I use Rubyripper to rip cds that whipper rejects. The whole point of using these two applications is their level of accuracy. Recently Rubyripper has stopped working on my Manjaro Gnome desktop and as yet I’ve not got it running again (it’s an AUR package and I’ve read all the warnings). I believe it can be installed successfully on Ubuntu, which I have as a VM in VirtualBox on my Manjaro Gnome desktop.
But I’m wondering if the fact of it running on the VM, accessing the optical drive on the host, could introduce factors that might compromise the accuracy of the rip.
Have you tried to rebuild the AUR package?
Re-building the program
and all it’s dependencies, if they are AUR packages, too
should help -
installing it in a VM and passing through the cd drive should not make a difference, except that it is probably overkill …
A maybe rather strange sounding tip that may help with ripping, apart from the program itself:
I recently needed to rip a lot of audio book cd’s that where rented from a public library.
They where heavily used and badly scratched.
What helped tremendously in successfully ripping them was putting some (!) hand cream on it, rubbing it in by hand, then carefully and lightly wipe it all off with soft cloth and a light touch to de-grease the cd again. 
The way I theorize this worked so well is:
the grease gets in the scratches and kind of “repairs” them enough to make the content more easily readable.
… all I know is: it worked a treat 
Thanks for this, jrichard326. I installed it from Add/Remove software (having enabled AUR support). It’s not the first time I’ve installed AUR packages and I have to confess I’ve gone ahead noting, but not acting on, the warning: “You should become familiar with the manual build process in order to be prepared to troubleshoot problems.” I have tried uninstalling it, updating everything and then reinstalling. No joy: the launcher icon is there in the menu but no response when clicked. It was fine until very recently; last time I used it was January 10th.
TBH, it’s in order to avoid having to learn deeper stuff like that that I thought about running RR on Ubuntu in VirtualBox, hence my post. My IT learning goes in fits and starts. At some point I do want to learn more and become more confident in troubleshooting, but right now I’m not in that place. But leaving aside the desire to get RR working, I’m genuinely interested in the question I posted regarding the possible limitations of working in a VM if the software relies upon a host hardware peripheral.
Brilliant tip re the handcream, Nachlese! I’ll defo try that with the really recalcitrant cds! Thanks. Good to hear too that there shouldn’t be an issue using the host optical drive with the VM. It might be overkill, but it might be more straightforward for me than getting my head properly round building from source. see my reply above.
one easy possible cheat to rebuild the package when you can’t convince pamac to do it
is to install and use yay
It uses it’s own cache, so there is no way that old build files will be used.
Worth a try?
you could also start the program via terminal
and see what (error) messages you get - and go from there
System needs to be up to date and the mirror list current
before you even attempt to re build.
Did you try to start it from terminal ?
Most times the result is a error-message (containing the info what to do) 
All I was getting from the terminal was “bash: rubyripper: command not found” However, I’ve now found a GitHub page which says the executables are rrip_cli and rrip_gui. Running the latter in the terminal brings up: “The ruby-gtk3 library (or one of its dependencies) could not be found. Is it correctly installed?” So that looks like my problem. Out of my depth though really! How do I ensure ruby-gtk3 library is correctly installed?
According to it’s github page, the name of the program to run from cli should be either one of:
rubyripper_gtk3
or
rubyripper_cli
Run from directory:
./bin/rubyripper_gtk3 or
./bin/rubyripper_cli
to me it looks like you need to update your system if you have not already and then rebuild the program against the now current system …
I’ve updated the system again, but with some errors:
Summary of Failures:
5/7 viewport TIMEOUT 30.57s killed by signal 9 SIGKILL
6/7 memory-cache TIMEOUT 30.58s killed by signal 9 SIGKILL
7/7 coordinate TIMEOUT 30.58s killed by signal 9 SIGKILL
Ok: 4
Expected Fail: 0
Fail: 0
Unexpected Pass: 0
Skipped: 0
Timeout: 3
Full log written to /var/tmp/pamac-build-nick/libshumate-git/src/build/meson-logs/testlog.txt
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in check().
Aborting...
Nothing jumps out from the log and I vaguely remember, on a previous occasion when I got similar errors, reading that this was a common issue related to meson and could be ignored. (You can see how far out of my depth I am!)
As i posted above, the terminal output when I run rrip_gui suggests ruby-gtk3 is the problem (and I see on the GitHub discussion that we should update and check that before complaining that RR doesn’t run!)
But when I try to reinstall ruby-gtk3, I get “Target not found!”.
This means:
- update your complete system (!) with pamac or pacman (in terminal)
- post all errors here
I’ve updated again. No errors:
[nick@nick-pc-3 ~]$ sudo pacman -Syyu
[sudo] password for nick:
:: Synchronising package databases...
core 163.5 KiB 279 KiB/s 00:01 [######################] 100%
extra 1858.1 KiB 730 KiB/s 00:03 [######################] 100%
community 7.6 MiB 741 KiB/s 00:10 [######################] 100%
multilib 170.6 KiB 437 KiB/s 00:00 [######################] 100%
:: Starting full system upgrade...
there is nothing to do
[nick@nick-pc-3 ~]$
I then find RubyRipper in Add/Remove Software (rubyripper 0.8.0rc3-2 with a green zip icon) and click on “Build”, whereupon a pane appears headed “Failed to prepare transaction” and containing “target not found.”
