Apt-get reports No Installable candidate

WD MyCloud Single Bay
Firmware Ver 4+

Just sharing my “doah” moment as an FYI to other users trying to install something extra on their Ver 4+ WDMC.

I had been messing with apt-get to install one of the smallest utilities possible less. Once you’re used to using less, more just doesn’t make it.

I was getting the error message as below, ‘No installation Candidates’.

WDMyCloud:# sudo apt-get install less
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package less is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'less' has no installation candidate

Googled around and found that you may be helped if you run

 sudo apt-get update

And then retry your apt-get install ... cmd.

It worked for me.

I’ve also looked at installing other tools, but am put off by messages like

 ....
 The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gcc-4.7-base
 The following NEW packages will be installed:
 gcc-4.9-base libblas-common libblas3 libgcrypt20 libgfortran3 liblinear1 liblua5.2-0 
       libxslt1.1 ndiff nmap python-lxml

So, I’ve refrained from installing some other debugging tools that may/or may not be of help.

ALSO I would advice inexperienced users to NOT accept such a condition for installing a new tool. If you really need a special tool/package, post a question here with the output of the apt-get install myPackage command along with a brief description of what you are trying to do. There may be a combination of tools already on the MyCloud that can help you accomplish your task.

I hope this helps someone else install a package they can’t live without.

Using apt-get to install or update packages on the MyCloud is a good way to brick your device.

The MyCloud firmware is built using a non-standard 64k page size, so installing from standard debian repositories (built with a standard 4k page size) can cause trouble. Plenty of examples to be found on the forum. And why there are threads pointing to custom build repositories specially built for the MyCloud.