Topic: Unable to upgrade Electrum 3.2.2 from 3.1.3 on Ubuntu 14.0.4 / VirtualBox (Read 466 times)

Yes, future developments were also what I had in mind, but I guess I'll let it rest for now, as you suggest. And hope that the next update doesn't bring me back here right away. Thanks again, to you and Abdussamad.

If you have Electrum 3.2.2 running, then it's probably best to just leave things as they are. The advice to upgrade to Python 3.5.5 was more to prevent any future issues with Electrum being unable to find required libraries etc.

Gentlemen/-ladies,

First of all: apologies for not having a better perception of the fact that the attention span and historical memory of a tortoise are of one kind, and those of a moth another. Throughout this thread I have on several occasions tried to make two things clear:

1. that as the owner of an Electrum wallet and an older MacOS, I have by necessity no other viable alternative than that of running the Linux port of the application under Ubuntu on a virtual image exclusively dedicated to that;

2. that I am not at all familiar with the linguistics in use among Linux habitués. While the English language is only one of those I fuddle with, I did attempt to explain myself as clearly as possible in this particular tongue.

Thus, in post #13 of 16.07 (and again in #27), I stated that, thanks to the suggestions of either Abdussamad (https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/abdussamad-85981) or HCP (https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/hcp-867786), or most likely thanks to the suggestions of both of them, I had got 3.2.2 to work.

Then, in post #19 of 20.07, and again in #21, HCP (https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/hcp-867786) — yes… that's you — recommended that I upgrade Python to v. 3.5. This is what everything on this thread has been dedicated to since then. Step by step, with some difficulties on my part, viz. the above about my understanding Linux Terminal lingo.

As by now I was fine with 3.2.2, one side of me (and of my household) has been inclined to drop the whole thread, thank you and good bye, yet another side was more than willing to listen respectfully to someone apparently knowledgeable who suggested that I didn't just leave Python at v. 3.4, or at v. 2.7.6 for that matter. Even if I couldn't see what I'd get out of upgrading to 3.5 in the short term.

So here we are, back to the last Terminal lines at post #30: 1. Python 3.5.5 installed; 2. don't know to have Electrum "catch" it (or vice-versa, to have 3.5.5 "catch" Electrum), if it is not already doing so; 3. don't know at this point whether it's useful or not.

Since your initial problem was that you were unable to upgrade to 3.2.2, you might want to lock the thread now because everything is working as it should ?

If you somehow still believe that something is not working as intended, please give a detailed description of what you think should happen and what actually happens.
For me it seems like you don't have a clue what you are actually doing inside the terminal, and just believe to have an error because the output you see should be different according to google.

If you already have it running... then I'm not sure what your current issue is?

Why are you trying to use the "cd Electrum3.2.2." command? Were you just trying to follow the instructions on the Electrum website (and the ones given by bob123) and wondering why you got an error message?

I can only reiterate — again, again — that I now have Electrum 3.2.2 running, which, as most people might assume, implies that I can start it. Kindly peruse the thread over again, if you're still in doubt.

According to this:



you are not able to find the directory. And this also is the reason that you can't start electrum. You just don't know where you put that file.
So you can either search your harddrive for the electrum folder and then simply run these 2 steps:


Or download it again, which takes 1 additional minute of your precious time, following all 5 steps.

Sorry, I just don't understand. As said, at this point I do have 3.2.2 already installed and running as it it supposed to, so it's difficult for me to see the point.

You might just simply download and unzip the file again. These 5 steps take about 1 or 2 minutes.


1) Open a console and navigate to the path you'd like to put electrum in.

2) Download electrum with this command:

3) Unzip the file:

4) Enter the directory:

5) Finally run electrum:

I just cannot remember, it's all been very confused, over three weeks ago (posts 4 to 12 in this thread). Possibly, I downloaded it from the Mac interface, then moved it over to the Ubuntu desktop and unpacked it there. It got deleted afterwards.