I then click on “Remove”, thinking to uninstall and start again, but I get the same response. 
trizen -Ss rubyripp
** GET https://aur.archlinux.org/rpc?v=5&type=search&arg=rubyripp ==> 200 OK (1s)
aur/rubyripper 0.8.0rc3-2 [13+] [0.00%] [20 Jun 2021]
Secure audiodisc ripper
Please do your transactions in terminal
You will be served with meaningful error-messages 
If you do not share the full error message, nobody will be able to help you
… same with yay - which was what I suggested and use
just saying - no competition in favor of one or the other AUR helper
1 Like
I really appreciate the help you guys are giving, especially as I clearly understood not to expect support if one decides to install AUR packages in Manjaro!
I’ve just tried installing RR using yay, as recommended. It installed:
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n]
(1/1) checking keys in keyring [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity [######################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space [######################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/1) installing rubyripper [######################] 100%
Optional dependencies for rubyripper
ruby-gettext: Translations
cd-discid: Gnudb support
lame: MP3 encoding support [installed]
vorbis-tools: Ogg Vorbis encoding support [installed]
flac: FLAC encoding support [installed]
wavegain: WAV ReplayGain support
mp3gain: MP3 ReplayGain support
vorbisgain: Ogg Vorbis ReplayGain support
aacgain-cvs: AAC ReplayGain support
normalize: Normalization support
cdrdao: Advanced TOC analysis [installed]
sox: Correct pre-emphasis with sox [installed]
wavpack: WavPack encoding and ReplayGain support [installed]
opus-tools: Opus encoding support
neroaacenc-bin: Nero AAC encoding support
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/4) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...
(2/4) Refreshing PackageKit...
(3/4) Updating icon theme caches...
(4/4) Updating the desktop file MIME type cache
But in the pre checks for the installation there was:
CHECKING FORCED DEPENDENCIES
cdparanoia: [OK]
CHECKING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCIES
ruby-gtk3: [NOT OK]
You won't be able to use the gtk3 interface.
ruby-gettext: [NOT OK]
You won't be able to use translations.
discid: [NOT OK]
You won't have accurate Gnudb string calculation unless Cd-discid is installed.
cd-discid: [NOT OK]
You won't have accurate Gnnudb string calculation unless Discid is installed.
eject: [OK]
flac: [OK]
vorbis: [OK]
lame: [OK]
wavegain: [NOT OK]
You won't be able to replaygain WAVE files.
vorbisgain: [NOT OK]
You won't be able to replaygain vorbis files.
mp3gain: [NOT OK]
You won't be able to replaygain LAME mp3 files.
normalize: [NOT OK]
You won't be able to normalize audio files.
cdrdao: [OK]
and more. Most of the NOT OK ones I don’t need, but to use the GUI I do need ruby-gtk3, confirmed when I try to run Rubyripper:
[nick@nick-pc-3 ~]$ rrip_gui
ruby-gettext is not found. Translations are disabled!
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/3.0.0/extensions/x86_64-linux/3.0.0/cairo-1.17.8/cairo.so: undefined symbol: cairo_tee_surface_index - /usr/lib/ruby/gems/3.0.0/extensions/x86_64-linux/3.0.0/cairo-1.17.8/cairo.so
The ruby-gtk3 library (or one of its dependencies) could not be found. Is it correctly installed?
So as I wrote above, it does seem that the ruby-gtk3 library, or lack of it, is the problem.
I tried reinstalling it but:
[nick@nick-pc-3 ~]$ yay -S ruby-gtk3
[sudo] password for nick:
warning: ruby-gtk3-4.0.6-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
Packages (1) ruby-gtk3-4.0.6-1
Total Installed Size: 2.13 MiB
Net Upgrade Size: 0.00 MiB
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n]
(1/1) checking keys in keyring [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity [######################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space [######################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/1) reinstalling ruby-gtk3 [######################] 100%
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/2) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...
(2/2) Refreshing PackageKit...
[nick@nick-pc-3 ~]$ rrip_gui
ruby-gettext is not found. Translations are disabled!
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/3.0.0/extensions/x86_64-linux/3.0.0/cairo-1.17.8/cairo.so: undefined symbol: cairo_tee_surface_index - /usr/lib/ruby/gems/3.0.0/extensions/x86_64-linux/3.0.0/cairo-1.17.8/cairo.so
The ruby-gtk3 library (or one of its dependencies) could not be found. Is it correctly installed?
[nick@nick-pc-3 ~]$
I seem to be going round in circles…
No, not going round in circles: the command line application now works fine. I’ve just successfully ripped a cd. So I can continue using it that way, though I prefer using it in its GUI form.
the PKGBUILD for that software was last updated more than 1.5 years ago
that might be one reason for why, for instance, the ruby-gtk3 dependency might no longer work
just speculation - not knowledge
perhaps you are better off using another ripper
I used Asunder …
but you seem to have special requirements re the accuracy and the here featured program achieving this by multiple rips
and comparing them …
how it decides which version is best? I didn’t look into it.
but the underlying software, doing the actual work, is still cdparanoia for both (maybe almost all) of those programs, I guess
What is the output of
pacman -Qkk ruby-cairo
[nick@nick-pc-3 ~]$ pacman -Qkk ruby-cairo
ruby-cairo: 979 total files, 0 altered files
[nick@nick-pc-3 ~]
Yes, I have Asunder and use it when neither of the others can get a rip. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and partial audiophile, so when I read about Exact Audio Copy (https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) it set me off on a hunt for Linux apps using the same approach…