So part of supporting byteplay3, which I have optimistically uploaded to PyPi, is to check that it installs on linux and on Windows. So I fired up Parallels and opened my 64-bit Ubuntu dev machine.
Now, I do this not very often, so it seems inevitable that every time I do it, I have in the interim updated Parallels itself, and every time Parallels updates, it wants to update the Parallels Tools component it inserts into every virtual machine.
So of course as soon as I open the Ubuntu dev VM, it starts installing a new Parallels Tools. Which for some reason takes 5 minutes to crawl its progress bar across, and then wants a reboot.
Meanwhile I thought, hey, let's make sure Ubuntu is up to snuff also. I bring up the Synaptic package manager. Current Ubuntu has a much simpler "Software Updater" program; and I know that the hard-core Linux user doesn't want any of that GUI shit, nothing but sudo apt-get on the command line will do. But me, I remember the SGI package manager for IRIX (but can't remember its name, though) and Synaptic is a dead ringer for it. So I use Synaptic.
I tell it, reload your info and it says it is reloading but then it says it couldn't find a bunch of repositories. It marks a bunch of upgrades but when I tell it to apply them, it grinds a while and says it couldn't download the packages. 404's everywhere.
imagine an hour or so of increasingly irritable investigation here...
Long story short, at some time in the near past, I unwisely and unwittingly approved an upgrade from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, to Ubuntu 14.10. Probably seemed like a reasonable thing to do at the time, you know? Minor point-release upgrade? But a bad, bad move on my part!
What was making Synaptic (and the Software Updater) fail flat was that their apt sources-list file specified "utopic" release in the repositories. Because, you see, I had upgraded to 14.10 Utopic Unicorn. Unfortunately, 14.10 Utopic was end-of-lifed back last July and all the "utopic" repositories were pulled from Ubuntu and Canonical. So that's why the 404's—the repositories are all gone.
Wait, what? I thought that Ubuntu 14 was a long-term support version!
No no no, you foolish person. Ubuntu 14.04 Titillated Tarsier, that was the LTS release.
When I stupidly approved an upgrade to 14.10, I moved away from the LTS system and once more stepped onto the every-six-months upgrade treadmill. I cannot apply maintenance to 14.10, I must upgrade to 15.04 Violent Vixen, and very soon again to 15.10 Willful Wildebeast, as per this diagram.
Alternatively I can find a DVD-ROM image of 14.04 and install it over my system to force a downgrade, which I may just do.
Meanwhile, fortunately, the 64-bit test system (without Python or Qt) is still on 14.04, as are, I hope the two 32-bit systems.
Meanwhile, less fortunately, the Windows 7 dev system seems to have forgotten how to run Pip-Win. It looks as if it is starting Python 3 but with the Python 2.7 lib. So some stupid error in the PATH or other environment variable. So I have that to look forward to, tomorrow.
Meanwhile again, I applied the 15.14 update and guess what? The dev system no longer remembers that it is a 1440-px wide window. Lost all the window sizes except 800. Another config file to remember the name of and edit.
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