Installing OPAM reports "Solver failed"

Software PureOS
1

I just did a fresh install of PureOS on a Librem 15, tried installing OPAM with sudo install opam, seemed to go fine.

Next I run opam init and tell it to, yes, modify ~/.profile and set up a hook to opam’s init script. Then it says

[ERROR] Solver failed: "/usr/bin/aspcud /tmp/opam-adam-32286/solver-in-32286-2c871f
        /tmp/opam-adam-32286/solver-out-32286-ad6566
        -count(removed),-sum(request,version-lag),-count(down),-sum(solution,version-lag),-count(changed)"
        exited with code 1 "ERROR: grounder returned with non-zero exit status"
Switch initialisation failed:

The only thing I saw relevant to this error was https://github.com/ocaml/opam/issues/3484 which seems to hinge on aspcud. I checked mine and, after trying to install it, I get the message that it’s already the newest version (1:1.9.4-2).

Apparently that’s not the newest version since there’s mention of a version 2. Not sure if I need to force that newer update or how to do so.

I suppose I should mention that I also installed OPAM on a Linux Mint machine and it went fine, so I’m assuming there’s something about PureOS which accounts for the difference.

2

Did you do sudo apt update before sudo apt install opam? I see version 2.0.3-1 in the PureOS.

I would at least recommend running

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
3

Yep, already did that, so this is the behavior after running all the updates and upgrades until no more were available.

4

That’s quite odd. What do you see in /etc/apt/sources.list?
I just have deb https://repo.puri.sm/pureos green main

So I would think you should be able to get version 2 by updating. Only other thing I could think of would be sudo apt remove opam followed by updating and installing again

5

So after removing and reinstalling opam, I run opam install ocaml again and get

[ERROR] No switch is currently set. Please use 'opam switch' to set or install a switch

An interesting thing is if I run sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade it returns

Hit:1 https://repo.pureos.net/pureos green InRelease                                
Hit:2 https://repo.puri.sm/pureos green InRelease                                   
Reading package lists... Done
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), are you root?

I ran it with sudo so I’m not sure why it would return this.

6

Not 100% sure, but you may need sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade - try sudo after the & too

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