Adding Linux device with Creator fails

[HannoBlackert]

For long time I enjoyed remote programming Linux devices (RaspberryPi) with QtCreator. Recently adding and testing such devices by "Preferences / Devices" fails the final tests. Keys are transferred to the device successfully and when coming to "Test" I get the message

"Connecting to device...
Basic connectivity test failed, device is considered unusable.
Device test failed."

When starting QtCreator from the terminal, I see there more detailed information:

"qtc.utils.deviceshell: Unexpected output while installing device shell script: "mkfifo: der FIFO '/tmp/tmp.XOnICRT6yc' cannot be created"
qtc.remotelinux.device: Failed to start shell for: "pi@heizung" , "Failed to install shell script: Failed to install shell script: : No permission"

Calling the creator as admin yields the same error.
However, executing "ssh pi@heizung" from the terminal works fine.

My environment:
QtCreator 13.01 based on Qt 6.6.3
Laptop with KDE Plasma 6 / Ubuntu 22.04
Using Qt 6.7.1 yields the same error

Help greatly appreciated!
Hanno

[Morix Dev]

Hi guys. The same here. I am not using Raspberry but a custom i.MX6-based device... and the result is the same.

I can create the remote device, deploy the keys on it, opening a remote shell to the device... everything seems fine, but when I click on "Test" then QtCreator replies that "Basic connectivity test failed, device is considered unusable".

Launching QtCreator from command line, I can read some additional info:
qtc.remotelinux.device: Failed to start shell for "root@192.168.1.1", "Failed to install shell script: Command "base64" was not found.\n"

I've already double-checked that base64 utility is installed and working on my PC (actually version 9.4 from GNU coreutils package).

I am using QtCreator 13.0.2 on Kubuntu 24.04 LTS, targeting Qt 5.3.2.

Please give me some advices, since QtCreator is pretty unuseful if I cannot deploy to target device...

Thanks!

[Morix Dev]

UPDATE: I just realized that base64 must be installed on target device, and not on host PC... so I arrange to cross-compile "base64", and also "install" and "rsync" which I then discovered were missing too, deployed them to the target device and now I am able to successfully pass connection tests gracefully and I am able to deploy & run my application on my target device.

But now I have another problem: everything works fine if, in QtCreator's Devices configuration, I select "Default" as the authentication type. If I select "Specific key" and I generate a key pair (deploying the public key to the target device) then connection tests are failed again...

This time the message on console is:

SOFT ASSERT: "state() == QProcess::Running" in /home/qt/work/build/qt-creator/src/libs/utils/process.cpp:1608
qtc.remotelinux.device: Failed to start shell for: "root@192.168.1.1", "Failed to install shell script: Timeout while trying to check for cat.\n"

Any ideas?

[cristian-adam]

You could have a look into Qt Creator logs via Tools > Debug Qt Creator > Show Logs... and hopefully you could find out what's going on.

[Morix Dev]

Great hint!
Doing what you've suggested I was able to understand the steps performed by QtCreator for connecting to the device and I was able to reproduce the issue, which it turned out to be due to the fact that my target device (which is quite "old") only supports SHA-1 as hashing algorithm to be used by SSH, but SHA-1 was deprecated on my desktop machine and so the SSH client on my desktop was not able to negotiate a mutual authentication scheme with the target device.

I fixed the problem re-enabling SHA-1 in my desktop's SSH configuration file, simply by adding the directive:

PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-rsa

at the end of my desktop's /etc/ssh/ssh_config.

Thanks again! TOP!

[HannoBlackert]

Helpful hint by Morix Dev:
The error message in QtCreator indicating missing rights to install shell script is related to the target device!
The script is intended to be installed in folder "/tmp". So I executed "sudo chown pi /tmp" - and the device test succeded!
Since this change of rights is not permanent, I added this "chown" command to /etc/rc.local to be executed at boot end and it worked.
Many thanks !!!

[cristian-adam]

Dont' forget to mark the thread as solved.