Re: Linux Mint 19.3 has 3-year-old ddrescue!

[Timothy Beryl Grahek]

Hi Shahrukh,

On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 11:31 PM Shahrukh Merchant wrote:
>
> Hello, I just installed Linux Mint 19.3 (latest version) and to my
> disappointment find that its software repository has ddrescue 1.22 from
> 2017 when the current version is 1.25 from 2020!

Wow, this is pretty remarkable. I wonder if the package maintainer can
be contacted to get this ironed out. By the way, Linux Mint and Ubuntu
share the same packages, so the software repository for Linux Mint is
actually the same one as Ubuntu and there are no differences. Note
that Linux Mint 19.3 is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Until a new LTS
comes out (20.04), Linux Mint will continue to be based on Ubuntu
18.04 LTS. https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/gddrescue

> So how do I get the latest version installed on my Linux Mint 19.3
> system? Thanks!

Generally speaking, whenever I need to install a newer version of a
package on Linux, I just compile the latest version from source. Since
ddrescue 1.22 is already in the Ubuntu repositories, it should be
pretty straight-forward to do this for ddrescue 1.25 since the
dependencies are likely already met.

Please, follow these instructions:

1. Remove ddrescue 1.22 from your machine if you happen to have it
installed. 'apt remove gddrescue' should be sufficient.

2. Download the latest ddrescue package from this link
http://gnu.mirrors.hoobly.com/ddrescue/

3. Extract the folder from the archive. To do this, you must have lzip
installed. Install lzip from the Ubuntu repositories; it is one
version behind the latest, but it should do for now. Invoking 'sudo
apt install lzip' should do.

4. Now that you have lzip installed, simply invoking 'tar -xf
ddrescue-1.25.tar.lz' should be sufficient to extract the archive.

5. You may also need tools to compile with. The simplest way to get
all the tools without hassle is to invoke 'sudo apt install
build-essential'.

6. Now, if you go into the folder ddrescue-1.25, you should see a text
file that says INSTALL. Read this file. Once you've read it and
understand it, try compiling ddrescue using the instructions from the
file.

Best regards,

Timothy Beryl Grahek