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Handle repository label changes #622
Description
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
PPAs can change their 'Label' values and mintupdate currently can't do anything about it but report it as a synaptic error and you can no longer use that repository for updates.
The issue reported by the update manager:
Repository 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/kisak/kisak-mesa/ubuntu bionic InRelease' changed its 'Label' value from 'kisak-mesa' to 'kisak-mesa fresh'
While using apt in the terminal, things are a bit different in the sense that you're presented with the option to accept the change and continue to use that source:
E: Repository 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/kisak/kisak-mesa/ubuntu bionic InRelease' changed its 'Label' value from 'kisak-mesa' to 'kisak-mesa fresh'
N: This must be accepted explicitly before updates for this repository can be applied. See apt-secure(8) manpage for details.
Do you want to accept these changes and continue updating from this repository? [y/N]
Describe the solution you'd like
It would be nice if the update manager would ask the same, so the users can fix it without having to use the terminal - because this doesn't go away by itself.
Describe alternatives you've considered
Alternatively, you could silently disable that PPA and notify the user that they have to accept the changes by using the terminal.
Activity
codingthat commentedon Jun 3, 2020
Note to those still in the habit of typing
apt-getinstead ofapt, the former also doesn't offer to fix it for you.kneekoo commentedon Jul 17, 2020
Another one:
kneekoo commentedon Feb 27, 2025
This is still an issue with Linux Mint 22.1 and mintUpdate 7.0.6, we're stil forced to do
apt updatein the terminal to accept the label change, or mintUpdate cannot perform updates from the affected repositories.kneekoo commentedon Apr 9, 2026
This is still an issue in Mint 22.3 with mintUpdate 7.1.4. Please look into this.
FrivolousSquid commentedon Apr 10, 2026
This also hit me today. I gave a basic attempt at trying to debug it (which is an adventure, as I'm not very familiar with debugging python). In my case, the full dialog box's text is:
What I've managed to find so far:
There appears to be code to catch the text of this error message via string matching on "changed its" in mintUpdate.py at line 2292, which doesn't seem to ever get executed:
if "apt.cache.FetchFailedException" in error and " changed its " in error:error += "\n\n%s" % _("Run 'apt update' in a terminal window to address this")The actual text of the error dialog box appears to be coming from aptkit, rather than mintUpdate, with error ERROR_REPO_DOWNLOAD_FAILED
I'm really not sure where to take it from here, but I hope that helps point someone in the right direction.