Unable to install chromium-browser in Ubuntu 14.04 environments

We have this step in our config.yml:

- run:
    name: Update and install required packages
    command: |
      ...
      sudo apt-get -y update
      sudo apt-get -y install chromium-browser

However, the install step fails as the package isn’t available:

Package chromium-browser is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'chromium-browser' has no installation candidate

As far as I can tell, the package should be available in Ubuntu 14.04: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/trusty/+source/chromium-browser

I did notice that the environment appears to be using Debian stretch package repositories, but it’s also available there: https://packages.debian.org/stretch/chromium

I can’t quite figure out why the package can’t be located; do the default environments exclude some of the regular package repositories? Is there a repository we need to add?

As per usual, right after posting this I realized the problem: in Debian the package name is just chromium and not chromium-browser. Once I corrected that the builds started working, so it looks like the package manager in Ubuntu 14.04 environments really does use the Debian packages instead of Ubuntu’s. I just wasn’t aware of that.

1 Like

A good technique is to shell into a failed build, and use apt-cache search X to see what something is called in a particular distro/release.

Ah, didn’t know it was possible to log in to the failed build. That would have made this pretty easy. Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.

Yep. If you go into your build list, click on the most recent failed build, then use “Rebuild with SSH” in the top right-hand corner. Wait for it to finish and then it will give you SSH details you can use to get a post-failure console. It’s very handy for debugging generally.

Just bear in mind it eats build minutes, and if you’re short on minutes, it is a good idea to cancel the job manually rather than disconnecting and waiting for it to timeout.

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