Cannot install WeeWX

[Auchtermuchty Weather]

I want to install it on an old Pi so I can test it for a period of time before trying to sell it.

It's an old model B so arkware really. I've used the Raspberry Pi Installer to build a card with Bookworm Lite. 

When I try to install WeeWX it can't find the package:

$ ls -l /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/weewx.gpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4015 Dec  3 15:18 /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/weewx.gpg
$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/weewx.list
deb [arch=all] https://weewx.com/apt/python3 buster main
$ sudo apt install weewx
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package weewx

I've logged out & back in, and restarted it, with no joy. There is nothing in the system log that's to do with this - the last few entries just show me logging in & out.

Is this no longer possible with such an old Pi?

[Mark Fraser]

Have you done a

sudo apt update

First?

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[michael.k...@gmx.at]

Try doing it the pip way: https://www.weewx.com/docs/5.2/quickstarts/pip/

[Auchtermuchty Weather]

Yes, did sudo apt update first - and sudo apt full-upgrade.

Will have a go with the PIP way.

[Mark Fraser]

What version of Raspberry Pi OS are you running?

[vince]

The apt installation works just fine on debian 12 (bookworm).  Just retested in a VM.

[Auchtermuchty Weather]

OK the 'pip way' is being painful. I don't need a virtual environment - this is a 'throw-away' installation to check the Pi and PSU are OK. Nothing else. Afterwards the SD card will be used for something else.

But I tried the normal installation method which worked this time!!!!

That baffles me. Totally.

[michael.k...@gmx.at]

The pip way is just beautiful and even easier than using apt. It saved me a lot of headache. On a WeeWX-only machine it can't play out all of it's advantages, but I still prefer it.

[Tom Keffer]

Did you tell the system where to find the repository?

echo "deb [arch=all] https://weewx.com/apt/python3 buster main" | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/weewx.list

What’s in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/weewx.list ?

-tk

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[Auchtermuchty Weather]

In my original post:

[Auchtermuchty Weather]

OK after running sudo apt full-upgrade and rebooting it installs - there was one upgrade. I used the new installer to burn the card, with Bookworm 32-bit Lite. 

Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to what the upgrade was, will burn another card later today and do that.

[Auchtermuchty Weather]

Having burnt another could of cards, I didn't have the problem with Trixie, but it is persisting in Bookworm. Both are 32-bit Lite versions.

This is what atp update found for Bookworm - for Trixie it was a load of camera-related stuff:

$ sudo apt list --upgradable  -a
Listing... Done
rpi-eeprom/oldstable,oldstable 28.9-1 all [upgradable from: 28.7-1~bookworm]
rpi-eeprom/now 28.7-1~bookworm all [installed,upgradable to: 28.9-1]

[John Smith]

the weeWX package doesn't have binary program files, just text based python code files, so the OS architecture shouldn't matter.

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[Auchtermuchty Weather]

I put it in for completeness. 

Something, somewhere matters.

[John Smith]

On Fri, 5 Dec 2025 at 01:41, Auchtermuchty Weather <shunr...@gmail.com> wrote:

I put it in for completeness. 

Something, somewhere matters.

As far as I'm aware the Debian package dependencies haven't changed since weeWX 5.0.0 

[vince]

The odds of us being able to fix a 'something broke' problem report with one liner descriptions and no logs or transcripts from exactly what you did is approximately zero.  Sorry.

All I can say is it works 100% of the time here when I follow the quickstart procedure exactly.

But you did mention you are using apt full-upgrade.  Why ?  You're not trying to do an in-place upgrade from bookworm to trixie are you ?  Why ?  That just creates needless waiting and risk of craziness at the os level.  You're reimaging the SD card. Just start with whatever os you want to use from https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/

[John Kline]

> You're not trying to do an in-place upgrade from bookworm to trixie are you ?

This is not a worry.  apt full-upgrade will not do that.

apt full-upgrade will handle dependency changes and remove packages, if necessary.

On Dec 4, 2025, at 9:20 AM, vince <vince...@gmail.com> wrote:

The odds of us being able to fix a 'something broke' problem report with one liner descriptions and no logs or transcripts from exactly what you did is approximately zero.  Sorry.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/weewx-user/cf8e3aef-b440-4945-9e32-1ee324bcb5c9n%40googlegroups.com.

[vince]

Sure...but it takes a very long time when they're reimaging a SD card already.  Just start with the base os you want to wind up with. Much faster especially on an ancient model-B.

[Auchtermuchty Weather]

I have switched to my faster Pi, a model 3, and burnt a Trixie Lite card. Still no joy, and temporarily stopping PiHole didn't make any difference:

sallyw@TrixieTest:~ $ sudo apt update
Hit:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie InRelease
Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie-updates InRelease
Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security InRelease
Hit:4 http://archive.raspberrypi.com/debian trixie InRelease
Get:5 https://weewx.com/apt/python3 buster InRelease [4,252 B]
Get:6 https://weewx.com/apt/python3 buster/main all Packages [5,819 B]
Fetched 10.1 kB in 1s (8,271 B/s)
All packages are up to date.

sallyw@TrixieTest:~ $ sudo apt install -y wget gnupg
wget -qO - https://weewx.com/keys.html | \
    sudo gpg --dearmor --output /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/weewx.gpg
wget is already the newest version (1.25.0-2).
wget set to manually installed.
gnupg is already the newest version (2.4.7-21).
gnupg set to manually installed.
Summary:
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0

sallyw@TrixieTest:~ $ echo "deb [arch=all] https://weewx.com/apt/python3 buster main" | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/weewx.list

deb [arch=all] https://weewx.com/apt/python3 buster main

sallyw@TrixieTest:~ $ sudo apt install weewx
Error: Unable to locate package weewx

weewx.gpg exists:
sallyw@TrixieTest:~ $ ls -l /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/weewx.gpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4015 Dec  5 10:13 /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/weewx.gpg

weewx.list looks correct:

sallyw@TrixieTest:~ $ cat  /etc/apt/sources.list.d/weewx.list

deb [arch=all] https://weewx.com/apt/python3 buster main

Since I've not managed to install WeeWX there is no log from it.

