Protonvpn-cli-ng stopped working

Hello,

Running Manjaro i3 and recently updated. I had a community client running for protonvpn (protonvpn-cli-ng), which now isn’t working. I was using the command line version and now get this when I run it:

 

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/protonvpn", line 33, in <module>
    sys.exit(load_entry_point('protonvpn-cli==2.2.11', 'console_scripts', 'protonvpn')())
  File "/usr/bin/protonvpn", line 22, in importlib_load_entry_point
    for entry_point in distribution(dist_name).entry_points
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/importlib/metadata/__init__.py", line 919, in distribution
    return Distribution.from_name(distribution_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/importlib/metadata/__init__.py", line 518, in from_name
    raise PackageNotFoundError(name)
importlib.metadata.PackageNotFoundError: No package metadata was found for protonvpn-cli

Looking at this, I’m struggling to know what to do next.

Many thanks for any advise!

It’s a AUR package. Fully update your system, if you have not already and rebuild that software against python 3.10:

sudo pacman-mirrors --fasttrack 5 && sudo pacman -Syyu  
pamac build protonvpn-cli-ng

From the stable update announcement of 1/2/2022:

You may need to rebuild any AUR packages that install files to site-packages …

1 Like

Proton vpn client is built using python.

Manjaro stable moved to python 3.10 in the newyear weekend - so if you haven’t used protonvpn since you will have to rebuild your AUR python packages.

This is not something Manjaro can do for you.

It’s better to uninstall and install again.

  1. yay -Rs protonvpn (to remove everything related to protonvpn)
  2. pacman -Qm | grep protonvpn (to check anything left remaining, if there is whatever, go delete it.)
  3. python -m pip list | grep proton (to check if you have something inside your pip re: proton, if so, run sudo pip3 uninstall ____)
  4. sudo rm -R ~/.cache/protonvpn (to clear the cache)
  5. sudo rm -rf ~/.config/protonvpn (to clear old settings)
  6. Reboot system
  7. pamac build protonvpn (to install the protonvpn, both GUI and CLI)

Just did all that and it still doesn’t launch

In that case, I recommend that you go to github and contact the developers as they might need to fix it upstream.

I think I’m going back to Kubuntu. This is a reoccurring problem with Manjaro which I like, but it wastes too much time. It’s too bad. It just one program that’s not even part of Manjaro but it is a paid service and it’s very frustrating, particularly if you are not nimble with the terminal.

If you build the meta package protonvpn from aur you will get the official files.

How do you do that? I just purged and rebuilt 3’xs now and it still doesn’t launch It has worked quite well previously for long periods of time. In fact was working just yesterday. I’ve probably been using Manjaro for less than a year.

pamac build protonvpn

Still doesn’t launch. I’ve done this several times this morning. I’m downloading MX-Linux as the final solution. I really did like Manjaro, but there are stability issues related to updates. Maybe it just changes too much too often.

   ~  pamac build protonvpn  :heavy_check_mark:
Preparing…
Cloning protonvpn build files…
Generating protonvpn information…
Checking protonvpn dependencies…
Warning: protonvpn-1.0.0-2 is up to date – reinstalling
Resolving dependencies…
Checking inter-conflicts…

To build (1):
protonvpn 1.0.0-2 AUR

Edit build files : [e]
Apply transaction ? [e/y/N] y

Building protonvpn…
==> Making package: protonvpn 1.0.0-2 (Fri 11 Feb 2022 06:22:26 AM MST)
==> Checking runtime dependencies…
==> Checking buildtime dependencies…
==> Retrieving sources…
==> Removing existing $srcdir/ directory…
==> Extracting sources…
==> Entering fakeroot environment…
==> Tidying install…
→ Removing libtool files…
→ Purging unwanted files…
→ Removing static library files…
→ Stripping unneeded symbols from binaries and libraries…
→ Compressing man and info pages…
==> Checking for packaging issues…
==> Creating package “protonvpn”…
→ Generating .PKGINFO file…

Arch based systems - and therefore also Manjaro - are not officially supported by ProtonVPN.

There is two ways to connect to protonvpn - and they are different in configuration and setup - and they cannot both be installed.

You should prefer the official files (protonvpn-gui and protonvpn-cli) which can be build from AUR. The META protonvpn builds both.

The old package protonvpn-cli-ng should be removed from your system as the executable name conflicts with the official files.

The official files depends on Network Manager - this is Manjaro default - just mention in case you are using something different.

Manjaro uses openresolv package for resolver. If you expereince your resolv.conf is not reset correctly you may be better of using systemd-resolved. This requires some additional setup.

see this protonvpn-cli issue #45; it might be that you’re missing some GUI related packages, even you might want to run it directly from console.