xfce4-weather-plugin for Xubuntu 18.04 / 20.04 stopped working

Question

The xfce4-weather-plugin for Xubuntu 18.04 and now 20.04 has stopped working and gives "No Data".

Solution 1

Update 2021-03-19: Just received an update today on the bug that they pushed the xfce4-weather-plugin version 0.10.2 to the focal-updates repository that does not have this issue. Feel free to reinstall from the Ubuntu Repos.

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Update 2021-03-04: The plugin version from the 20.04 repository stopped working recently due to shutting off the 1.9 API: https://api.met.no/blog/2021-02-04-extremeswwc on March 1st.

This affected version 0.10.1 that is in the Ubuntu Repository. The git build below now installs version 0.11.0 which fixes this issue.

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The reason for this is that the API from https://apt.met.no has changed the version number that the plugin is calling.

Old code calling: https://api.met.no/weatherapi/locationforecastlts/1.3

The page gives this error message:

404 Not Found

Validation error

The specified version number is end-of-lifed for this product 

API expecting: https://api.met.no/weatherapi/locationforecast/2.0

I have filed a bug report for this to get new API added to the code here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-weather-plugin/+bug/1895246

There is a bug filed at the Xfce GitLab:

https://gitlab.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-weather-plugin/-/issues/27

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Apparently there has been a fix pushed upstream it is available in git repo xfce4-weather-plugin except there is an issue that the xdt-autogen version required to build this is 4.14.0. The version in Xubuntu 18.04 is version 4.12.0 as the highest. The version in the git is looking for isn't available in the xfce4-dev-tools package for 18.04. However, I was actually able to get a git version to build with version 4.12.0 with some quick modifications to their autogen.sh script. I have the instructions below.

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Git repo install:

I found the version that comes with 18.04 actually has a problem with showing when it is evening outside as I was seeing the icon showing a moon when it was only 4 pm. I updated to the version, I believe is version 0.10.1, in the git repo and that corrected it.

Remove Weather plugin from panel and after remove existing plugin

sudo apt remove xfce4-weather-plugin

Now add prereqs:

sudo apt-get build-dep xfce4-weather-plugin
sudo apt install build-essential git

or

sudo apt install intltool libdbus-glib-1-dev libsoup2.4-dev libxfce4ui-1-dev libxfce4util-dev libxfconf-0-dev xfce4-dev-tools xfce4-panel-dev git build-essential

If running 20.04 also install the following:

sudo apt install libxfce4ui-2-dev libxfce4panel-2.0-dev

NOTE: All of these -dev applications are only used for the build from source. Once the install process is complete, you can remove all these -dev applications safely as they are no longer needed.

Now get the git version, build and install

git clone https://gitlab.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-weather-plugin.git
cd xfce4-weather-plugin/

If you are running 20.04 or newer the next line is not needed:

sed -i 's/4.14.0/4.12.0/' autogen.sh

Continue with the build:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

Re-add the weather plugin to the panel and it should now work now. =)

Quick screenshots of it:

Solution 2

Version 0.10.2 is being worked on by the Xubuntu devs for 20.04 and 20.10 and should be arriving soon. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-weather-plugin/+bug/1918002

Until then, you can grab this one from MX Linux.
http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/pool/main/x/xfce4-weather-plugin/xfce4-weather-plugin_0.10.2-1~mx17_amd64.deb
http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/pool/main/x/xfce4-weather-plugin/xfce4-weather-plugin_0.10.2-1~mx17_i386.deb

Solution 3

Thanks to all above and 2 I think ones I found need for Ubuntu Studio 18.04 last week this script 2 systems of mine:

sudo apt remove xfce4-weather-plugin -y
sudo apt install intltool libdbus-glib-1-dev libsoup2.4-dev libxfce4ui-1-dev libxfce4util-dev libxfconf-0-dev xfce4-dev-tools xfce4-panel-dev git build-essential -y
sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev libxfce4ui-2-dev libxfce4panel-2.0-dev -y
git clone https://gitlab.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-weather-plugin.git
cd xfce4-weather-plugin/
sed -i 's/4.14.0/4.12.0/' autogen.sh
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

Comments

[Kevin Bowen]

FYI. This was fixed upstream ~3 weeks ago. gitlab.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-weather-plugin/-/issues/‌​23 Nice write-up on the workaround!

[Terrance]

@KevinBowen I removed my other comments here because they were starting to scream about extended chats. Anyway, I was able to get the git version to install into 18.04 just fine with minimal effort. Added to answer in the middle section there. =)

[Paul Matthijsse]

Thanks Алексей Агапов for that new libweather.so, xfce4-weather-plugin works again. Paul.

[Sigur]

Do you have an official mirror to get it?

[Terrance]

@martinspacek Good edit! Oops, I forgot to change that when I edited last. =)

[Iras]

I also needed to install the dependencies libxfce4ui-2-dev and libxfce4panel-2.0-dev. I'm using Ubuntu 20.04.

[Terrance]

@Iras Thanks for the comment. I had to follow this today for my installation on 20.04 as well. Out of the blue the plugin stopped working. The plugin from the Ubuntu repos seemed to stop working. Installed this way and I am glad to see it back. =)

[fixitmanarizona]

That might work for you but it's a big hassle trying to type or paste in all that code, and I just get errors like "install: missing destination file operand after 'xfce4-dev-tools' Try 'install --help' for more information." and fatal: destination path 'xfce4-weather-plugin' already exists and is not an empty directory. Oh and it installed a bunch of "dev" stuff I don't want on this system, like 90 files!

[Terrance]

@fixitmanarizona I have no idea what you did to get those errors, considering I did this yesterday for me and it worked. When you are getting errors like that you are possibly copying and pasting more information than what is needed. Also, do you copy and paste blndly? I do have or statements up there meaning you don't need to copy and paste everything. Also, dev applications can be removed after installation since they are only needed for building the application from source.

[fixitmanarizona]

I basically gave up, basically I did try several ways, but it's just too much hassle for a "regular user" as opposed to an expert or a developer. I also noticed the newer version provided upstream won't install via package manager due to a malformed(apparently) dependency, calls for libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 version 2.22.0 and I have 2.40.0 . I think that probably should read equal to (or also less than some version sucvh as 2.30.0?) I don't really want to build packages anyway. Yes, I removed all the dev stuff. I can always just check in a tab in my browser (yahoo or weather underground.)

[Terrance]

@fixitmanarizona Check the bug: gitlab.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-weather-plugin/-/issues/‌​… Someone there posted a 10.2 MX version you can download and install. The only thing that I recommend is that you remove the plugin if you installed it from the Ubuntu repositories so that you don't bump into the problem of it wanting to "upgrade" the version back to the 10.1 that doesn't work.

[fixitmanarizona]

Thanks Terrance, I'll check it out.

[fixitmanarizona]

Worked great, thanks!

[eMPee584]

(These also work on debian buster.. 🌤😀)

[Pat J]

Version 0.10.2 has arrived, at least for 20.04, and it fixes the issue for me.