[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ google-earth-pro

It's broken on my machine. However on Arch Linux I successfully run
an older version:

[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ sudo systemd-nspawn -qD /mnt/archlinux/ pacman -Q google-earth
Failed to create directory /mnt/archlinux/sys/fs/selinux: Read-only file system
Failed to create directory /mnt/archlinux/sys/fs/selinux: Read-only file system
google-earth 7.1.8.3036-1

64 bit
https://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/pool/main/g/google-earth-stable/google-earth-stable_7.1.8.3036-r0_amd64.deb

32 bit
https://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/pool/main/g/google-earth-stable/google-earth-stable_7.1.8.3036-r0_i386.deb

So I downloaded it and installed it for Ubuntu, too.

[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ cd /tmp/
[weremouse at moonstudio tmp]$ wget https://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/pool/main/g/google-earth-stable/google-earth-stable_7.1.8.3036-r0_amd64.deb
[snip]
[weremouse at moonstudio tmp]$ ls -hl /tmp/google-earth-stable_7.1.8.3036-r0_amd64.deb 
-rw-rw-r-- 1 weremouse weremouse 44M Jan 17  2017 /tmp/google-earth-stable_7.1.8.3036-r0_amd64.deb
[weremouse at moonstudio tmp]$ sudo apt install --no-install-recommends -o APT::Keep-Downloaded-Packages=1 /tmp/google-earth-stable_7.1.8.3036-r0_amd64.deb 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'google-earth-stable' instead of '/tmp/google-earth-stable_7.1.8.3036-r0_amd64.deb'
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  google-earth-stable
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

If needed push enter.

[weremouse at moonstudio tmp]$ google-earth

This version of Google Earth works :).

Regards,
Ralf





[1]
I didn't need to select the operating system or to chose between 32 bit and
64 bit when using icecat, so I got an EXE for Windows. If this happens for
you, too, chose another browser.

It shouldn't happen for the real firefox.

However, actually I run

[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ qupzilla https://www.google.com/earth/index.html >/dev/null 2>&1

It only displays a download button, so I used the scroll wheel of the mouse
to see more, including the "RESOURCES" link, this (slso) shouldn't be
necessary when using firefox.





More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list