Hi,
I installed ProtonVPN a year or more ago, and it has never worked. The package installed is old, protonvpn 1.0.0-2. When trying to start it, it crashes instantly. Off and on I’ve tried updating or removing it with both the gui and the cli for over a year, but both ways give error messages. I don’t recall everything I’ve tried to get it working. I’ve tried updating it. I’ve tried removing it to do a fresh installation. Here are a couple of my recent attempts.
Via the cli, I get this error:
“sudo pacman -U protonvpn.desktop
loading packages…
error: could not open file protonvpn.desktop: Unrecognized archive format
error: ‘protonvpn.desktop’: cannot open package file”
Via the gui, this pops up:
"conflicting files:
- proton-vpn-gtk-app: /usr/share/applications/protonvpn.desktop already exists in filesystem (owned by protonvpn-gui)"
I should have started by admitting that even after roughly 25 years of using Linux, I’m bad at troubleshooting technical issues. Any help solving this will be much appreciated.
Thanks
sudo pacman -Rns protonvpn-gui
sudo pacman -Syu proton-vpn-gtk-app
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A delayed reply. I seem to have forgotten/misplaced my root password. I know it’s not smart to do, but I thought root and user passwords were the same. I was smart enough to change it, but dumb enough to lose it.
I’m betting your prompts would work if I could execute them. For now, I’m not going to mess with it. Thanks for help.
sudo pacman -Rns protonvpn-gui
sudo pacman -Syu proton-vpn-gtk-app
When sudo prompts for a password, it wants the user password, not the root password.
Of course, if you have forgotten both your own password and the root password then there will be trouble ahead.
What am I missing? Just like most other Linux distributions, just chroot in and change either. (Assuming no encryption/LUKS.)
That is not a problem - one will have to know the passphrase to open the encrypted container, of course.
Without that, the game is over.
… as it should be 
He doesn’t care - is what I heard him say.
Unless he asks, I won’t give advice.
It is also perhaps not necessary because the users password gets him sudo access, regardless of a root password.
Phemisters,
Sorry, I wasn’t clear, I need the root password, because the drive is encrypted.
I believe I screwed myself.
To everyone who replied, thanks, I do apreciate it.
But the root and user passwords don’t have anything to do with the password needed to decrypt your drive …
They can all be different.
The process to change the encryption password is totally different from that of changing a system users password - different commands …
When you truly lost any memory of the decryption password then yes, you are screwed.
When you just lost a users password (root is also just a user …) - that can be rectified.
BTW:
If we are talking about LUKS encryption
there are multiple keyslots
which means you can set multiple passphrases and keys,
all of which can be used to open the encrypted container.
Typically one would set a new password into a second, third … keyslot,
test it,
and only then actively remove/clear the previous keyslot.
If it is not cleared, both will stay present and be able to unlock the device.
Nachlesee,
Yes, you are right. Apologies for losing my mind. I don’t know how I came to think I needed to decrypt the drive to sort things out. Or how I managed to mess up Phemisters’ code:
I ran that code again, and, of course, it worked.
As for the encrypted drive, efore a long distance move, I gave a friend two computers I had, along with four drives I’d wiped. I think the encryption key for this drive got wiped at thaat time. Perhaps I’ll learn to get better organized, but I doubt it.
Nachlesee, the drive isn’t LUKS encrypted, but thanks for the detailed advice.
And thanks to everyone that helped.
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