muon package manager search broken

[ptoche]

I just got a Lenovo U300s and got Kubuntu 11.10 installed. One week ago I installed 11.10 on my HP-DV6, where I've had problems with the touchpad. I've got the same problems with the Lenovo, but I don't want to talk about that today...

The muon package manager works flawlessly on my HP, but doesn't work so well on my Lenovo. The funny thing is that both are clean install from the same CD, both are used with the same sort of setup and share the same internet connection.

On the HP if I enter a name in the search box, say "eclipse", then it will list all the packages that have some sort of connection with the word eclipse. On the Lenovo, it lists nothing. But if I scroll down to the letter E, eclipse is listed there, available, and I can install it. What's disabled is the search feature.

I can install, update, remove from the command line.

sudo apt-get purge muon (or whatever the commands are)
sudo apt-get install muon
didn't fix it.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[SteveRiley]

Re: muon package manager search broken

First, let's verify that you're truly running the same versions of Muon. On each machine, run this:

apt-cache policy muon

and let us see the results.

On rare occasion, I've seen problems where the Xapian indexer -- the background process that indexes APT packages -- gets corrupted and causes the quick search in Synaptic to misbehave. Perhaps the you're seeing the same problem? On your machines, compare the output of this:

ll -R /var/cache/apt-xapian-index

Are they the same?

[ptoche]

Re: muon package manager search broken

Thanks Steve,

yes, both machines run the exact same version, which is:

1.2.1-Oubuntu1

and the exact same output for apt-xapian-index (apart from the dates, obviously, but same names, sizes).

[SteveRiley]

Re: muon package manager search broken

1.2.1-Oubuntu1

and the exact same output for apt-xapian-index (apart from the dates, obviously, but same names, sizes).

Hm. I recall several reports that search was broken in 1.2.0 -- typical symptom: type a character, the entire package list disappears. That was supposed to have been fixed in 1.2.1. Your symptom is different, however.

Perhaps you might try updating Muon from Jonathan's QApt Experimental PPA. It's been working well for me.

[ptoche]

Re: muon package manager search broken

Thanks Steve,

well just a moment ago I received a "security update" notification in the pop-up menu. So, I did this: I launched muon and tried search : broken. Then clicked on update, a bunch of updates took place, I tried muon again: fixed.

Miracles do happen!

[JasperC]

Re: muon package manager search broken

Hi guys, don't mean to crash the thread, but I think I might be having the same/similar problem. The Muon Software Centre search seems inconsistent. At one point typing anything (eg firefox) into the search box resulted in no results at all.

Another example is when I installed the mscorefonts TTF package. Before installing, sometimes it would show up and sometimes it wouldn't. Right now I've installed it, but entering mscorefonts in the search box gives no results. And typing ttf brings up a lot of things, but not one of them fonts.

I ran apt-cache policy muon and got:

muon:
Installed: 1.2.1-0ubuntu1
Candidate: 1.2.1-0ubuntu1
Version table:
*** 1.2.1-0ubuntu1 0
500 http://sg.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status


How do we do updates with KDE/Muon? I've only just installed Kubuntu 11.10 this week and not yet seen any notifications for software updates.

[ptoche]

Re: muon package manager search broken

I can't help you Jasper, I'm afraid, I'm a newbie. I did nothing special, I was online and a notification just popped at the bottom right-hand corner, then I clicked on it.

The weird thing is that I had previously uninstalled and reinstalled muon without any success. And as I report, I had the same version as you do before and after the problems.

Based on your experience, it's possible that the problems will return. I will drop a line if I notice further problems.

What I will do if the problem returns is install synaptic. It's currently listed. Oh, now that I think of it, I'd better install it while I can

EDIT: P.S. Just been on an installation binge.

[JasperC]

Re: muon package manager search broken

Well, I'm a newbie too, so no apologies necessary.

