Linux Lite 7.0 RC1 Released

[Şerban S.]

Comparing the code between master, 6.6 and 7.rc all the bashisms are the same, so the problem is with policy kit and the xfce terminal preconfiguration or Ubunbtu configuration file for Lite Tweaks. I've tried several solutions because I want to exhaust the possibilities but the bashisms are all comparable.

TC

Hi!

I've been looking into the scripts myself and since they work alright on LL 6.6, they should in 7.0 too. Yet, an error related to user rights, constantly appears. So the only conclusion is some major change in the policy occured. Further more, it seems that somehow this policy change, is intertwined among lots of packages that are held due to versioning reasons.
As such, it is unlikely that the issue has an origin in the scripts. I found that the error messages are related to minor problems that are unlikely to cause the breaking of the code, since the code is executed on LL 6.6 and the errors are present in this version too.
Yet, another message appears, stating that writing in a file that require just a user name, is denied due to "AccessViolation" error. Which is impossible on a common file or directory.
The $USER variable, is never empty. On my computer, I chose the password login instead of "auto". That is my default installation for over 12 years.
So, there is at least my user name in $USER and I checked that repeatedly.
As I see it, all we can do is for the updates to come and see what that changes.
Another thing I've noticed, that the kernel now is a PREEMPTIVE version. This might require some changes in the policy also.
On the other hand, Ubuntu was buggy for years, when the new release was issued.
Takes time to put the pieces together. Time will clear the things up, I'm sure.
User input will narrow the search for bugs also. So, let's see what happens next.
I'll keep testing meanwhile. If any change happens, I guess at least a bit more can be seen in the output.
The script I put together, is simple but allows me to get the console output when and while Lite Tweaks works.
For now, I never passed the BeginButton_Click() event.
Yet, the script is running up to some point.
 

[trinidad]

Comparing the code between master, 6.6 and 7.rc all the bashisms are the same, so the problem is with policy kit and the xfce terminal preconfiguration or Ubunbtu configuration file for Lite Tweaks. I've tried several solutions because I want to exhaust the possibilities but the bashisms are all comparable.

TC

[sqwuade]

I've made significant progress on the "Lite Tweaks" issue.  My first two theories (.rules vs .pkla polkit-1 and Zenity 3.44 not being compatible) are out the window!

Here's something that at least allows the tweaks to work, although it introduced a new issue, because, once you apply this change, even though all of the Lite Tweaks now work, you will get stuck in an infinite loop, where you can't exit the main window, and have to kill the zenity process manually.

So here it is;

Open the file
/usr/bin/lite-tweaks
and on line 786 change the operator "-ne" to "-eq"

I.e. change:
if [ "${PIPESTATUS[0]}" -ne "0" ]; then _clean_up; exit 0 ; fi # If Quit is clicked then exit

so it becomes:
if [ "${PIPESTATUS[0]}" -eq "0" ]; then _clean_up; exit 0 ; fi # If Quit is clicked then exit

Then try and run Lite Tweaks again and it should work for you...  That is until you try to close it!  That's where it gets stuck in the infinite loop.

A lot of great info on this page: https://linux.die.net/man/1/bash

That's where I found the info on the different operators.

arg1 OP arg2
    OP is one of -eq, -ne, -lt, -le, -gt, or -ge. These arithmetic binary operators return true if arg1 is equal to, not equal to, less than, less than or equal to, greater than, or greater than or equal to arg2, respectively. Arg1 and arg2 may be positive or negative integers.

Info on the PIPESTATUS arrays:
https://linuxsimply.com/bash-scripting-tutorial/process-and-signal-handling/exit-codes/pipestatus/

Cheers!  Sqwuade

[sqwuade]

I tried "sudo apt install openssh-server" first thing with a fresh install of LL7-RC1 and got "openssh-server is already the newest version (1:9.6p1-3ubuntu13).  It's not working for me...  I've installed and run ssh servers many times before.  Usually I just run "apt install ssh" to install the server and "service ssh status" etc. to check on it.  When I run "service ssh status" I get:

Job for ssh.service failed because the control process exited with error code.  See "systemctl status ssh.service" and "journalctl -xeu ssh.service" for details.

