Ubuntu installation history

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hi,

I just ran the upgrade process and was alarmed to see I had not upgraded to 21:10 which is what I thought I was doing, it says 21.10 is available saying I am on 21:04, this would imply before I ran the upgrade I was therefore using 20:10. Its been a while since I installed linux but I didn't think it had been that long. Is there a way to see what versions had been installed already on here? Or see files that were installed upon first use of the computer to see the date of those? I guess a lot may have been over-written by the upgrade today anyway. Thanks in advance.

#2

Your apt history is in /var/log/apt/history* files.

#3

Thank you, this folder has .gz files and in the earliest one it has history to 9th feb 2021, so this infers I had october 2020 installed. Interesting. Thanks, will have to try another update tomorrow then.

#4

Installation media name and type is usually shown in the first line of /etc/apt/sources.list. For example on my 18.04 LTS machine I have

$ head -n1 /etc/apt/sources.list
# deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20140204)]/ dists/precise/main/binary-i386/

So it was upgraded from 12.04 LTS → 14.04 LTS → 16.04 LTS → 18.04 LTS (now).

Other interesting folders are /var/log/installer/ and /var/log/dist-upgrade/ . The first contains first installation logs with date (for me it is 8 Feb 2014), the second - logs of all distribution upgrades.

4 Likes
#5

OK well its upgraded now, I look forward to seeing if the upgrade has fixed my strange sound echoing issue.

#6

OK so since this upgrade I've noticed opening up FireFox is very slow compared to before, any ideas?

#7

Since upgrading and opening up TOR browser I now find I cannot save files to wherever I like on the system with it saying permision denied to access the drive, why has this now happened?

Since the upgrade the Ubuntu system had MATE installed, I just uninstalled TOR and reinstalled it to see if that would make a difference but it didn't. I then thought to uninstall MATE in case that was the issue however even when I go to select the main package it leaves other MATE items installed, how do I remove MATE completely? Curiously TOR can save to its own download folder. Thanks in advance..

Edit I just saw this on a post on Reddit but it is simply not true, I could save files anywhere before:

" Access denied means you're trying to save somewhere other than the 'Tor Browser' folder. The browser can only read and write to that folder as a security measure. Move the file manually where you want it after saving."

#8

Any takers on my TOR browser issue? Thanks in advance.

#9

It looks like you used to have TOR installed as a 'deb' package but now installed TOR as a 'snap' package which would explain everything you encountered.
Just like Firefox b.t.w.

#10

well I couldn't find the deb on the tor site, for some reason it just has tiny gz files, so found this page to add via command but am now getting errors, got down to part 3 until I found a problem:

home@Home:~$ sudo wget -qO- https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89.asc | gpg --dearmor | tee /usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null
tee: /usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg: Permission denied

I then tried step 4

home@Home:~$ apt update
Reading package lists... Error!
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
E: can not open /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_impish-backports_InRelease - fopen (13: Permission denied)
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

I dont have any package manager open and these were done sudo so not sure what the issue is?

#11

sudo apt update

without sudo, you cannot write in /var/lib/

#12

https://support.torproject.org/apt/tor-deb-repo/

This where I Am reading the steps,

This step four failed too, why can't I install the keyring then?

home@Home:~$ sudo apt install tor deb.torproject.org-keyring
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package deb.torproject.org-keyring
E: Couldn't find any package by glob 'deb.torproject.org-keyring'

#13

this is b/c step 3 of the link your provided needs a bit of work ...

$ wget -qO- https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89.asc | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null

this will bring in the key correctly.

After sudo apt update you may get a warning ... N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'main/binary-i386/Packages' as repository 'https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org focal InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'i386'. Then you can install ...

sudo apt install deb.torproject.org-keyring
sudo apt install tor

(tested on my um20.4)

Or
as that page says, Note: The symbol # refers to running the code as root.
First become root: sudo su -
then you can follow their steps as root.
( Warning: you can mess up your system if you don't know what you're doing as root)

Note: the repo tor.list should be:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tor.list 
deb     [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg] https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org focal main
deb-src [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg] https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org focal main
#14

Thank you pavlos_kairis, I have done the above including editing the tor list file and had no errors come back however I don't know how to launch it, there is no icon in the start menu for web and these commands I googled did not work?

home@Home:~$ ^[[200~start-tor-browser~
start-tor-browser~: command not found
home@Home:~$ tor-browser
tor-browser: command not found
home@Home:~$ torbrowser-launcher
Command 'torbrowser-launcher' not found, but can be installed with:
sudo apt install torbrowser-launcher

#15

wow, given the error message saying I can install tor browser launcher, I did this, it downloaded a bit more and now i I have tor browser..

Does this look like it checks out though?

home@Home:~$ start-tor-browser
start-tor-browser: command not found
home@Home:~$ torbrowser-launcher
Tor Browser Launcher
By Micah Lee, licensed under MIT
version 0.3.3

Launching Tor Browser.
Running /home/home/.local/share/torbrowser/tbb/x86_64/tor-browser_en-US/start-tor-browser.desktop
Launching './Browser/start-tor-browser --detach'...
home@Home:~$

Is this MIT standing for Michigan Institute of Technology?

#16

MIT = Massachusetts Institute of Technology

#17

lmao, sorry rookie mistake, but anyway thank you so much for your help.

#18

OK well it turns out it is not letting me save files to anywhere on the system. Strange.