How to install & configure ParrotOS - Repositories

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1

I just reinstalled ParrotOS because of broken packages and broken dependencies. (Virtualbox, Qt etc)

Trying to install some packages I noticed the strange source.list.

There seem to be 4.X repos and 5.X repos. Why?
Looking at the “dists”, 4.X seems to be a rolling release and 5.X a long term support (LTS) release.

Why would the RR version have a lesser number than the LTS?

A fresh installation from the image file uses the RR, but that one does not have backports etc. With RR there are many packages that I can’t install qtbase, virtualbox, syncthing etc…

Why?
What are the official repos for the ordinary day to day usage?

Some more background:

Until yesterday I had used the “LTS” repos, but I couldn’t install qtbase because of broken dependencies with vulkan. I tried working around that by manually installing the needed libraries and qmake. Executing qmake I noticed that it couldn’t find the libraries. As a test I installed qt creator and that told me that there is no valid Qt version could be found…
A few days ago I installed Xubuntu on virtualbox in order to at least finish some tasks that I couldn’t do because of the broken dependencies with qtbase. Yesterday I tried to start that VM again and it threw an error about a kernel module. Executing modprobe vboxdrv gave me

modprobe: FATAL: Module vboxdrv not found in directory /lib/modules/5.16.0-12parrot1-amd64

I then decided to purge all virtualbox packages and reinstall.

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

sudo apt --fix-broken install

Loading new virtualbox-6.1.26 DKMS files...
Building for 5.16.0-12parrot1-amd64
Building initial module for 5.16.0-12parrot1-amd64
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 5.16.0-12parrot1-amd64 (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/virtualbox/6.1.26/build/make.log for more information.
dpkg: error processing package virtualbox-dkms (--configure):
 installed virtualbox-dkms package post-installation script subprocess returned 
error exit status 10
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of virtualbox:
 virtualbox depends on virtualbox-dkms (>= 6.1.26-dfsg-4parrot1) | virtualbox-so
urce (>= 6.1.26-dfsg-4parrot1) | virtualbox-modules; however:
  Package virtualbox-dkms is not configured yet.
  Package virtualbox-source is not installed.
  Package virtualbox-modules is not installed.
  Package virtualbox-dkms which provides virtualbox-modules is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package virtualbox (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of virtualbox-qt:
 virtualbox-qt depends on virtualbox (= 6.1.26-dfsg-4parrot1); however:
  Package virtualbox is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package virtualbox-qt (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 virtualbox-dkms
 virtualbox
 virtualbox-qt
Scanning application launchers
Removing duplicate launchers or broken launchers
Launchers are updated
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

This was supposed to be LTS?

What are the correct repos? And what’s the logic behind them?

2

Probably when you updated the system you were asked whether to keep the repositories you already had or to update them to the version proposed by the maintainer. If you didn’t explicitly say “y or yes”, you are left with the old repositories.

The reason is that, with the upcoming release of the new version (Parrot 5.0) we are migrating the entire OS to an LTS model, and this involves a nice change and some consequences. If you update the repositories, you will see all the repository news on /etc/apt/sources.list.d/parrot.list.

deb https://deb.parrot.sh/parrot parrot main contrib non-free
deb https://deb.parrot.sh/direct/parrot parrot-security main contrib non-free
deb https://deb.parrot.sh/parrot parrot-backports main contrib non-free

As you can see, in addition to the usual ones, another repository has been added, “backports” which provides all the latest updates. Here is the description that you will find in your system once updated:

“The stable repository contains software that is considered stable the day of the release. such packages receive only security and stability updates that don’t introduce new features and don’t drop old ones. The ‘backports’ repository provides feature updates to many packages, and even external software that was originally excluded from the stable release.”

About Virtualbox, the new kernel is giving some problems, so it could be more a virtualbox problem than a OS problem. You can try to remove virtualbox-dkms or try to reinstall it.

3

The first time I downloaded the image, installed and then upgraded the OS, I was indeed asked.

A few days ago I reinstalled the OS with s new image from the official download site and now the parrot.list looks different. On installing updates I was not asked anything and there is only the LTS and the two rolling repos rolling and rolling-security.
That was causing me confusion.

Anyway: thanks for the explanation. I’ll just have to be a little bit more patient then. As long as I know that, there is no problem at all.

About virtualbox: the dependencies were destroyed and I was not able to install it again after an apt-get purge virtualbox*

Best regards,

Hodonaru

4

You could try the beta 9 of Parrot 5.0, although it is a beta it is also updated and closest to the final release.

For Virtualbox I think the problem is really derived from the new kernel, but we are already working on it (also because it has given problems to people who have an nvidia video card).

5

Virtualbox is not my priority right now. But the Qt framework is. At least I need a working qmake…

I think I’ll try the beta. Where can I find how to install/download it?

6

https://download.parrot.sh/parrot/iso/5.0-beta9/
Here it is. Pickup the version you want, you have a large range of choice.

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7

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