I even downloaded a fresh copy of the ISO to install from.  It works fine in LL6.6, Xubuntu and Debian etc.

[sqwuade]

I've been doing more research on the "Lite-Tweaks" issue and the problem could be related to the 3.44 version of zenity not having the "WebKit" option enabled/compiled into the binary any longer (LL6.6 had zenity 3.42.1, which was before the change).

Some info from the zenity Change log page:

3.44.0-2
Superseded in mantic-release on 2023-07-18
Deleted in mantic-proposed on 2023-07-20 (Reason: Moved to mantic)

zenity (3.44.0-2) experimental; urgency=medium

  * Team upload
  * d/control.in, d/rules: Disable WebKit integration (--html option).
    This adds several "heavy" dependencies, notably WebKit itself, but
    also video and spellchecking among others, which are undesired for
    a simple interactive dialog.
    The WebKit feature is disabled by default upstream, and several
    major distributions (including at least the Fedora/Red Hat family,
    Arch and openSUSE) don't enable it in their packaging, so portable
    software cannot rely on this option being available. According to
    codesearch.debian.net, none of the packages with a dependency on
    zenity use the --html option.
    The beginning of the Debian 13 cycle seems a good time to make this
    sort of potentially disruptive change; most likely nobody will notice
    this feature going away, but if we get bug reports, we can consider
    other options such as having a zenity-minimal package without HTML
    support, or having a zenity-full package with it.
    (Closes: #777608, #942362)
  * d/control.in: Remove version constraints in Build-Depends unnecessary
    since bullseye (oldstable)
    - libgtk-3-dev
    - libnotify-dev
    - meson

Source: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/zenity/+changelog

As a test, try running this script in a terminal on LL7, then try it on LL6.6:

"echo "hello world" | zenity --text-info --html --filename=/dev/stdin"

I got that info here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1141802

[sqwuade]

I'll give it another try Trinidad.  I did try it a couple times with LL7 in live mode and it wouldn't work.  I've always just run "apt install ssh" and that would setup the server.  I think the client is enabled out-of-the-box.

[trinidad]

SSH doesn't appear to be working/installing correctly in LL7

Works fine for me, and it's openssh not ssh. LL comes with the openssh client installed already. You just have to add openssh server and sftp server.
TC

[sqwuade]

SSH doesn't appear to be working/installing correctly in LL7.  I've always installed in the past with "apt install ssh".  I've confirmed it installs w/o issue that way with a live version of LL6.6 (UEFI) but I've tried several times with LL7 and it doesn't install correctly.
I also tested on a live version of the new Xubuntu (24.04) and it does install and work correctly with "apt install ssh" on that distro.

[sqwuade]

That makes sense.  I'll bet you're right and those "PERCENTAGE = (100 \* ${i} ) / ${TOTAL_LINES}" parts are to show progress bars leading up to 100%.

[Şerban S.]

[...] What if you make that change on a system where the Lite-Tweaks works, like 6.6?

It doesn't. That is the problem.
It didn't on LL 6.4, and it still doesn't.
Anyway, it seems that it only affects the way the progress of the current task is displayed in the message box that appears.
So, with or without this string formatting error, the script does what is supposed to do: removes something or whatever the current task is.
The only approach to Lite Tweaks is see if the error comes from the upstream packages. It seems that this is the case.

[sqwuade]

Interesting Serban.  Did this change make any difference?  What if you make that change on a system where the Lite-Tweaks works, like 6.6?

Code: [Select]
  ( PERCENTAGE = (100 \* ${i} ) / ${TOTAL_LINES} )
As you can see, I moved the inner brackets to enclose the computation of the integer value of the number of lines, which is a runtime value.
But this has logic for me.
I'm curious if that checks though.

[Şerban S.]

[...] The "Lite Welcome" app (Similar in appearance to Lite-Tweaks) seems to be working fine in LL7 [...]

That is what I could see, too. Have to recheck it though. But so far, I can confirm.

