Missing python-cffi-backend package on Jessie Debian

Hello,

I’m trying to install certbot in a Debian Jessie installation (ARMBIAN Debian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie) 3.14.79-odroidc2) but I’m unable to go ahead.

I added jessie backport to the lists (Instructions) and ran apt-get update with no alerts.

When I tried to install it (sudo apt-get install python-certbot-apache -t jessie-backports) I’ve been interrupted for a series of dependencies that would not be automatically installed. I kept adding those to the “apt-get install” line and ended up with this:

apt-get install -t jessie-backports certbot python-certbot-apache python-certbot python-acme python-cryptography python-openssl python-ndg-httpsclient python-cffi python-cffi-backend

Then I was unable to go ahead. The latest error message was:

Package python-cffi-backend is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'python-cffi-backend' has no installation candidate

I dug the forums and wikis all over the internet, found some valuable info but wasn’t able to solve this.

Any insights?

Thanks a lot.

That’s kinda strange, because the Debian packages site does mention it for jessie-backports: https://packages.debian.org/jessie-backports/python-cffi-backend

Could you paste your sources.list (or contents of /etc/apt/sources.list.d/)?

Hello Osiris,

Here is what I have:

root@odroido1:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# ls -lart
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  134 Jan 26 20:25 webupd8team-java.list
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Jan 26 20:25 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  115 Jan 30 14:02 armbian.list
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 30 14:02 .

root@odroido1:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# cat *
deb http://apt.armbian.com jessie main utils jessie-desktop
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu trusty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu trusty main

Thanks a lot!

Could it be an architecture issue? If I look at the python-cffi-backend package, it has a list of architectures… And if I compare the list to a “big”, “main” package, such as python, I’m missing “arm64” from the python-cffi-backend package.

I’m not that familiar with Debian, but could you try to find out what kind of architecture (in Debian packaging that is) your ARMBIAN is using?

2 Likes

Hi!

You nailed it!!!

Indeed was an architecture issue. I’m running in an arm64. The latest version of this package for arm64 (and a few others) isn’t present in jessie-backports. I searched a bit and found it in stretch. So I added this in my .list file this way:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch main

Then ran:

apt-get update
apt-get install -t stretch python-cffi-backend python-cryptography python-openssl
apt-get install -t jessie-backports python-certbot-apache

Smooth and clean installation. Working perfectly!

Thank you very much for the great help!

Regards.

1 Like

Nice!

And my compliments to you to provide the necessary info in your start post. Not everybody describes their situation in such manner, which was, in this case, the clue to the solution :smile:

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