I’m pretty sure apt is the one reporting the dependency issue with cockpit - not necessarily HoustonUI. I’m pretty sure if you ran sudo apt install cockpit-sosreport then you would receive the same error.
This might also be a short coming of the Ubuntu 20.04 repo. It looks like the newer package might be part of 22.04 so enabling backports could help - UbuntuBackports - Community Help Wiki.
Backports did the trick. I pulled in the 22.04 version of cockpit-bridge and resumed the Houston UI installer. After a whole lot of shaking, the script completed happy. I rebooted and Houston UI came up.
I’m impressed by the scope of Houston UI. After installing Cockpit, I verified that it was alive and was shocked at how bare the sidebar was.
45Drives boffins have done a huge amount of work that greatly eases server admin.
I’d recommend that curl, openssh-server, zfs, and cockpit be installed before having a first go with the Houston UI script.
Good to hear backports worked! You probably want to upgrade at least to 22.04 though. I believe the Desktop LTS releases are only supported for 5 years so you’re at EOL.
If I update to 22.04, do I smoke Houston UI? Some desktop thing keeps telling me that 22.04 is a thing and would I like it installed.
There’s still the occasional report of Houston UI install issues. Sadly, I’m lost without Houston!
This guy’s sorry mission is to collect backups of photos and purchased music stashed in the Roon Server (the System76 meerkat in the corner). And it is not TrueNAS (diversity is good).
It’s not without some risk but 45Drives Repo does support Ubuntu 22.04 now. 45Drives have stated they -1 strategy so they’ll start support of 24.04 once 26.04 releases in a few months.
Something went wrong overnight. Can’t log in anywhere. I’m suspicious that TimeShift ran amok. The configuration dialog was ambiguous – I don’t recall being asked for a destination and suspect there’s some buckshot on the root filesystem.
Is it reasonable to take a Mulligan with 22.04 vs 20.04? “Supported” implies that shared libraries are all version compatible with Houston UI images.
Having another go. Installing ZFS utils and Cockpit before running the Houston UI script appears less traumatic than running Houston UI on top of a virgin install.
Trying to get this guy to be a backup alternative for my TrueNAS boxes. Life as TimeMachine spool volume is dreary but important.
To bring up Houston UI on Ubuntu Workstation Lite 22.04 required the following adjustments to the preconfigure script
22.04 script needs the release id changed.
network-manager is known as NetworkManager to systemctl
Once I changed 3 systemctl commands, life was good, mostly. 45Drives ZFS is missing as is Networking. Will check the logs.
I’m a bit mindful that the “enterprise” mindset and the “user” mindset are a bit different. I’d be surprised if an enterprise machine ever changed versions. It would likely be replaced with new iron running a new OS release given 3-5 year tech refresh cycles. Home users keep a machine going until there is reason to change, like Apple inventing a new instruction set. Or Liquid Glass widget set
You might be surprised how many of our enterprise users come in with three, four, or even five year old hardware and are looking to upgrade to a newer operating system. That is exactly why we have the process outlined above.
If you are able to share the exact three changes you made, I would be happy to look into getting the script adapted. That said, the script was originally written for enterprise environments running Ubuntu Server Minimal Edition only, which may explain some of the issues you encountered.
Please let me know the details when you have a moment, and I will be glad to take a closer look.
The edits I made to the 20.04 script were to change 20.04 to 22.04 in the opening test and to change network-manager to NetworkManager in several locations. Then it ran pretty happily. On Desktop minimal even.
Why desktop minimal? Spindly typefaces and old eyes using JetKVM in place of an actual terminal. Gnome minimal was much happier. M1 iMac Retina display can give fits getting scaling usable.
My last corporate job featured lazy former USN IT’s maintaining the battle lab. They were lazy so copied images rather than running the installer. No end of trouble when video drivers weren’t found. Very limited understanding there.
Thanks for help. Slowly getting Humpty Dumpty back together. Portainer-CE is up. Podman wouldn’t install on 20.04. On 22.04, it wasn’t happy so reverted to Docker to get Portainer up. Channels DVR is back up.
Good news. Thanks. Are you keeping the KB up to date? That’s a big problem in Linux land – lots of obsolete blog posts, reddit kvetching, and magazine articles. It’s time-consuming to do right but essential to reaching a market not having a live-in high priest or priestess.
Yes, we are actively going through our KB and updating any outdated guides. We have a lot of documents on there, so it is taking the team some time to get through it all