[...] There were a lot of security changes in Ubuntu 24.04: [...]

As I said, I'm far from what you might call "programmer". Still, from my experience, the mess is generated by some user rights management.
Since policy has changed, it's difficult to know all implications on the old code.
Given the fact that the classes are based on inheritance, an error that never became obvious in the old code, might now lead to such results.
Here is one example: Line 1089, lite-tweaks-super:

Code: [Select]

  (( PERCENTAGE = 100 \* ${i} / ${TOTAL_LINES} ))
This generates the following output:

Code: [Select]

/usr/bin/lite-tweaks-super: line 1089: ((: PERCENTAGE = 100 \ 2 / 1 : syntax error: invalid arithmetic operator (error token is "\ 2 / 1 ")
The only thing I can do, is do a quick install of Lite 6.0 (I guess i still have it) and test if this error is present in which case, the error has been passed from version to version.
Sadly, there might be many more others.
What bothers me is that most people rely on Jerry to fix it (those?) but this is, to put it lightly, INHUMAN.
Since you looked at the code, you can imagine what kind of hell is to go line by line in a code like the "Lite Tweaks", let alone the whole suite "Lite..."
lite-tweaks-super alone, has 1,102 lines. Reviewing the whole code, takes simply put, a lot of man-power. Since we're dealing here with something different than chopping woods, well... Just being Schwarzenegger-like, helps nothing.

What is the correct form of this line?

Code: [Select]

  ( PERCENTAGE = (100 \* ${i} ) / ${TOTAL_LINES} )As you can see, I moved the inner brackets to enclose the computation of the integer value of the number of lines, which is a runtime value.
But this has logic for me.
I'm curious if that checks though.

Further more, the gauge implied here (PERCENTAGE has to be passed to some kind of control)... I neve remember seeing any % progress bar or the like.
A variation is a StatusBar that shows a string like PERCENTAGE + " %". Have you ever seen this? Otherwise, might be just an internal counter to trigger something else than showing the progress.

Șerban.

[sqwuade]

Could the Lite-Tweaks app be rewritten in Python?  The "Lite Welcome" app (Similar in appearance to Lite-Tweaks) seems to be working fine in LL7, but those are written in python while the Lite-Tweaks is written in bash?

   /usr/bin/lite-welcome-live
else
   /usr/bin/lite-welcome-installed

The conversion to Python looks like it would be a bit of work but it could be a possible solution?

There were a lot of security changes in Ubuntu 24.04:
https://ubuntu.com/blog/whats-new-in-security-for-ubuntu-24-04-lts

[sqwuade]

A lot of great posts here, thank you to all.
Not sure how I'm going to progress here with Lite Tweaks. It might be that it gets left out of 7x altogether.
If someone can come up with the solution, that's our only savior for now.

I'll take another look at it and see what I can find out.  I'm still betting the lite-tweaks issue is being caused by the the change of the polkit system.  That's the largest change to the base OS that I know of.  I haven't found a way (For testing purposes) to remove the new .rules system and rollback to the old .pkla system.  I'd like to see if the lite-tweaks would run on a system after doing that.

[Şerban S.]

A lot of great posts here, thank you to all.
Not sure how I'm going to progress here with Lite Tweaks. It might be that it gets left out of 7x altogether.
If someone can come up with the solution, that's our only savior for now.

I'm in doubt if there's anything with your work.
As I see it, the upstream packages are far from being to date.
I got some 21+ updates that I hold. As for yesterday at about 15:00 GMT+3. Might be more now though.
Among those, are also zenity components, but there are many other key components too.
I guess I posted the terminal output yesterday.

Would it be a bad idea to just wait and see what comes from Ubuntu Core and re-test, from time to time?
At least, that's what I'm going to do.
I'll fire the update and see what happens, if any change at all.
After writing the shell script and testing, at least I know I have some means to steal some info while running Tweaks.
Anyway, there's still time. it's only the 9th of May...
Things might still settle down in our favor.
I wish I was a better programmer, but this is it...

Best regards, Șerban.