Plexamp Desktop (Ubuntu) dumps core

Plex Labs
1 
Earth:ll plexamp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 andrew defaria 22 Aug 18 08:39 plexamp -> Plexamp-4.3.0.AppImage*
Earth:plexamp
Gtk-Message: 08:40:17.024: Failed to load module "xapp-gtk3-module"
Main: Window state x:3853 y:1590 w:835 h:564 fullscreen:undefined maximized:false
Main: Display bounds x:3842 y:0 w:3841 h:2160
Started Media Service: false
Linux: Registering MPRIS service.
libva error: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with unknown libva error, driver_name = (null)
libva error: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with unknown libva error, driver_name = (null)
libva error: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with unknown libva error, driver_name = (null)
[1310619:0818/084020.963514:FATAL:gpu_data_manager_impl_private.cc(415)] GPU process isn't usable. Goodbye.
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)
Earth:
2

Fishy :thinking: . Out of interest, is the issue present with our flatpak build?

3

Oh, gee, yet another package manager (to rule them all) to learn
 UGH

arth:flatpak install /Tmp/com.plexamp.Plexamp.flatpakref

Note that the directories 

'/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share'
'/home/andrew/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share'

are not in the search path set by the XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable, so
applications installed by Flatpak may not appear on your desktop until the
session is restarted.

The remote 'flathub', referred to by 'com.plexamp.Plexamp' at location https://dl.flathub.org/repo/ contains additional applications.
Should the remote be kept for future installations? [Y/n]: Y
Required runtime for com.plexamp.Plexamp/x86_64/stable (runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/20.08) found in remote flathub
Do you want to install it? [Y/n]: Y

com.plexamp.Plexamp permissions:
    ipc       network               pulseaudio             x11
    dri       dbus access [1]       bus ownership [2]

    [1] org.freedesktop.Notifications
    [2] org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Plexamp


        ID                                           Branch Op Remote  Download
 1. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default          20.08  i  flathub 105.8 MB / 106.4 MB
 2. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-510-73-05 1.4    i  flathub 329.7 MB / 330.1 MB
 3. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.Locale              20.08  i  flathub  17.7 kB / 322.3 MB
 4. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.openh264            2.0    i  flathub   1.5 MB / 1.5 MB
 5. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform                     20.08  i  flathub 266.4 MB / 270.3 MB
 6. [✓] com.plexamp.Plexamp                          stable i  flathub  85.4 MB / 85.2 MB

Installation complete.

Oh and more things to configure! Great! Why didn’t the apt install of flatpak fix this when it was installed? And a whopping 803 Meg instead of a measly 83M. Nice.

OK so how do you run this thing now? I type in plexamp and get command not found. Looking into the warning about XDG_DATA_DIRS.

Earth:export XDG_DATA_DIRS=$XDG_DATA_DIRS:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/home/andrew/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share
Earth:plexamp
plexamp: command not found
Earth:

Still no joy.

Apparently I have to run /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/com.plexamp.Plexamp. Well, that’s easy to remember! Why didn’t I think about that before? At least it runs


Now I have more crap in my home directory and a strange way to start this app.

Now if there were only a way to quit this app without having to kill it


4

I was simply trying to work with you to troubleshoot the problem. You can feel free to continue using the AppImage build if we can get it working again for you.

Unfortunately (as you’ve now encountered), Ubuntu doesn’t provide a great experience out of the box with Flatpak (they’re pedalling their competing, and IMHO inferior, Snap format instead).

This is down to how Flatpak works. The first flatpak you install will pull in its runtime dependencies (freedesktop platform, mpris etc). The second flatpak you install won’t need any of that, as they can share their dependencies, as long as the versions are compatible.

AppImage doesn’t bundle any dependencies, but as a result can run into weird environmental issues where system-provided libraries may not be compatible with the application, which is what I suspected might be happening in your case.

Additionally, flatpak upgrades are ‘delta’ upgrades, so future updates to the app should usually be (very) small, in the range of 2-5MB or so in my experience. AppImage can’t do that.

You shouldn’t have to do that. Flatpak apps are namespaced and can be run by their unique identifier, e.g. flatpak run com.plexamp.Plexamp.

Alternatively, the application comes with a .desktop file, so it should integrate in all the usual ways you expect an app should (application menu, shelf, whatever desktop environment you’re using), so no need for command-line launching at all. This is another area where our Flatpak build is better than the AppImage one.

1 Like
5

Plexamp is a way of life; it’s not meant to be quit.

