Application manager: problem with sources.list
 

After having to reinstall the 2006 OS due to damage caused by installing maemo mapper, I am unable to download updates to Application Manager. It never works regardless of what network I'm on. Period. After looking into this exhaustively, I *think* the problem might lie in the first entry in sources.list, a tableteer repository. For some unknown reason it can't be edited or deleted on my tablet, although every other entry can. The only thing I can see unique about this entry is that it has extra spaces toward the end of the text. Here is what it looks like:

deb http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com/certified/ mistral user

Note extra spaces before mistral. No other entry has this.

I reflashed a friend's tablet and lo and behold he had the exact same issue. This puzzles me-- if it's symptomatic to the latest 2006 OS update, why isn't everyone seeing this? And why didn't I experience it earlier? The first time I installed the 2006 OS I didn't have this issue. I could install from any of the repositories in my sources.list. Now that seems impossible.

I re-ran the reflash on my friend's 770 and it took an hour to run whereas it had only taken 20 minutes before. That was odd. Unfortunately, the sources.list problem still exists.

I then tried editing sources.list (with joerc) but for reasons I can't figure out I can't seem to save sources.list without it becoming unreadable by Application Manager. I next tried deleting sources.list and installing MaNo 1.2 (a Nokia internal VPN tool) which creates its own sources.list with additional repositories-- but it also had the same problem with the tableteer entry. Also, the MaNo install causes sources.list to be read-only and I don't know how to fix that (linux noob) so no editing with joerc.

What I'm wondering is:

1) Has anyone else experienced the AppMan update problem I've described?

2) Does anyone else's tableeter catalog entry look like mine, and if so, can you get application updates?

3) How the heck do I fix this????

Thanks.

EDIT: In File Manager I am unable to copy any other sources.list from, say, the MMC to /etc/apt/sources.list. I copy, paste, and nothing appears. Move also fails; I get a very useless error from File Manager saying "Unable to move this file". :confused:

Mine seems to work.
While the extra spaces didn't show up in your post, I took a look at my sources.list and it has the same extra spaces ... I don't know why it does but I would think apt-get (the brains behind the Application Manager) would ignore this (eventhough it barfs on extra /'s).

If you do the command 'ls -la /etc/apt/sources.list' it should be owned by user root group root and have rw permissions for the user only. If it doesn't, you can reset them as such by the command 'chmod 600 /etc/apt/sources.list' and 'chown root:root /etc/apt/sources.list'.

I am assuming that Nokia made some changes to atp-get or the Application manager to interpret the comment #maemo:essential as a "do not mess with the following repo" flag. Not sure if they also modified it such that any sources.list without that as the first line will barf. Something to experiment with if you feel lucky. Just *don't* do an 'apt-get upgrade' ... that seems to upgrade things to an experimental/unstable state ... or at least it used to.

To do anything with those files (and anything in /etc/ in general) you need to be logged in as "root". When using the GUI, you are running as the user "user". There is a package in one of the repositories called becomeroot that makes it pretty simple to enable root access (maybe too simple as you can brick your 770 by doing the wrong things as root). Install the package and the xterm package and type sudo su - at the command line to login as root ... however, if your application manager is hooped then you have a chicken and egg problem that the linux flash utility can help you with. You just need a linux desktop to use it on. A Ubuntu liveCD works like a charm if you don't have a machine running linux. Check out the maemo wiki for more info for the magic switches that you need.

I should have said: I already became root (already figured all that stuff out) but it didn't make any difference-- I still get the error.

Anyway, if others can get application updates even with those spaces then something else screwy is going on, and it's making me nuts. It *used* to work. I would think reflashing would restore the device to the working state but that is not the case... no matter what I flat cannot get updates... :(

Thanks for your input though.

do you have ssh running?

dropbear is running; that's what you're talking about, right?

Either way, what would ssh help me with here?

I had this same problem, and this is how I fixed it. I forget - does dropbear allow incomming connections? If so - this is what I did:

I used a program called winscp (http://winscp.net/eng/index.php) and connected to my 770 as root. I navigated to /etc/apt and right clicked on sources.list and chose edit. This opened the file as plain text. I then cleaned up the file. In my case there was an extra blank line in the middle of the file. I removed that. I also commented out each entry (put a # at the begining of each line) and uncommented one at a time to make sure none were broken. Be sure to save the file each time it is edited. I hope this helps.

I appreciate that advice, but I'm almost completely lost here. No idea at all how to configure WINSCP to connect to my tablet... SSH is very new to me and I don't yet understand all the terminology or requirements. User name? Password? Key? I have no idea what any of that is supposed to be in this case...

???

EDIT: I entered the tablet's IP as host name, then tried root as user name and the password I had assigned to root previously. I got the messages below--

Searching for host...
Connecting to host...
Authenticating...
Using username "root" .
Authenticating with pre-entered password
Access denied.
Access denied.

Then I'm prompted below:

'root@192.168.16.15' session password:

I have tried entering the root password again, and leaving the text box blank, and no further progress,

??????

