Problem in updating

[sdibaja]

well i tried posting what helped me and everyone wasnt paying attention,so,why post "what can i do..." if no one follows advice?

podagee: I did read your post, tried what you suggested, and it failed. I posted the results of that failure. maybe you don't read the responses...

[karlchen]

Hello, sdibaja.

Forget about using a different commandline tool in order to perform the update. It does not make a difference. The source of trouble has been the linuxmint repository server all the time and it still is.
Trying to connect packages.linuxmint.com timed out on 18th December for me. It did not time out but failed to get the inRelease file thus causing a GPG error on 19th December mot of the day.
I have not changed anything on my system, in particularly nothing affecting network connectivity or updating software. So the source of the problem is not on my machine. Hence I can do nothing to solve or work around the Linux Mint repository problems whatever they are.

Conclusion:
Those of us for whom updating works fine again are lucky. The rest of us can only hope that someone will get to the bottom of the problem and solve it.
Until then using Synaptic, mintUpdater, apt-get or aptitude does not make the slightest difference.
Currently I am downloading a 13.5 MB software package. Downloading is slow as good old snail mail in the 19th century. 1.6 kB/sec. I am not sure I will wait for more than an hour.

I'll try to be patient ...
Cheers,
Karl

[everfree]

I reload Synaptic again :

Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/maya/Release.gpg Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... 4/Packages Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... 4/Packages Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... 4/Packages Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... 6/Packages Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... 6/Packages Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... 6/Packages Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... tion-en_US Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... slation-en Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... tion-en_US Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... slation-en Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... tion-en_US Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Failed to fetch http://packages.linuxmint.com/dists/may ... slation-en Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:
Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

[podagee]

well i experienced what everybody was and i did what i said and it worked fine.sorry i probably misread.its up and working though

[everfree]

Now it all updated ... as mysteriously as it came .. lol

[karlchen]

Hi, folks.

Just a brief update on the well-known issue from Germany - location might matter or maybe it does not: This morning I was able to update from the Mint repository (packages.linuxmint.com) at a really slow speed. But the update succeeded.
This evening, things have reverted from bad to worse. I do not even manage to receive the complete update of the software packages list, let alone a real software package.
So whatever the trouble is it seems to refuse successfully to go away.

Karl

[bimsebasse]

Just change download server - I had the same issue, changed server (from Main Server to a Danish one), and everything downloaded normally.

[soldier1st]

If it can't authenticate a package i wouldn't install/update it. I'm also getting the same server issue but on Mate 13 x86.

[karlchen]

Good morning, bimsebasse.

Just change download server - I had the same issue, changed server (from Main Server to a Danish one), and everything downloaded normally.

Thanks for this useful piece of advice. I'll remember it in case the problem re-appears. This morning the linespeed to packages.linuxmint.com seems to be normal.

<added after midnight>

Tonight, more users online I guess, the speed issue was back. So I followed your advice, bimsebasse, and selected a German mirror server explicitly. Et voilà, the updating the software list is back to normal speed.

</added>

Have a nice weekend.
Karl

[mister_lister]

I started a bug report on this on https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint a few days ago, the error report number is 1091895 please feel free to read the report and add any pertinent comments.

[karlchen]

mister_lister,

repeating an incorrect hypothesis - mintupdate 4.4.7 being responsible for the problem which this thread is about - over and over again does not turn into a correct hypothesis.

Karl

[mister_lister]

mister_lister,

repeating an incorrect hypothesis - mintupdate 4.4.7 being responsible for the problem which this thread is about - over and over again does not turn into a correct hypothesis.

Karl

I know your type, you like to argue. Please check the bug report thread. This has happened on 2 different machines over the course of 2 days Right after a mintupdate 4.4.7 update. I EXPLICITLY WROTE IN THE BUG REPORT THAT IT IS PROBABLY A SERVER ISSUE AFTER I DID TESTING.

The EXPLICIT INTERM SOLVE for problem is the the following:

Goto the menu -> software sources -> download from -> other and then select a different mirror address that is close to your geographic area. If you do not see software sources listed off the root of the menu or in the Administration or System Menu Groups, use the application search box to find it by name. Software Sources is a GUI application and simple to use.

Any one who has any level of user support exprience and is not just an arguing troll, should know to explicitly declare solves in ways that are easy for the most inexperienced computer user to understand. When on a forum or in chat, communication must be direct and concise with always an inexperienced user in mind. Simply repetively insulting a person does not solve ANY ISSUE.

ADMIN please mark this thread as solved.

[xenopeek]

This indeed has nothing to do with mintUpdate 4.4.7. The problem last week where you couldn't fetch updates from the Linux Mint repository (error "Unable to connect to packages.linuxmint.com:http:") was resolved by work done on the server on the 18th and 19th.

Impact on download speeds from the 19th was caused by the release of LMDE Update Pack 6 on that day (http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2254) and the subsequent downloading of that huge donwload by LMDE users.

As stated a few times in this topic, a good workaround for slower download speeds is switching to a mirror repository. That's why we have mirrors To distribute load across servers and geographic locations.

Thanks all for suggestions shared for workarounds! Anybody still having problems updating (as in, getting the above error), please open a new topic.