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When trying to enable Livepatch with the "Software & Updates" GUI on a derivative of Ubuntu Budgie 18.04, I get the following error message:

 Sorry, there's a problem in setting up Canonical Livepatch

I tried to do it manually by using the steps on https://auth.livepatch.canonical.com/ and running the commands, but I get the following:

2018/12/13 11:11:21 error executing enable: This machine ID is already enabled with 
a different key or is non-unique. 
Either "sudo canonical-livepatch disable" on the other machine, or regenerate 
a unique /etc/machine-id on this machine with "sudo rm /etc/machine-id /var/lib/dbus/machine-id && sudo systemd-machine-id-setup"
 : {"error": "Conflicting machine-id"}

I am sure I have never set Livepatch up on this laptop. What could the issue be here?

What could be the risks of generating a new machine ID like suggested in the error message? i.e. what other elements of my system could be using the current machine ID?

Zanna
  • 70,465
stragu
  • 1,958

1 Answers1

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I solved following this one ( always do bakup of files you edit :D ): https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/402999/it-is-ok-to-change-etc-machine-id

basically I've done a bakup of /etc/machine-id and /var/lib/dbus/machine-id files

then I removed the content from /etc/machine-id file (using sudo if needed) and I reinitialized the machide ID. Here are the commands

cp /etc/machine-id /etc/machine-id.original
cp /var/lib/dbus/machine-id /var/lib/dbus/machine-id.original
nano /etc/machine-id (to remove the existing value)
systemd-machine-id-setup
> Initializing machine ID from D-Bus machine ID.
cat /etc/machine-id
Ralkeon
  • 56
  • Thanks! I ended up doing the copying like you recommend, just to be safe, and used the Canonical-recommened command (in my question) to remove both files and initialise the ID again. I directly restarted my computer and could then set LivePatch up without any problem. I haven't noticed any issue so far :) – stragu Jan 20 '19 at 00:10