Fetch errors after mintupdate-debian upgrade

[mikecz]

I'm on LMDE XFCE, and I just loaded an update to mintupdate-debian (v 1.0.6 according to Synaptic). During the apply step, I got a dialog that asked me to point to a repository, with 3 choices (in France, USA and Germany). I chose the USA, but after that whenever I ran Update Manager I got a fetch error (too long to include here).

I restored the old /etc/apt/sources.list file and deleted the one that was added, but I did compare them and they didn't look any different.

I have been patiently waiting for UP5 to hit the Latest repository, but I want to make sure that I'm pointing to the correct set of repositories so I get the update properly, and it is amazingly unclear on what the 'Latest' repository file should be from what I've seen.

This is my /etc/apt/sources.list file, just so its clear:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/‭ ‬debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security/‭ ‬testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/multimedia testing main non-free

Any help would be appreciated: I like LMDE, but it updates so infrequently that I forget the finer points when something comes down and breaks.

MikeC

[zerozero]

you don't have by any change the deleted faulty source.list to compare? that, yes would be very useful

[mikecz]

you don't have by any change the deleted faulty source.list to compare? that, yes would be very useful

No, alas, though I did a cursory side-by-side visual comparison and I didn't see any differences (but for some reason I always have trouble parsing the sources.list files in my head).

Unfortunately, I had rm'ed the file before I remembered about diff....

Sorry,

MikeC

[zerozero]

MikeC,
are you willing to perform an experiment for us?
now that you have the original sources.list in place can you please run in terminal

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mint-choose-debian-mirror

this will rerun mint-debian-mirrors and will ask you to pick the best server, after that finishes give us the output of

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inxi -r

much appreciated

[mikecz]

MikeC,
are you willing to perform an experiment for us?
now that you have the original sources.list in place can you please run in terminal

Code: Select all

mint-choose-debian-mirror

this will rerun mint-debian-mirrors and will ask you to pick the best server, after that finishes give us the output of

Code: Select all

inxi -r

much appreciated

Output of mint-choose-debian-mirror:

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Current server: http://debian.linuxmint.com/ (latest)

Server http://debian.linuxmint.com - 14Kbps
Server http://mirror.rts-informatique.fr/linuxmint/debian - 52Kbps
Server http://debian.lth.se/lmde - 38Kbps
Best server: http://mirror.rts-informatique.fr/linuxmint/debian
Selected server: http://debian.linuxmint.com
Saving old /etc/apt/sources.list in /etc/apt/sources.list.bk
Updating /etc/apt/sources.list


When I ran this command, each line came up in turn, and it eventually came up with a text screen that gave me a choice of servers that looked an awful lot like what came up (in graphical/X form) when I first applied the mintupdate-debian update.

And now I get the same fetch error again, and here is the capturable text in the box:

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W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.comlatest/dists/testing/InRelease 

W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.comlatest/security/dists/testing/updates/InRelease 

W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.comlatest/multimedia/dists/testing/InRelease 

W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.comlatest/dists/testing/Release.gpg  Could not resolve 'debian.linuxmint.comlatest'

W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.comlatest/security/dists/testing/updates/Release.gpg  Could not resolve 'debian.linuxmint.comlatest'

W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.comlatest/multimedia/dists/testing/Release.gpg  Could not resolve 'debian.linuxmint.comlatest'

W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

Output of inxi -r:

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 Repos:     Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list
           deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
           deb http://debian.linuxmint.comlatest testing main contrib non-free
           deb http://debian.linuxmint.comlatest/security/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
           deb http://debian.linuxmint.comlatest/multimedia testing main non-free


Though it took doing a diff between the old & new files for me to see it, it looks like the script-generated sources.list file has a bug in it that omits a / in the URLs in the last 3 lines. when I corrected them, Mintupdate-debian worked fine.

I told you I had a blind spot where sources.list was....

And please spell my last name correctly on the bug fix list.....

MikeC

[zerozero]

mikecz,
as i kinda suspected same bug as here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=185&t=112047&p=628421#p628381
i'm going to link this topic in that one to give it more visibility.

[mikecz]

mikecz,
as i kinda suspected same bug as here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=185&t=112047&p=628421#p628381
i'm going to link this topic in that one to give it more visibility.

Glad to to my tiny little part.

Now, if only UP5 would go live on Latest, this will be a good week..

MikeC

[m4daredsun]

mikecz,
as i kinda suspected same bug as here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=185&t=112047&p=628421#p628381
i'm going to link this topic in that one to give it more visibility.

So I guess we should wait before updating mintupdate.
Is this correct?

[squeezy]

So I guess we should wait before updating mintupdate.
Is this correct?

Just make a backup copy of your sources.list file then do the update. If you have a problem afterwards you simply replace sources.list with your good backup copy. That way you can report on success or failure.

I updated mintupdate-debian yesterday and it worked just fine. Probability is that yours will too, but if you get a failure it's easy to fix and you supply another data point towards resolution of the bug.

It's this easy to do...

Backup your current working sources file.

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sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.good

Do the update and test (update method left to your choice). If it works fine, you're done.
If you get failures as noted above, do this (to preserve the evidence ).

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sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.bad

Restore the good file.

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sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list.good /etc/apt/sources.list

Bonus is now you have a copy of your working sources.list file in case of future problems

[clem]

Wow... that one was tricky

First of all, thanks for your feedback. Basically we're looking at two bugs here... special characters within the source file prevented the script from parsing it well... and in some cases the current server would contain a / and the selected one wouldn't.. leading to a missing / in the resulting sources.list.

Both bugs were fixed in mint-debian-mirrors 2012.09.18.

[mikecz]

Wow, a reply from clem himself! I feel honoured.

So, UP5 finally went live, and something strange happened during the applying (aside from it taking 4+ hours to download everything): the mint-choose-debian-mirror script only showed 2 mirrors, and since I prefer the main one (debian.linuxmint.com), I hit 'cancel', and that bombed out the setup script for Mint-Update. I don't think it stopped anything being installed, however.

I had to re-install the mint-choose-debian-mirror package to get it to work properly after the update finished, but it still doesn't list the main mirror as a choice, only the other two.

That, and there is no description of UP5 in "Update Pack Info", so I'd like to know how to refresh that.

MikeC