Focal upgrade broke Clibre

[Tommy Trussell]

My answer appears below

On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 12:28 PM Tony Arnold <tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk>
wrote:

> After upgrading to Focal, I can no long run Calibre. Running from the
> terminal gives:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>
>   File "/usr/bin/calibre", line 20, in <module>
>
>     sys.exit(calibre())
>
>   File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/gui_launch.py", line 73, in calibre
>
>     main(args)
>
>   File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/gui2/main.py", line 529, in main
>
>     app, opts, args = init_qt(args)
>
>   File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/gui2/main.py", line 114, in init_qt
>
>     app = Application(args, override_program_name=override, windows_app_uid=MAIN_APP_UID)
>
>   File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/gui2/__init__.py", line 875, in __init__
>
>     raise RuntimeError('Failed to load the progress_indicator C extension, with error: {}'.format(pi_err))
>
> RuntimeError: Failed to load the progress_indicator C extension, with error: PyCapsule_GetPointer called with incorrect name
>
>
> I've google'd this and only found a German discussion group whose best
> suggestion is to download Calibre rather than use the repo version. Indeed
> this way is recommended on the Claibre web site.
>
> Seems very non Linuxesk to do it that way so was wondering if anyone else
> had seen this or got any other solutions?
>
>
I don't regularly use Calibre but I was curious about your issue and found
that I had it installed. It launches and seems to run properly on my
recently-upgraded Focal system.

To me that error message you are seeing probably indicates a missing or
mis-configured dependency. I found a RedHat bug report from 2011 where
someone had that same error in Calibre and the solution was to update
their system.

What happens when you run this?

$ sudo apt update ; sudo apt upgrade

If you see ANY errors running that line, you'll want to follow up and fix
the errors.

FURTHER THOUGHTS

I looked at the package on https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/calibre
I also checked https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/calibre

The version available in Focal is the Debian patched version that was
available when Focal froze in March, and you can see from the listings
above that Calibre has been updated several times since then. SO there is
some active development going on in Calibre, and if you need a particular
bug fixed you might want to either backport the latest Ubuntu package, or
remove the distribution version and download and install the latest on your
system. At that point you'll have to manually download and update the
package.

Alternatively you can help get the more recent version backported into
Focal. As an active Calibre user, you're in a good place to help get that
started, especially if you find that the version in Focal is unacceptably
buggy and unbefitting of the LTS release. (Remember this is the version of
Calibre many users of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" AND derivative distros
will see for the next two+ years.)

But a backport won't happen unless you or someone else initiates the
backport process.
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