Focal upgrade broke Clibre

[Tony Arnold]

Hi Tommy,

Thanks for your comments. Sorry for top posting but I'm using my phone!

Your comment about dependencies got me thinking. It could be to with my Python environment. I'll check later but may have a version sip or some such installed locally.

I'll check it out Nd see what I find.

Regards,
Tony.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: Tommy Trussell <tommy.trussell at gmail.com>
Date: 22/05/2020 18:38 (GMT+00:00)
To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
Subject: Re: Focal upgrade broke Clibre

My answer appears below

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