Installing QGIS 3.8 Zanzibar in Ubuntu 18.04

4 min readAug 10, 2019

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First, let’s go over some introduction. QGIS is an application create, edit, visualize, analyze and publish geospatial information on Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD. Geospatial data can be shapes, tiles etc.

I discovered QGIS when I was working with Postgis to create a geospatial database. I had to validate the data and draw some shapes over one other from db itself and QGis seamlessly integrates with PostGIS, but more on that later.

Installing QGIS on ubuntu required a lot of hit and trials, a very hardcore googling and some luck.

Here’s the page: https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/alldownloads.html#debian-ubuntu
for official instruction on installing it in ubuntu. It is pretty straightforward but it didn’t work for me . If these instructions work for you, then great you don’t need to read any further. The instructions will be for3.8 version and I am not sure whether it will work for other versions. But some fixes are very generic to every installation process.

Standard Installation Process

Add the package source in the apt source list (Take special note on this step)
echo "deb https://qgis.org/ubuntugis bionic main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the GPG key (updating as per the new key)wget -O — https://qgis.org/downloads/qgis-2019.gpg.key | gpg — import
Verify the key (Optional)
gpg — fingerprint 51F523511C7028C3
Add the key to apt
gpg — export — armor 51F523511C7028C3 | sudo apt-key add -
Install the package
sudo apt update && sudo apt-get install qgis python3-qgis qgis-plugin-grass

If the last step probably doesn’t work for you, then you can look at the following possible solutions.

Change Source and find what works for you

Change the source in /etc/apt/sources.list . From the qgis installation page switch between the 3 listed sources but do only one at a time

Open etc/apt/sources.list in your text editor (nano,vim, sublime)
- Scroll down to the last line
- Switch between the following sources
- Choose only one source at a time

deb https://qgis.org/debian bionic main
deb https://qgis.org/ubuntu bionic main
deb https://qgis.org/ubuntugis bionic main

After each step do
sudo apt update && sudo apt-get install qgis python3-qgis qgis-plugin-grass
If this works for you, great! If not try to find a source with minimum broken packages.

Install external libraries on your own

If it’s listing more than 3 files then I wouldn’t recommend them installing manually as that will bloat your system
If it’s python3-qgis-common, qgis-common then add them to the previous install command
Some of the packages exist in gdal2 , install it by using
sudo apt install gdal-bin If this doesn’t change anything then remove this package using
sudo apt purge gdal-bin
Follow the above process for libgdal-dev

One Specific problem with gdal-abi-x-x

This is a very specific problem in with QGis installation. The above mentioned virtual package provided by libgdal20

To make qgis accept it as a dependency we will install the virtual package manually.

Create gdal_abi.txt file and with the follwing text. Make sure you change the version as per your environment

Section: misc
Priority: optional
Standards-Version: 3.9.2

Package: gdal-abi-x-x-x
Version: x.x.x
Depends: libgdal20
Description: virtual package for qgis which needs a gdal-abi-x-x-x

Install equivs , this will be used to create a virtual package
sudo apt install equivs
Make the virtual package
sudo equivs-build gdal_abi.txt
Now you will see the gdal-abi-x-x-x.deb file in your directory. Install it using dpkg sudo dpkg -i gdal-abi-x-x-x.deb
Try installing qgis again

Please comment on any other problem you faced.

In case you want to reverse and do a clean install or remove everything related to QGis altogether here’s a small reference

Remove all packages related to qgis sudo apt purge qgis* python3-qgis*
Remove gdal and libgdal-dev
sudo apt purge gdal-bin libgdal-dev
Remove the key
sudo apt-key del 51F523511C7028C3 gpg --delete-key 51F523511C7028C3

Sources:

P.S. The key will expire on August 18th, 2019 (this month). They should update it in the few days or so, but it doesn’t affect the installation process

Update (22th August 2019) the new key was published on 8th August 2019. I have updated the blog as per the changes.

See you in August 2020 for the same issue 😛

Installing QGIS 3.8 Zanzibar in Ubuntu 18.04

Written by json singh

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