EDIT 2: I get the feeling I'm supposed to enter some sort of authentication info on the tablet side, but I have absolutely no idea where to start. This PGP stuff is almost completely foreign to me. I have a vague idea what it is, but never used it before.

EDIT 3: found helpful info on http://www.maemo.org/maemowiki/InstallSsh . Only problem is, it says to put apublic key file into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys... unfortunately that folder doesn't seem to exist on my tablet.

For a longtime Windows user, this stuff is like 1 step forward, 2 steps back. I wish there were online resources aimed at those of us new to the linux world... every one I've found somewhere leaves out extremely crucial details. :(

Also, how the HECK do you right-click with a stylus???

The spaces in sources.list are absolutely valid and correct. See here: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ap...basico.en.html

The "#maemo:essential" flag is only used by the application manager GUI to prevent you from removing the default repos.

What do you mean by "unable to download updates to Application Manager" ? What is the actual error message that you get?

The first message says it can't download an update, then asks me if i want to pull up the current app list. I respond yes, and it tells me it can't do that, either.

This is happening on 2 770 tablets, each of which has been reflashed more than once with 2006 OS. On one tablet it only became an issue after the %$#@! maemo mapper royally screwed my tablet, forcing me to reflash. App man worked fine before that. The other tablet is a co-workers that I upgraded to 2006 and now exhibits the same problem as mine. I can't find anyone else experiencing this which is really perplexing. I had assumed it was a corrupt sources.list but now I'm unsure. Now on one tablet I've ended up with NO sources.list file and I can't figure out how to move/copy a new one to /etc/apt. Nothing works.

I still wonder why the first tableteer entry can't be edited or deleted from the repository list via the App Man options.

I love my 770 tablet, but man, this stuff is aging me rapidly. I wish to God my employer had created a more robust infrastructure for it BEFORE selling the first one...

It sounds like it might not be a problem with you sources.list, but to make sure you could just get a copy of the file and replace the old one with it.

I'll send you a private message with a place you can get it from and full instructions on how to replace it. Can you use your 770 as a mass storage device?

Thanks again Johsua. I'm still working on this but no luck yet.

I'm not sure how to turn the 770 into a mass storage device, or why I would want to...???

You don't turn it into one. You simply plug it in to your computer via the usb cable (while both are running), and it should pop up as a drive that you can access through My Computer (if you use windows). The reason I asked if you had that available is because for some strange reason mine won't work as a mass storage device anymore. Let me know if I can help more with getting it working. Oh yes - have you contacted Nokia about this problem and submitted a bug report to the Maemo bugzilla?

Ok, yeah, the drive function via usb works fine. What has never worked is sending files back and forth via bluetooth or wifi; I have never managed to get an ad hoc network working between any computer and the tablet due to DHCP I think.

I work for Nokia (I am the quality engineer for the tablet now) and have tried to get help through internal channels but so far the people I've contacted are more clueless than I am. It's really difficult getting connected to the right people!

It is great that you are engaging with the community but I am slightly disturbed that you are not getting more internal support.

Another support avenue that you can follow is the Maemo user mailing list located here:

https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

or the devel list here:

https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers

There seems to be quite a bit of 770 dev involvement on both lists.

Maemo bugzilla gets some response too.

wow. Yes- wifi ad hoc doesn't work worth a *!@&. I tried to figure it out, and it'll work for about a minute, and then the PC will stop responding. I don't think it likes the way the 770 does wifi. I also tried BT a while ago, but it didn't work. Isn't it only set up for phone pairing w/out adding extra drivers?

Were you able to copy my version of sources.list to /etc/apt/, and did it work?

FWIW, ad-hoc works fine between my 770 and my Windows 2000 laptop, with WEP "encryption".

Edit: the #maemo IRC channel is also good for support, but don't forget to ask a smart question.

I think ad hoc depends on the wireless adapter you are using as well. I am running XP on a Thinkpad T42 with no encryption. If I constantly send data it will keep the connection for a while, but if it's at all idle I'll loose it. I can even bridge the connection and get online - just not for long. It usually requires a long time or a reboot to reconnect too. Any ideas?

I'm using a Thinkpad too-- maybe that's the problem (re ad hoc networking). And I have yet to see a solution to the ad hoc host having to use DHCP addresses.

Anyway, haven't had a chance o try your suggestions yet Johsua. My wireless router just died at home (:() and I had no chance at work to test it out. I'll post here when I can.

hi,

after upgrading to the newest version of OS2006, i have the same issue:
as soon as i add a new entry to my sources list (via application manager), it's no longer able to update the packages list and comes up with an error message. it only works with the two default entries (tableteer...).
"http://repository.maemo.org/" and others do not work. if i remove them from the list, it starts working again.

cheers
tobiyoo

Some repository urls need a / on the end. Some do not. Try adding or removing the trailing /

To figure out which repositories are giving you problems you can always check the log file. Application Manager > Tools > Logs...