Duplicate OS entries

[lurch]

Now that the versions of the downloads on http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads are newer than those included in the "full NOOBS", it shows up a previously-undetected bug in NOOBS: there are multiple copies of OSes shown in the OS-selection list!
At the time of writing, if I boot up a freshly-written SD card containing the "full NOOBS" download, in a Pi with an ethernet connection, then each of these OSes appear in the list twice:

• Raspbian [RECOMMENDED]
• Raspbian - Boot to Scratch
• OpenELEC

I'm guessing that this is because the versions of OpenELEC and Raspbian available in the "online install mode" are now newer than the versions already present on the SD card in "offline install mode" but it isn't removing the older "offline" versions of the OSes from the selection list.

[lurch]

...so, I've just installed both copies of "Raspbian [RECOMMENDED]" and it all seemed to work fine, and in the OS-boot-selection menu I have two identical-looking copies of Raspbian to choose from ;-)
However if I power-off and power-on and then press SHIFT to get into the Recovery GUI (again with an ethernet cable connected) I now get two copies of "Raspbian - Boot to Scratch" and "OpenELEC" (one copy of each shows an "SD" icon and the other shows an "Network" icon), and I now have an unticked "Raspbian [RECOMMENDED]" entry which shows the Network icon, a ticked "Raspbian [INSTALLED]" entry which shows the SD icon, and a ticked "Raspbian [INSTALLED]" entry which shows the Network icon.
Definitely something not working right somewhere! I guess we'll be seeing a "NOOBS v1.3.1" much sooner than planned?

[lurch]

Just done a bit more investigation...
I initially couldn't find what the problem was, because os/Raspbian/os.json on my SD card and http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads and http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/os.json all agreed that the Raspbian release_date is 2013-09-25. Hmmm.
So I did a bit more digging and found that http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/os_list.json is for some reason claiming that the release_date of Raspbian is 2013-09-10 ! (did somebody copy an old file into the wrong place?!)
So in this case it obviously shouldn't be displaying any network-install option for Raspbian because the network-version is appearing as older than the version we already have on the SD-card.

Did some more digging, and found that the code in https://github.com/raspberrypi/noobs/blob/master/recovery/mainwindow.cpp#L974 is simply doing an exact-string-comparison on the release_date strings, i.e. whenever the release_date in http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/os_list.json is different (regardless of whether it's newer or older) than the release_date in the corresponding os.json file on the SD card, you'll always get two entries displayed for that OS in the Recovery GUI.

When the release_date strings for Raspbian and OpenELEC are corrected to their correct current values in http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/os_list.json then this bug will temporarily disappear again, but it'll reappear when any of the OSes on http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads get updated to be newer than the versions included in the "full NOOBS" download.

[Rob-Bishop]

http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/os_list.json has been updated and is syncing now.

Could you confirm that after this sync only the latest version of each OS is displayed as expected (i.e. the local copy is shown in preference)?

This isn't a bug as os_list.json will only have the same or later versions of the OSes - this only occurred this time as there was an error with the file being updated.

[lurch]

Yup, now that http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/os_list.json has been corrected, the only "online install" option displayed in the list is the Data Partition. Thanks.

However can you please re-read my bug report and explain to me how there won't be two copies of Raspbian displayed in the recovery-GUI when the version on the SD-card is 2013-09-25 but the version in os_list.json is e.g. 2013-11-06 ?
In fact I just did a test and edited the os/Raspbian/os.json file on my SD card to give it a fake release_date of 2013-08-25 (to make the version 'online' newer than the 'offline' version), and upon booting up the card with the ethernet cable connected, the OS-install-list again shows two copies of "Raspbian [RECOMMENDED]" and "Raspbian - Boot to Scratch" :-(

[maxnet]

People with slow Internet connectivity may opt to restore an old version from SD card, above waiting a couple hours for the download of a newer version to complete.
May be helpful to include version information in the title though.

[lurch]

Okay. Should I close this bug and open another one asking for the version information to be squeezed into the GUI? (somehow!)

Edit: And I wonder if the [RECOMMENDED] label should only be displayed against the newer (online) version of the OS ?

[Rob-Bishop]

This wasn't how I was expecting this to work. I had intended for only the latest version to ever be shown (and for the local copy to be shown if both versions are identical).

If that's not what occurs then we will want to change this for the next release.

[lurch]

This wasn't how I was expecting this to work. I had intended for only the latest version to ever be shown (and for the local copy to be shown if both versions are identical).

Yeah, that's what I was expecting too, hence this bug report ;-)

If that's not what occurs then we will want to change this for the next release.

Yeah, see my earlier comment - you can "fake it" by setting the release_date in one of the os.json files on the SD card to be earlier than it actually is (i.e. simulating what happens when the online version of the OS is newer than the on-SD version).

[lurch]

I see you've managed to neatly side-step this issue in NOOBS v1.3.1 by updating NOOBS at the same time as updating RaspBMC ;-)

But as expected it means that if booting a "full" NOOBS v1.3 on a Pi with an ethernet cable attached, you now get duplicate "RaspBMC" entries in the OS-install menu, with nothing to differentiate them other than one having a SD-card icon and one having a network icon.

And talking of RaspBMC I guess you need to update the release_notes.txt ?

[lurch]

Looks like this hasn't quite been fixed properly...
/os/Pidora/os.json in 'full' NOOBS1.3.2 says the release_date for Pidora is 2013-08-09 but http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/os_list.json say the release_date is 2013-09-27
(http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/pidora/os.json also gives a release_date of 2013-08-09 - I told @Rob-Bishop about this inconsistency last week but he's either forgotten about it, or decided it wasn't important enough to fix - to clarify, I believe it's os_list.json that is wrong because Rob rolled the non-working 2013-09-27 release of Pidora back to the known-working 2013-08-09 version)

This means that in the vanilla NOOBS 1.3.2 you get duplicate Pidora entries, but (after building the latest code) #129 does fix this problem (it only shows the network-installable Pidora). However in the post-#129 version of NOOBS when you then press shift to get into the recovery GUI after having installed Pidora, you then get duplicate Pidora entries again! (both with network icons, only one of which says [INSTALLED])

In case this bug was caused by the release_dates in http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/pidora/os.json and http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/os_list.json being out of sync with other, I also ran a different test in my latest-build NOOBS. I edited /os/OpenELEC/os.json on my SD card to give it a fake release date of 2013-08-14 i.e. the version on the SD card is apparently older than the version online, but this time both online JSON files agree on the release_date! Again on the first boot NOOBS detects that the online version of OpenELEC is newer than the SD-card version, so only shows a single OpenELEC entry with a network icon next to it. And after installing OpenELEC and rebooting back into the recovery GUI by pressing shift at power-on, there are now two OpenELEC entries: one with a card icon, and one with a network icon which says [INSTALLED].

So I'm re-opening this bug.