Ubuntu versions and using apt-get for SNMP mib downloader

I am running Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS, which I believe slightly pre-dates a fix to some issues with the SNMP MIBs installed by the snmp-mibs-downloader. I'm trying to understand whether I can use apt-get to install the fixed version of the downloader. My expectation was that as the SNMP artefacts are installed independently of Ubuntu, that the Ubuntu version would not prevent me from install the fixed version of the mib downloader.

If I run

sudo apt-get install snmp-mibs-downloader

I get

snmp-mibs-downloader is already the newest version (1.1)

However I know that a version 1.1+nmu1 exists, it's documented here and appears to be available at sites documented here. At the latter site it gives the format of a string I can add to my /etc/apt/source.list file.

deb http://cz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful main multiverse

In fact I've successfully done this before, for another package only available from this site, so I'm pretty sure the config works.

However I don't see how to request this +nmu1 version, apt seems convinced that 1.1 is the latest version.

I realise that I could either download the tar.gz by hand, or go to a machine with Debian installed and get the fixed MIBs from there, but if I can use APT it feels cleaner. Is there a way to do this?

Solution 1:

Those packages you linked are for artful release which is Ubuntu 17.10. If you check that same package for xenial(which is Ubuntu 16.04) you can see that latest package is in fact 1.1 version:

snmp-mibs-downloader

Since you still have 1.1 version installed after you added that artful version of the package, I assume you did something wrong. So let's try it this way:

1. Remove this deb http://cz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful main multiverse from /etc/apt/source.list file (and wherever else you pasted it).

2. Paste this command echo "deb http://cz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful main multiverse" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/snmp-mibs.list

3. sudo apt update; sudo apt list --upgradable and check if snmp-mibs-downloader package is in that list. If you see it, feel free to sudo apt upgrade snmp-mibs-downloader -y if you only whish to update that package.

4. Remove artful repository so you don't accidentally upgrade some package that might break xenial installation: sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/snmp-mibs.list; sudo apt update -y

I've tested it on my end and it works:

root@test:~# cat /etc/os-release ; apt list snmp-mibs-downloader NAME="Ubuntu" VERSION="16.04.5 LTS (Xenial Xerus)" ID=ubuntu ID_LIKE=debian PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS" VERSION_ID="16.04" HOME_URL="http://www.ubuntu.com/" SUPPORT_URL="http://help.ubuntu.com/" BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/" VERSION_CODENAME=xenial UBUNTU_CODENAME=xenial Listing... Done snmp-mibs-downloader/artful,now 1.1+nmu1 all [installed]

Let me know if this helped.