Missing packages suggestions won't work on Raspbian buster

Question

I'm trying to get command-not-found package to work. That's the one which tells what to install when the user types a missing command, for instance:

$ zbarcam
The program 'zbarcam' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install zbar-tools

However, when I try to set it up, I get the following error

$ sudo update-command-not-found 
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/sbin/update-command-not-found", line 26, in <module>
col.create(db)
File "/usr/share/command-not-found/CommandNotFound/db/creator.py", line 94, in create
self._fill_commands(con)
File "/usr/share/command-not-found/CommandNotFound/db/creator.py", line 132, in _fill_commands
self._parse_single_contents_file(con, f, fp.stdout)
File "/usr/share/command-not-found/CommandNotFound/db/creator.py", line 271, in _parse_single_contents_file
priority = component_priorities[component]
KeyError: 'rpi'

I'm pretty certain I don't have anything non-standard in apt sources, and the issue seems to come from the rpi component which is indeed in the default sources.list:

deb http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/ buster main contrib non-free rpi

Is there any way to get it to work, preferably without removing the rpi component?

Answer 1

I tried to install command-not-found on Raspbian Buster with:

pi@rasberrypi:~ $ sudo apt install command-not-found

It succeeds without error messages. After a reboot I get:

pi@rasberrypi:~ $ zbarcam 
Could not find the database of available applications, run update-command-not-found as root to fix this
Sorry, command-not-found has crashed! Please file a bug report at:
http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting
Please include the following information with the report:

command-not-found version: 0.3
Python version: 3.7.3 final 0
Distributor ID: Raspbian
Description:    Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Release:    10
Codename:   buster
Exception information:

local variable 'cnf' referenced before assignment
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/command-not-found/CommandNotFound/util.py", line 23, in crash_guard
    callback()
  File "/usr/lib/command-not-found", line 93, in main
    if not cnf.advise(args[0], options.ignore_installed) and not options.no_failure_msg:
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'cnf' referenced before assignment

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo update-command-not-found
pi@raspberrypi:~ $

I get another result then you. update-command-not-found succeeds without errors but executing zbarcam gives always the same error as shown. So you should file a bug as suggested.

Answer 2

Update 2019sep09hkt2238

(1) I ran "$ sudo apt-get install command-not-found" and got message saying OK, blah, blah, blah, version 18.04.5-1.

(2) "$ sudo update-command-not-found" returns nothing. I guess it means no update to do.

(3) I don't understand the "rpi" component thing. I read that there are 3 packages.

(4) I don't know what is "sources.list", and how to check if "rpi" is in that list. Perhaps you can give me a bash statement to do that. PS - I don't know how to use the weird "grep" thing. In other words, I am a linux newbie.

(5) Actually I don't even know what actually is the thing "repositories". I guess it is a collection of warehouses storing millions of packages. :)

Wrong Answer to delete later

Yes, I could not install blah-utils in terminal mode, so I tried it in desktop and found it OK. I can run blah now but don't know how to do the database thing. :)

Blah running log tlfong01 2019sep09hkt1544