Update and synaptic look to work but do nothing.

[Ricbritain]

I found out today that Mint 9 is out and thought I would look to see if I could upgrade. I've done it before and used synaptic to install things too, but haven't actually used the machine for a while but the wife has. Anyway, when I tried update it took a long time to make any progress and when I checked it had a list of failures. I then tried to install something with the synaptic and I got the same. It used to work fine but I have no idea what's happened.

Any ideas?

[vincent]

It would be helpful if you could post the error messages you saw. Broken packages? Messed-up repos? Dependency troubles?

[Ricbritain]

When I start the Update manager I see only the update screen in grey without anything in the main area of the update screen. After several minutes I got the following:

Could not download all repository indexes

The repository may no longer be available or could not be contacted because of network problems. If available an older version of the failed index will be used. Otherwise the repository will be ignored. Check your network connection and ensure the repository address in the preferences is correct.

[dawgdoc]

A number of things could be causing this:

1) Problems with your internet connection - not likely since you did not mention any other connection related issues.

2) Problems with the repository servers -

The repository may no longer be available or could not be contacted because of network problems.

- possible, frequently these will be resolved from that end given a little time, such happened with the getdeb repositories a short time back.

3) A problem with your sources list. Sometimes when an application is installed from a .deb file the sources will reflect isadora when they should reflect lucid. Check /etc/apt/sources.list any line that refers to ubuntu should include lucid, not isadora. If the line refers to linuxmint, it should include isadora, not lucid. Installation of other applications may result in similar issues. Installing Dropbox from a deb file causes this type of problem. If you are on an older version of Mint change lucid to karmic or jaunty then isadora to helena or gloria, etc.

4) Problems with your installations of both synaptic and mint-upgrade - not likely. You could always reinstall both of these from the command line, but this would not be my first action.

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get --reinstall synaptic
sudo apt-get --reinstall mint-upgrade

(check the package names before doing this.

Also, it would not hurt to check the apt-get man page.

Code: Select all

man apt-get

As has been said by vincent, it would help if you could post the specific repository listings which were not working.