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I just updated Ubuntu 20.04 to 20.10, and I'm finding a lot of these geoclue errors in /var/log/syslog...

Nov 25 13:35:05 Satellite-E55 geoclue[105775]: Failed to query location: Forbidden

It appears in /etc/geoclue/geoclue.conf that it's making an inquiry to a Mozilla server with...

 url=https://location.services.mozilla.com/v1/geolocate?key=geoclue

Which returns the following error...

error   
errors  
0   
domain  "usageLimits"
reason  "dailyLimitExceeded"
message "You have exceeded your daily limit."
code    403
message "You have exceeded your daily limit."

And I guess that this is a common error, as everybody uses key=geoclue.

They give instructions in /etc/geoclue/geoclue.conf on how to use a Google server, but it requires its own API Key, and I haven't been able to find out how to get that.

# To use the Google geolocation service instead of mozilla's, simply uncomment
# this url while changing API_KEY to your Google API key and comment out or
# remove the url above.
#
# WARNING: Please make sure that you are complying with the Google's ToS and
#          policies if you uncomment this:

# url=https://www.googleapis.com/geolocation/v1/geolocate?key=YOUR_KEY

Is there a common/easy way to fix this? Why is this a new error in 20.10?

heynnema
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  • Upstream Geoclue Bug report #113 (closed, no action): https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/geoclue/geoclue/-/issues/113# – user535733 Nov 25 '20 at 21:54
  • Upstream Geoclue Bug report #136, announcing deprecation of the default key and requiring downstreams (like Ubuntu) to get their own key: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/geoclue/geoclue/-/issues/136 I suspect we need a Launchpad bug to get the Ubuntu developers involved. – user535733 Nov 25 '20 at 21:57
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    Aha...there it is: [LP: #1826290 geoclue mozilla location api key rate limited](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/geoclue-2.0/+bug/1826290) (High, Triaged) – user535733 Nov 25 '20 at 21:59
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    I've added a comment to the LP bug. Mozilla's throttling seems intended to get downstream distros (not individuals) to get their own API key. You can get your own if you wish, but that's not the intent. – user535733 Nov 25 '20 at 22:05
  • @user535733 Good research! Thanks! I've reviewed some of the posts, and all are over 1 year old... and it appears that nothing has been done... and here we now are with 20.10 and it's broken... and it's spamming syslog. Disappointed that this wasn't discovered during beta/FC. Sigh. – heynnema Nov 25 '20 at 22:17
  • @user535733 As of right now, it looks like Mozilla has fixed their problem. It may come back. Had a similar problem with ddclient. Also working now. – heynnema Nov 26 '20 at 01:08
  • @user535733 It looks like both geoclue and ddclient are both failing again, for the same reason... rate limits (different sites). – heynnema Nov 27 '20 at 14:51

0 Answers0