How can a utility be installed but not accessible?

ARobin

The software center shows usbutils has been installed, but querying the command line for usbreset responds with "command not found". Why wouldn't that installed command utility be able to run from the command line?

What I would like even more for troubleshooting device issues, is to be able to run the hubpower command, which isn't available, not just in Solus, but in lots of other Linux flavors, so hubpower must be compiled from scratch. The problem is that in order to do that, I would need to install and update a fork of the getsolus/packages repository, which I don't want to do. I just want to compile a program just for myself and not for the repository, which means taking the c source file and ... doing what exactly? In other words, I don't want to create a package, I just want to create a custom utility, but how do I do that in Solus? I mean can I just compile programs on Solus the same as any other Linux OS? Is there any step-by-step instructions for that on Solus?

alfisya

ARobin I just want to compile a program just for myself and not for the repository, which means taking the c source file and ... doing what exactly? In other words, I don't want to create a package, I just want to create a custom utility, but how do I do that in Solus? I mean can I just compile programs on Solus the same as any other Linux OS? Is there any step-by-step instructions for that on Solus?

There is a difference between compiling a program for your own use and creating a (distro) package.

For your own use, you can just compile the program per instruction give by the program developer. For example: the hubpower command you are looking for is available in "uhubctl" program. You can follow the instruction here to compile it yourself for your own use. The only Solus-specific thing that users need to do is intalling system.devel packages (similiar to build-essentials package on Ubuntu) before compiling any program per instruction on help center.

sudo eopkg install -c system.devel

Now, to create a (distro) package. Beside following the program instruction to compile the program, you also have to follow the distro instruction (and use its tooling) to create a package. This package (if met with certain criteria by distro maintainer) can be redistributed via distro repository. For example: In Solus, we use .eopkg package to distribute programs/software, eopkg command to manage software, solbuild and ypkg to build the software and package.yml to define the software build process. To learn about creating a package for Solus you can read our documentation here or ask us anything via matrix.

alfisya

ARobin The software center shows usbutils has been installed, but querying the command line for usbreset responds with "command not found". Why wouldn't that installed command utility be able to run from the command line?

Forgot to answer this one : P

Upstream developer consider usbreset as unstable, so it is not installed by default. That being said many distributions include it in their package (Archlinux, Debian, Fedora), so I made a pull request to include it in our own package. Lets see if it gets approved. Cheers!

ARobin

alfisya

Thank you for answering my question directly and simply. I was hoping you would say that. That is encouraging because even as a Linux newbie I think I can do that with what I think Solus already has installed (GCC and Make).

I will have to manually add things I compile, to the menu, which is a hassle, but I really want to make Solus work for me, because the other distros I have tried so far (Deepin, Mx Linux, Linux Mint, and now Kubuntu) are not what I call "future proof". What I mean is, for example, they aren't very up-to-date on GTK4, and they don't support Wayland out-of-the-box. I am trying to move all my Window software projects over to Linux, using GTK4 and Wayland, and I want whatever I translate over to Linux today, to still be working 5 or 10 years from now, hence the reason for wanting the most up-to-date version of GTK (there are serious bugs even in GTK4 v4.12).

There are very few Linux distros that are up-to-date and stable, so why not those other distros? Because my newbie experience taught me a painful experience with this thing called "dependency Hell". Deepin didn't have much software in the software center, so I tried using Synaptic to install and uninstall lots of apps (I didn't know what apps I wanted or not), and I totally bricked the system doing that. I researched my mistake and learned from it, but now I avoid Synaptic like the plague. APT also reminds me of Synaptic, so while Solus doesn't use APT, which I believe is a good thing, it makes Solus somewhat limiting in what I can do, but since it also makes me feel a lot safer than the other distros make me feel, I can live with the hassle/restrictions.

pomon

Why can't I run the usbutils command?

usbutils is the name of a package, not a specific command. When you install the usbutils package, you get access to commands like lsusb, usb-devices, etc., but there is no command called usbutils.

The package usbutils it does NOT include usbreset or hubpower commands.

How to compile hubpower?

Install the development package:

sudo eopkg install -c system.devel

Download the hubpower.c source file from the repository:

https://github.com/hevz/hubpower/blob/master/hubpower.c

Compile it:

gcc -o hubpower hubpower.c

Example usage:

sudo ./hubpower <bus>:<device> status

where <bus>:<device> is e.g. 1:5 — the bus and device number you can find with: lsusb

lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
sudo ./hubpower  1:1 status

ARobin

pomon sbutils is the name of a package, not a specific command

Yes but one specific command the usbutils provides is usbreset, and even though the Software Center shows usbutils as installed, entering usbreset at the command line results in a command not found response.

Sorry for not being more clear on that.

ARobin

alfisya I made a pull request to include it in our own package. Lets see if it gets approved

Like I said, it is already installed. The problem is that it still doesn't work.

Let me rephrase that: I can't install usbutils because the Software Center shows it as already installed. I could uninstall it and reinstall it, but I'm not going to bother doing any troubleshooting with that until someone else verifies they are seeing the same problem on their computer(s).

Staudey

ARobin Like I said, it is already installed. The problem is that it still doesn't work.

Let me rephrase that: I can't install usbutils because the Software Center shows it as already installed. I could uninstall it and reinstall it, but I'm not going to bother doing any troubleshooting with that until someone else verifies they are seeing the same problem on their computer(s).

Yes. What people are trying to tell you is that the usbreset tool is currently not part of the usbutils package on Solus. @alfisya has provided a patch to remedy that, which will have to be approved first, after which the updated package (now including usbreset) will be available first in the Solus Unstable repository, and after the next sync for all Solus users.