There is nothing useful in the system log. It shows my commands, with NO error messages.

Dec 05 10:13:36 TrixieTest sudo[952]:   sallyw : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/sallyw ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/apt install -y wget gnupg
Dec 05 10:13:36 TrixieTest sudo[952]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by sallyw(uid=1000)
Dec 05 10:13:42 TrixieTest sudo[952]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Dec 05 10:13:42 TrixieTest sudo[960]:   sallyw : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/sallyw ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/gpg --dearmor --output /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/weewx.gpg
Dec 05 10:13:42 TrixieTest sudo[960]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by sallyw(uid=1000)
Dec 05 10:13:46 TrixieTest sudo[960]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Dec 05 10:13:48 TrixieTest sudo[970]:   sallyw : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/sallyw ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/weewx.list
Dec 05 10:13:48 TrixieTest sudo[970]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by sallyw(uid=1000)
Dec 05 10:13:48 TrixieTest sudo[970]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Dec 05 10:13:57 TrixieTest sudo[976]:   sallyw : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/sallyw ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/apt install weewx
Dec 05 10:13:57 TrixieTest sudo[976]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by sallyw(uid=1000)
Dec 05 10:14:16 TrixieTest sudo[976]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Dec 05 10:16:21 TrixieTest sudo[986]:   sallyw : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/sallyw ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/apt install weewx
Dec 05 10:16:21 TrixieTest sudo[986]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by sallyw(uid=1000)
Dec 05 10:16:23 TrixieTest sudo[986]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Dec 05 10:16:56 TrixieTest sudo[992]:   sallyw : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/sallyw ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/apt update
Dec 05 10:16:56 TrixieTest sudo[992]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by sallyw(uid=1000)
Dec 05 10:17:01 TrixieTest CRON[1012]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by root(uid=0)
Dec 05 10:17:01 TrixieTest CRON[1014]: (root) CMD (cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Dec 05 10:17:01 TrixieTest CRON[1012]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Dec 05 10:17:06 TrixieTest sudo[992]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Dec 05 10:18:07 TrixieTest sudo[1018]:   sallyw : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/sallyw ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/journalctl
Dec 05 10:18:07 TrixieTest sudo[1018]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by sallyw(uid=1000)

And to add further insult, finally it let me install.

I am utterly mystified as to why most of the time the steps as documented fail, but once in a while they are OK. I have used 3 different Pis, each with a newly-burnt card. If I had network issues I think my problems would be much, much bigger.
 

[Nick]

On 05/12/2025 10:47, Auchtermuchty Weather wrote:
> I have switched to my faster Pi, a model 3, and burnt a Trixie Lite card.
> Still no joy, and temporarily stopping PiHole didn't make any difference:

I've not really been following, but you do seem to have got in a muddle :-)

Sorry if I've missed anything obvious from others - I don't use the web
interface because $GOOGLE :-(

> *sallyw@TrixieTest:~ $ sudo apt install -y wget gnupg*

> wget -qO - https://weewx.com/keys.html | \
> sudo gpg --dearmor --output /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/weewx.gpg
> wget is already the newest version (1.25.0-2).
> wget set to manually installed.
> gnupg is already the newest version (2.4.7-21).
> gnupg set to manually installed.
> Summary:
> Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0

The formatting of his looks odd here, but not sure you meant to add the
wget bit to the end of the apt bit ... they should be totally separate
commands waiting for the apt bit to finish its stuff first.

> *sallyw@TrixieTest:~ $ echo "deb [arch=all] https://weewx.com/apt/python3
> buster main" | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/weewx.list*

> deb [arch=all] https://weewx.com/apt/python3 buster main
>

> *sallyw@TrixieTest:~ $ sudo apt install weewx*

> Error: Unable to locate package weewx

sudo apt update needed here I think, as otherwise apt won't find the new
repository

Hope this helps, but it may not :-)

Nick
M0HGU

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The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket,
and ate anything that couldn't climb out of one.
(Pyramids)
Fri 11784 Sep 11:20:01 GMT 1993
11:20:01 up 8 days, 21:37, 1 user, load average: 0.67, 0.94, 1.04

[Auchtermuchty Weather]

The commands are simply coped from the documentation, using the 'copy' links in the web page,

Presumably they look odd because of the mechanism you are using for looking at the group.

[Auchtermuchty Weather]

Well done for spotting the problem, but I agree that copying in everything (so I didn't get told I was missing information!) made my posts hard to read.

On Friday, 5 December 2025 at 11:27:13 UTC Nick wrote:

<snip>

sudo apt update needed here I think, as otherwise apt won't find the new
repository

Hope this helps, but it may not :-)

<snip>