Unable to install chromium-browser in Ubuntu 14.04 environments

#1

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?

#2

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.

#3

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.

#4

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.

#5

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.