I tried to do some searches as best as I could with the terminal, this is what I got:

~$ locate electrum|grep bin
/usr/local/bin/electrum
~$ locate electrum 3.2.2|grep bin
/usr/local/bin/electrum

This is what I then found in that directory (sorry, I don't know how to upload a screenshot here). The dates stamps on all those files (July 13) except the last one (qr, = 2015) seem to indicate that they are those that were installed at the time, three weeks ago:

/usr/local/bin/easy_install
/usr/local/bin/easy_install-3.4
/usr/local/bin/electrum
/usr/local/bin/pip
/usr/local/bin/pip3
/usr/local/bin/pip3.4
/usr/local/bin/qr

But I do not know how to see the electrum file's version number. Anyhow, after this I tried these commands:

~$ cd /usr/local/bin/electrum
bash: cd: /usr/local/bin/electrum: Not a directory
~$ cd usr/local/bin/electrum
bash: cd: usr/local/bin/electrum: No such file or directory
~$ cd usr/local/bin/
bash: cd: usr/local/bin/: No such file or directory
~$ cd /usr/local/bin/
/usr/local/bin$ python3.5 electrum
Error: No module named 'dns'. Try 'sudo pip install '
/usr/local/bin$

... from which I don't know where to go. As you see it's not really getting me very far...

Not a problem, I'm only too happy to find people willing to help! I'm working on the rest, will be back in a few minutes...

The "cd" command (short for "change directory") will only look in the current directory if you don't pass it the full path... Depending on which directory you are in when you type "cd Electrum-3.2.2", then the system might not see that directory. It doesn't "search" your entire file system looking for it. So you need to know exactly where it is.

Where did you download and extract the Electrum-3.2.2.tar.gz file?


Also, apologies for the bad reply before... I was using my phone on a break at like 4am, and obviously didn't proofread the message before I sent it

Good, thanks a lot. So "python3.5 -V" gives Python 3.5.5.

However, when I enter "cd Electrum-3.2.2" (which is what I think I could understand from an earlier reply), I get:

bash: cd: Electrum-3.2.2: No such file or directory

But I do actually have 3.2.2 installed (and running, for that matter)

If you managed to successfully install it by sudo apt-get install python3.5, you do have python 3.5 installed.
You need to type python3.5 instead of python35.

So, this command:


Then you can open electrum with this python version by typing:
inside the electrum directory

Sorry to get back to you so late… This is what I'm getting:

"python -V": Python 2.7.6

"python3 -V": Python 3.4.3

"python35 -V":
No command 'python35' found, did you mean:
 Command 'python3m' from package 'python3-minimal' (main)
 Command 'python3' from package 'python3-minimal' (main)
python35: command not found

So I don't know where things are at. Thought I'd managed to get 3.5 installed?

Sorry to have to somehow repeat myself, but I wouldn't know how to "figure out the right command needed..."

You can simply try typing: python -V
And see what it says... You may need to use python3 or python35 to get it to run the 3.5 version...

Once you figure out the exact command needed to make python35 run, you can the use: pythoncommand spectrum

For instance: python35 electrum

That will start Electrum using the correct version of Python...

Well, I found a few minutes, and for once it went like charm. I just had to run the commands in that thread in two steps, first:
then:
So I figure that I now have 3.5 installed. Only after this: the following discussion of symlinks (which I assume to mean aliases in my speech) seems to indicate that 3.4 will remain active. How will Electrum figure out which Python version to play with? Not that I'd like to fiddle about with any symlinks, after all those warnings (wouldn't know where to begin with anyway), but just out of curiosity...

Seems complicated, but I'll try to work it out as soon as I get a chance. And get back to you to tell you the result. Thanks a lot for helping making clear that I still don't have 3.5 installed.

I can't remember if I have mentioned earlier that Ubuntu 14.04 is the last version that will run in VirtualBox 4.3.34, which is the last version that will run under MacOS 10.6.8. At least that's the way I understand it.

I would suggest you really need to update your version of Python then... however, it looks like Python3.5 may not be to friendly with Ubuntu 14.04 (https://askubuntu.com/a/682875), so you need to be careful with how you do this.

You can follow some of the suggestions there... or maybe consider setting up an Ubuntu 16.04 virtual machine (that comes with a higher version of Python pre-installed) see the bottom answer: https://askubuntu.com/a/882723

Thanks. Yes, before starting this thread I had also been led to believe that updating python to 3.5 from 3.4 might be part of the problem. But at the time I couldn't figure out how to do this update. And I still can't, unless the command you're giving me here is intended to do just that — which I'm not sure of (if you'll excuse me, I've gotten a bit lost between the various recommendations since the beginning.)

Anyway, I've applied it, but it doesn't get me very far, apparently. This is what I'm getting:

Requirement already satisfied: typing in /usr/local/lib/python3.4/dist-packages (3.6.4)
protobuf 3.4.0 has requirement six>=1.9, but you'll have six 1.5.2 which is incompatible.

Still quite perplexing…