Debian "Buster" upgrade broke freecad

[GenePoole]

I recently upgraded my Debian distribution to the latest stable "Buster" version. It went fairly normal as have past upgrades to "Stretch", etc. but when it was all done, Freecad didn't work. Clicking on the icon did nothing, so I ran it from the command-line to see if there were any messages. It gave me the logo and then a single word: "Aborted"

Code: Select all

FreeCAD 0.18, Libs: 0.18R
© Juergen Riegel, Werner Mayer, Yorik van Havre 2001-2019
  #####                 ####  ###   ####  
  #                    #      # #   #   # 
  #     ##  #### ####  #     #   #  #   # 
  ####  # # #  # #  #  #     #####  #   # 
  #     #   #### ####  #    #     # #   # 
  #     #   #    #     #    #     # #   #  ##  ##  ##
  #     #   #### ####   ### #     # ####   ##  ##  ##

Aborted

I uninstalled and reinstalled with the apt package manager and still the same. I did a apt-get --purge removal of anything that seemed related to freecad, deleted my home directory ".FreeCAD" directory, my ".config/FreeCAD" directory, and then did a reinstall and the same thing. Nothing I could search for gave any references to just "Aborted" and nothing else, but some searches recommended trying the AppImage version, so I downloaded that and ran it. It gives just a slight bit more info, but nothing I can use to help figure out what's going on.

Code: Select all

/tmp/.mount_FreeCA4WZyWQ
FreeCAD 0.18, Libs: 0.18R16117 (Git)
© Juergen Riegel, Werner Mayer, Yorik van Havre 2001-2019
  #####                 ####  ###   ####  
  #                    #      # #   #   # 
  #     ##  #### ####  #     #   #  #   # 
  ####  # # #  # #  #  #     #####  #   # 
  #     #   #### ####  #    #     # #   # 
  #     #   #    #     #    #     # #   #  ##  ##  ##
  #     #   #### ####   ### #     # ####   ##  ##  ##

/tmp/.mount_FreeCA4WZyWQ/AppRun: line 12: 11170 Aborted                 ${HERE}/usr/bin/FreeCAD "$@"

I don't know what to do next. There is no official path for reverting a Debian dist-upgrade as far as I can tell.

[kkremitzki]

The most common reason I've seen for this is installation of 3rd party modules in e.g. /usr/lib/freecad. Can you try these steps to troubleshoot the problem?

1. Run sudo apt purge -y \*freecad\* to purge all FreeCAD packages. In Buster, FreeCAD is split up into several packages, so you want to make sure you remove all of them. Depending on your shell, you may not want to backslash-escape the *.
2. Verify they're all gone with dpkg -l | grep freecad.
3. Make sure the purge is fully complete with find /usr -name freecad. You shouldn't see any results, and if you do, sudo rm -rf them.
4. Try installing freecad again, and pay attention to the installation log. If you install it and the same behavior is occurring, there may be a clue in the output from the installation procedure.

The reason this happens is that purge removes leftover system configuration, but if there are user-placed files in system-managed locations, they have to be removed manually.

[GenePoole]

Thanks for the tips. I'm pretty sure I removed all traces on my first try, but I tried it again to no avail. On the other hand, I did a fresh clean install of Debian Buster in a VM (Oracle Virtualbox) and Freecad works (both the Debian package and the AppImage), so it seems it is probably a Debian upgrade thing, not a FreeCAD thing. I'll keep working on it and report back.