2 Likes
6

Not a good nor professional answer. Hopefully, you weren’t serious. Plexamp is not a way of life. Maybe it’s a way of life for you but for me, I have a life, and it’s not Plexamp.

7

Understood but so far, to me, flatpak is unimpressive and just another way of doing the same old thing - installing software.

Both suck.

Again, understood. But I’d argue that any system that requires 800 meg to operate is horribly broken!

This is an age-old problem that has been around forever - at least in the 45 years I’ve been doing this. Many people have solved this issue. But it occurs to me as long as we keep inventing new ways to install software and handle dependencies (yum, dpkg, apt, flatpak, snap, appimage, yadda, yadda, yadda) all we are really doing is insuring these basic system problems will only multiply.

Not looking for appimage to be the be-all, end-all. Instead what I want is just to have the distro’s native way of installing apps, install the app. Is that asking for too much?

Oh, that’s much better! :roll_eyes:

Dumb question here but how exactly was I to discover this magical encantation? Stated differently, do you think it’s wrong for a user to expect to run an application called plexamp with the command plexamp?!?

.desktop files are not much better if you ask me. I’m not afraid of launching stuff from a command line. Indeed, flatpak run com.plexamp.Plexamp is but a CLI invocation is it not?

Personally I prefer just plexamp as in /bin/plexamp, you know like 99% of the other “apps” I run.

And I really fail to see how flatpak run com.plexamp.Plexamp is better than an appimage - or what we used to call back in the day - a program.

Look I’m in software development too and I truly do understand a number of the issues with installers for the various different flavors of Linux and other architectures that are around. But this is a problem of our own creation. Creating yet another way to do something that’s gonna be better and that everybody will use has been a pipe dream forever. Making things more complicated does not make it better (AKA why the hell doe flatpak have to be involved in running a simple application?!?).

And having to tote along a gig runtime just to run a media, music playing app is ridiculous. Take a step back from the technical details and realize what’s is being asked


So you got your flatpak troubleshooting data. AppImage is still broken. Maybe try .deb


8

I’m not going to win you over on the “flatpak is better” argument, I’m confident you don’t agree, and to each their own. Choice is power.

What I can say is that flatpak runs everywhere we want Plexamp to run, and that’s why we chose it. The honest truth is that Linux doesn’t have the user numbers to justify development, compute time, hosting, and QA resources to build a different “native” package (.rpm, .deb, etc etc) for all the distributions under the sun when Flatpak is supported natively, out of the box on almost every distribution other than Ubuntu (see: Fedora/RedHat, Arch and derivatives, Debian and derivatives, and even Ubuntu downstreams like elementary, Mint etc).

Beyond that, flatpak solves real world problems that native packages don’t, at a slight cost to initial user bandwidth (but not long term bandwidth, which is ultimately saved when compared to native packages), and a slight learning curve for users who prefer not to use their apps via their OS’s GUI.

Most people launch their apps via the GUI, not CLI. If you’d rather use CLI, it’s documented in Flatpak’s docs and man page. Try flatpak --help.

The benefits of flatpak over appimage have nothing to do with how many characters a CLI invocation requires. Off the top of my head:

  • App store-style distribution
  • Native integration with freedesktop standards (portals for permissions etc)
  • Better sandboxing and security means Plexamp (or other packages) don’t have anywhere near the level of access to your system
  • Seamless autoupdates without us having to run infrastructure behind the scenes
  • Less QA and testing, as it eliminates a lot of the issues with system library incompatibility
  • Support for all distributions, even the obscure ones. I run an immutable host with Silverblue, and Flatpak works beautifully there.

FWIW the appimage wouldn’t have run with a simple plexamp invocation, either. If the longer terminal command is that annoying to you, feel free to alias it :slight_smile:

Thanks. I’m not currently able to reproduce the same crash, but I suspect our next release may resolve your problems with the appimage bundle. Let’s revisit this then!

9

Choice is also confusion.

All this seems like a development problem to me. As a developer I understand, however, as a user, I don’t care about development problems. Those are yours to solve. And I might add, not require me to radically change how I am currently doing things.

Did I miss something? How exactly was I supposed to launch this flatpak Plexamp app? Where in my OS’s GUI was this (Ubuntu 22.04 running MATE)? There was no new menu item added nor was there any kind of desktop shortcut. Did flatpak not offer such functionality? I thought it worked everywhere.

