Tag: snap app

Extend Ubuntu 18.04 LTS updates?

How do I extend updates for my Ubuntu 18.04 LTS? I don’t want to reinstall a new one.

ANSWER

Yes, Ubuntu LTS versions have a standard support period of only 5 years. The 18.04 will have that on April 2023 May 31, 2023. Coming very soon.

If you are not yet ready to install a new one, but still get the official updates from Ubuntu, then you can sign up for Ubuntu Pro. Register here – https://ubuntu.com/pro.

How to do that? Follow the guide here – https://ubuntu.com/pro/tutorial.

Once you have signed up and enabled Extended Security Maintenance, or ESM, then you are good for another 5 years of security updates. That will end on April 2028. A long way off, but plenty of time still.

Stress on the word security. It doesn’t mean you will get the newest versions of software installed on your computer for the next several years. That’s different. An alternative is to install the Snap version of a software to get the latest that the package maintainer offers. And if you don’t fancy Ubuntu Snaps, there may be Flatpak or AppImage versions of the same software.

Install app latest version with Ubuntu Snap

I want to install application most recent version on Ubuntu. With this command snap refresh <app name>, but it doesn’t work.

Getting a ‘snap “<app name>” has no updates available’ message instead.

There is a higher version from snap info <app name> for example below.

channels:
  latest/stable:    12.5 2021-09-23 (50) 516MB classic
  latest/candidate: ↑                          
  latest/beta:      ↑                          
  latest/edge:      12.5 2021-09-19 (50) 516MB classic
  12.0/stable:      12.0 2020-06-12 (30) 462MB classic
  12.0/candidate:   ↑                          
  12.0/beta:        ↑                          
  12.0/edge:        ↑                          
  11.0/stable:      11.0 2019-09-04  (6) 399MB classic
  11.0/candidate:   ↑                          
  11.0/beta:        ↑                          
  11.0/edge:        ↑

What I need do to force the update to latest version?

ANSWER

If you look at the “tracking” value after the snap info command, you will see the channel the app is currently on.

That’s the same channel listed in the “channels” information. To get that latest version you want, change the channel accordingly. Let us say you are at 12.0/stable now. You want to download and update to 12.5. That means you need to change to latest/stable channel in this case.

For that we will need to add an option that is --channel=<channel name> to change the target channel.

The command it will look like this in the terminal:

:~$ snap refresh <app name> --channel=latest/stable

This will immediately begin the download process to update to that version of that channel specified.

Add sudo optionally. Optional because Ubuntu will prompt you for your password if you don’t. A pop-up dialog window will appear for you to enter the password.

How to fix error: snap “telegram-desktop” has “install-snap” change in progress

I enconter this error message when installing a Snap app Telegram for Desktop from the terminal command line. I followed instructions on how to do this from the Install button of the snapcraft.io website.

First one I select is use the GUI app store. But nothing happens when click install button. Installing progress starts but go back to install. Click again and same thing is happens.

When using the command line that is I got the error of:

error: snap "telegram-desktop" has "install-snap" change in progress

How to fix?

ANSWER

The error is because you are telling Snap to install an app that has already been scheduled for installation. It’s in the queue. The GUI app store is not very informative about this scenario. Hence, it will seem like the installation process failed when in fact that is not the case.

My guess is it is put on schedule for installation because a higher priority install needs to be done first, most likely Snap core updates that have not yet been applied to the system yet.

Either wait for the core updates to finish and wait for Telegram to get installed after, or force it to update right away.

At the command line, do:

:~$ snap changes

It will show something such as:

ID Status Spawn Ready Summary
101 Done yesterday at 20:33 PST yesterday at 20:34 PST Auto-refresh snap "intellij-idea-community"
102 Doing today at 11:36 PST - Install "slack" snap

Abort the scheduled install for the app listed there, in your case “telegram-desktop” snap using the following command:

:~$ sudo snap abort 102

In the example above, I chose to abort install scheduled with ID 102. Choose the ID of the app you are trying to install that you will see on your terminal after the command above.

Then install the snap app manually:

:~$ sudo snap install telegram-desktop

This should force snap to go ahead with the install, but first it may start with its core updates, followed by the telegram-desktop snap app.

It can be done for other Snap applications too where you’re facing this scenario. Just replace with the correct application name (use snap list to get the name of that application). The same can be said when instead of “install-snap” it’s the opposite – “remove-snap” – instead.

error: snap APP_NAME has "remove-snap" change in progress

If the abort option does not work, one other thing that has worked for me is by using the purge method,

:~$ sudo snap remove --purge APP_NAME

How to show Snap app icon properly on Ubuntu Unity desktop

Had this issue where after I logged into my Ubuntu desktop all Snap apps icons do not show properly. Instead I see a plain icon in place of what the app icon should be. Have you the same experience?

This might have been fixed in later Ubuntu LTS releases, I really don’t know. But I am still on 16.04 Xenial Xerus until its EOL. Also, the reason is that I love the Unity Desktop. The Gnome Shell replacement just doesn’t cut it for me.

I have been looking for a solution on this issue for some time. The 2 main things people point out are:

– Add /snap/bin to the /etc/environment file, and;

– Something to do with the profile.

Neither of those solutions worked for me. But it did work for others according to what I have read so far.

ANSWER

To fix this icon issue, create a symlink of the Snap’s .desktop shortcut file to your user’s .local/share/applications directory.

It is as simple as that. Once done the problem will go away, and you will be left with a nice-looking icon that came with the Snap installation. This won’t go away on following restarts.

For more details on how to do this fix exactly, refer to this article – https://www.joseyamut.xyz/2020/08/13/getting-that-ubuntu-snap-icon-right-on-unity-shell/