[Ethereum] Problem installing Ethereum via apt-get on Debian Buster

debianppa

I want to run a geth fullnode (with fast syncmode) to be able to use the JSON RPC. I have a VMWare-based vm set up which fits all the requirements as far as I can see. Domain. Fixed IP address. Disk space. RAM. The works.

Now this is a Debian system on Buster (10) on kernel 4.19 on an emulated x86_64. uname -a gives you Linux hostname 4.19.0-13-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.160-2 (2020-11-28) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Now I want to install ethereum via apt-get to be able to have it automatically updated instead of having to do this always manually. I encountered some problems installing the sources, as the ppa-keys for whatever reason weren't imported. Anyhow, everything is set now:

$ ls -l /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ | grep eth
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 144 Jan 11 17:19 ethereum-ubuntu-ethereum-hirsute.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 140 Jan 11 17:04 ethereum-ubuntu-ethereum-hirsute.list.save

and

$ apt-key list
/etc/apt/trusted.gpg
## truncated
pub   rsa1024 2014-02-10 [SC]
      2A51 8C81 9BE3 7D2C 2031  944D 1C52 189C 923F 6CA9
uid           [ unknown] Launchpad PPA for Ethereum
## truncated

which I achieved via sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 2A518C819BE37D2C2031944D1C52189C923F6CA9 (key ID from the launchpad site) and now my apt-get update works without any errors:

$ sudo apt-get update
## truncated
Hit:5 http://ppa.launchpad.net/ethereum/ethereum/ubuntu hirsute InRelease
## truncated
Reading package lists... Done

Yet, when trying to install ethereum (or the packages geth, ethereum-unstable, or so), I get the message "unable to locate package":

$ sudo apt-get install ethereum
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package ethereum

EDIT: Also followed this here: https://linuxconfig.org/install-packages-from-an-ubuntu-ppa-on-debian-linux, but with the same result: "unable to locate…"

Anyone knows how to solve this?

Best Answer

Well, turns out this was an incompatibility of Ubuntu and Debian. Hard to say what exactly made it work, but here's what I did:

  1. Reset the ppa sources for Ethereum for an older Ubuntu-version: focal instead of hirsute:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ethereum/ethereum/ubuntu focal main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ethereum/ethereum/ubuntu focal main
  1. The problem following was, that buster provided glibc6 in version 2.19, while 2.32 required. I fixed this by including the testing repository in the sources.list:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free

and then (re)installing the package build-essential along with a general apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Downside to this solution: A TON OF dependencies were upgraded to "testing" versions. Anyhow, so far, everything seems to work fine.

So - anyone has a better/"safer" way?