Is Synaptic the software installation thing in Ubuntu? I've used it before but never noticed what the application was called. And does it work in Kubuntu? I know I've read somewhere that because they share the same code base whatever app that works on Ubuntu should run on Kubuntu, but I wasn't sure about something that sounds more system specific...

[ptoche]

Re: muon package manager search broken

synaptic is what we used to have on kubuntu, it's been replaced by muon, they look pretty similar to me at the user level, but there must be sound and well thought-out reasons for the replacement. Below a reference, stating explicitly that synaptic can be installed, and indeed I have done so on my laptop without any problem so far, I hope they don't interfere...

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/06/s...-ubuntu-11-10/

[SteveRiley]

Re: muon package manager search broken

but there must be sound and well thought-out reasons for the replacement

Synaptic is built with Gtk+ and makes sense for GNOME-based distros. We haven't had a capable native Qt4/KDE4 package manager, ever. KPackageKit didn't come close. Muon is getting there, give it time--it's still relatively new. See Jonathan's introductory blog post for more details.

[ptoche]

Re: muon package manager search broken

thanks for the clarification and the reference Steve!

[ScottyK]

Re: muon package manager search broken

Wanted to take a minute and thank SteveRiley for the advice about seeing what version of Muon one has installed.

After the latest round of updates, I noticed that muon was completely gone from my system.

using the command..

apt-cache policy muon

verified that it was indeed gone!

muon:
 Installed: (none)
 Candidate: 1.2.1-0ubuntu1
 Version table:
   1.2.1-0ubuntu1 0
    500 [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] oneiric/main amd64 Packages
   1.1.2-0ubuntu1 0
    500 [url]http://ubuntu.mirror.cambrium.nl/ubuntu/[/url] natty/main amd64 Packages

Then running..

sudo apt-get install muon

will reinstall it.

[SteveRiley]

Re: muon package manager search broken

Glad it's working for you. I'm sure many of us here look forward to Muon's continued enhancements.

[Guest]

Re: muon package manager search broken

I registered just to say thank you to ScottyK (and Google for bringing me here) !!

I just wasted three hours of my life because of this stupid bug. Damn thing simply refuses to search !!
I did have this problem though (twice! in two consecutive installations!):

http://askubuntu.com/questions/89401...-dpkg-now-what

And I followed the same approach to solve the issue (kill the process, reboot, repair).
And after that, search just stops working. What finally saved my sanity was this command:

 sudo apt-get install muon

Unlike ScottyK I had the program installed, as you can see from output:

sudo apt-get install muon
[sudo] password for loreia: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree    
Reading state information... Done
muon is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

But just running this command, caused Muon to start searching normally.

God, this is so frustrating !!
I really want to like KDE, I really do, I even installed on my Windows machine (but there at least I know I am dealing with alpha/beta stuff), but this is just too much. OpenSuse 12.1 was so bad I had to remove it (after wasting whole day on it), and now KUbuntu is giving me hard time because installer/updater is in beta state.
BTW, why ON EARTH can I start 'muon-updater' only from command line? This thing pops-up, blocks and hangs, and after killing it, I need to use Google to start it again manually. Really! I am mean really, was this an actual rational decision? Seriously!

It feels like whenever something starts working in normal and stable way, for no apparent or logical reason it is replaced with alpha quality software. Who makes these childish decisions anyway? If you find this guy, do a world a favor, and shoot him in the head !!

Ok, after venting out my frustration, I can now go and actually install something.

Once again, thanks a lot ScottyK, as you can see I was about to murder someone!

BR,
Loreia

[ptoche]

Re: muon package manager search broken

I haven't had problems with muon not searching anymore, but I did have an interesting experience I thought I'd describe here, as perhaps some thing of help may come of it:

I accidentally pressed the power button while I was upgrading and updating software with muon (the button is placed in a very awkward position on my laptop). Muon wouldn't work after that, can't blame the little sod. But, worryingly, sudo apt-get upgrade also failed. So here are the steps that got me out of this quandary:

sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install -f

and it was all honey and milk after that!