Excuse me but isn’t flatpak --help something one launches from the CLI? Again, I saw no GUI way to launch this app and wouldn’t have even thought to run flatpak --help or to figure out how to run any application other than, well, flatpak! I don’t look to yum, or apt, or dpkg to run apps - I look to them to install apps. I know now but granted, this is not a normal way that a computer user would think of launching an app. It hasn’t been the way we’ve launched programs for some 40 years.

And neither was my beef about this. My beef was that people don’t think “Gee I just installed an app. To run it I just need to invoke the installer again with a run command”. Nor would I have thought that plexamp’s real name is com.plexamp.Plexamp. It’s just not natural, not the way we’ve always done it, and just doesn’t flow. I’m smart enough to know how to change the longer command to something more palatable, but my point was not that, it was that it was not intuitive how to execute the application. There was no GUI launcher that I could see so I had to go out hacking for the answer. That’s never a good UX.

You’re making invalid assumptions. I didn’t say, nor mean to imply, “Awe that’s too much for me to type”. I’m quite capable of typing - hell just see this post! No, the point was that it was not intuitive and appears to be wasteful. Let alone that I want to have to use apt for most installations but need to use snap to install firefox and flatpak for plexamp. Flatpak may ease your development burden but with all these competing methods, from my vantage point, it only complicates my burden. See how choice can often be confusion?

10

When you first configured the flatpak system on your OS, the below message indicates you need a restart:

I only mentioned it because it seemed from your reply that you preferred using the CLI. If that’s not the case, try restarting, and let me know how it goes!

Agreed. Sadly this is the result of Canonical’s refusal to ship a well-integrated flatpak runtime. See Mint as a good example of an Ubuntu base that supports both Snap and Flatpak well out of the box.

1 Like
11

So you’re saying I need to reboot my system because I installed an app and this would magically appear in my menu? All by simply adding these directories to some environment variable where the first directory just had a few directories under it and the second directory doesn’t exist at all? And where do I go about setting this envvar? No instruction was given. I gotta see how this will work however I only reboot when forced to so maybe in a few weeks
 But trust me you only need to do this once


As for flatpak on Ubuntu, well it was you who said this works everywhere. Now we come to find it doesn’t work that well everywhere after all and considerably more effort and learning are required. Again, I fail to see why flatpak is superior. I mean I see it may be handy for you but again, it ain’t handy for me! It’s just yet another package manager I need to learn (never mind language developer package installers like cpan, pip, gems, etc. Choice, that’s the ticket! It’s powerful.

The history and workings of running things on Unix and later Linux is that you install an app into /bin or /opt or some directory and the user only need to add that path to their PATH envvar if not already there. Viola, everything works. Now I have find the place that I have to add paths to some envvar and reboot my computer to make sure it’s effective. Or learn to invoke some installer to find and run the app for me, or somehow seem to find the appropriate place it put the GUI button that I can push to launch the app.

Funny but when I install something with apt it installs, is usually in /bin, and is conveniently added to my main menu. Oh yeah, I can see how flatpak is superior


Look, I’m not totally against the idea of a more universal installer for the various Linuxes - it’d be a good thing. What I’m against are umpteen different package managers in which each one thinks it’s the best, the one ring to rule them all. Trust me but my history with this always seems to point to just a mess of similar tools, all with their own pros and cons.

12

I came here in good faith to try and help you. I don’t appreciate the attitude you’ve shown, or your unwillingness to work with me on this.

I believe I’ve done all I can to help for now.

1 Like
13

Sorry, you feel that way. I was not trying to give you an attitude. Perhaps you could point out where I said something untruthful.

Also not sure why you think I’m unwilling to help you. I did install both flatpak and plexamp and verified that the flatpak installation has no issues. I didn’t need to do that.

As for rebooting in order to see if that works, sorry man but I have other things I need to use my computer for right now but I will try to let you know when I do restart my machine if it works. Then again, you seem to be unwilling to continue maybe I’ll not bother


14

I’ve read this thread
 Sorry adefaria, but your negativity doesn’t help. Elan and the Plexamp team are in a word
 “awesome”. Drop the negativity and you may get somewhere with your thoughts/suggestions.

2 Likes
15

I’m being truthful. The truth is not always positive. For example, you state that plexamp is “awesome” which is clearly an opinion. I’ve shown that plexamp dumps core, which is a fact. I’ve also stated my opinion of flatpak, again, based on the factual experience I had. Sorry, it wasn’t positive.

I’m not looking to “get anywhere” rather I was merely reporting a problem.

Next time I won’t report anything because I don’t need people to call me negative for reporting negative things. After all, I didn’t create them.

16

Closing this topic as it’s not productive.

2 Likes