'Some index files failed to download' while updating
Solution 1
Just open synaptic manager, install/reinstall ubuntu-extras-keyring
and then (in terminal) type sudo apt-get update
.
cheers u'd get out from this error.
Solution 2
As vasa1 pointed out, the server your system is configured to use to download packages for installation is currently down.
What to do when your download mirror is down...
The solution to this problem is to use change it to a different mirror (i.e., a different server).
Option 1: Using Graphical Configuration Utilities
Open Software Sources
Press Alt+F2, type gksu software-properties-gtk
, and enter your password. (Alternatively, select Settings... at the lower left corner of the Update Manager, or go to Settings > Repositories in Synaptic).
- That's for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, which you are running. In later releases, you can just run
software-properties-gtk
and when you make changes, PolicyKit will authenticate you. - Most people using newer releases have the Software Center and not Synaptic. In the Software Center, you would go to Edit > Software Sources....
- The Update Manager is unchanged, but in new releases is called the Software Updater.
Change the Download Server
In the Ubuntu Software tab of the Software Sources window, there is a drop-down menu labeled Download from. Select your regional server. For example, I'm in the United States and it looks like this on my 11.10 machine:
Software Sources window showing Sever for United States being selected in the "Download from" drop-down menu.
You may see other servers listed in that short list (like the server you currently have set up).
You can use the Main server too but it is almost always considerably slower than using your regional server. (At least in the United States, anyway.)
If you want to use another mirror, you can look through a list of mirrors by clicking Other....
Option 2: Manually Editing a Configuration File
Back Up and Open sources.list
Back up your sources.list
file and open it in a text editor:
cd /etc/apt
sudo cp sources.list sources.list.old
gksu gedit sources.list
- If you've already ran the second line, don't do it again, unless you want to overwrite the old backup with a copy of the new configuration.
- For a text-based editor (not requiring any GUI), replace the third line with
sudo nano -w sources.list
(orsudo vi sources.list
, orsudo -e sources.list
).
In the text editor, replace every instance of your old server name with the new server name. For example, you could replace every instance of ubuntuarchive.hnsdc.com
with us.archive.ubuntu.com
. (Your text editor, whichever you use, will facilitate this--you don't have to manually find each instance and type in the name of the new mirror.)
Save the file, quit the text editor, run sudo apt-get update
, and it should work with the new server.
Option 3: Command Line Substitution
sed
allows you to write simple (or complicated) scripts that act on a file, one line at a time. So you can issue a single command that goes through sources.list
, replacing all the instances of the old server name with the new server name.
First, go into /etc/apt
and (unless you did so recently) back up the file:
cd /etc/apt
sudo cp sources.list sources.list.old
Then run sed
:
sudo cp sources.list sources.list.tmp
sed 's/ubuntuarchive.hnsdc.com/us.archive.ubuntu.com/' sources.list.tmp | sudo tee sources.list
sudo rm sources.list.tmp
- For an old server besides
ubuntuarchive.hnsdc.com
, change that as appropriate. - For a new server besides
us.archive.ubuntu.com
, change that as appropriate. - I decided to copy
sources.list
into a temporary file and use that assed
's input. This is one way to ensure thatsed
is not overwriting the file while it's still reading it. - The
sed
"script" here is very simple. This explains how substitution works.
But what download servers are there?
There are over 400 registered Ubuntu mirrors for installing and updating software.
These are called archive mirrors. This should not be confused with CD mirrors, where ISO images and related files for installing Ubuntu are stored.
Many servers provide both, and are thus both archive mirrors and CD mirrors. But many are just one of the two.
Solution 3
Either the mirror is down or you internet connection has issues (can be temporary).
-
make sure you can ping google DNS and archive.ubuntu.com:
ping -c3 archive.ubuntu.com
ping -c3 8.8.8.8
Both commands should return
0% packet loss
in the statistics line. Else your internet connection is down. If your connection seems fine then it is likely the mirror is down. Try choosing another one close to your location.
Solution 4
Go Terminal and follow below steps for solution...
sudo su (login as root)
cd /var/lib/apt/lists/
rm -fr *
cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
rm -fr *
cd /etc/apt
sudo cp sources.list sources.list.old
sudo cp sources.list sources.list.tmp
sed 's/ubuntuarchive.hnsdc.com/us.archive.ubuntu.com/' sources.list.tmp | sudo tee sources.list
sudo rm sources.list.tmp*
apt-get clean
apt-get update
Solution 5
Try this. It works for me.
sudo su # login as root
cd /var/lib/apt/lists/
rm -fr *
cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
rm -fr *
cd /etc/apt
cp sources.list sources.list.old
cp sources.list sources.list.tmp
sed 's/ubuntuarchive.hnsdc.com/us.archive.ubuntu.com/' sources.list.tmp | tee sources.list
rm sources.list.tmp*
apt-get clean
apt update
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Rakesh Godhala
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
-
Rakesh Godhala over 1 year
When running
sudo apt-get update
I get these following errors:Err archive.ubuntu.com quantal InRelease Err archive.ubuntu.com quantal-updates InRelease Err archive.ubuntu.com quantal-backports InRelease Err archive.ubuntu.com quantal-security InRelease Err archive.ubuntu.com quantal Release.gpg Unable to connect to archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.177 80] Err archive.ubuntu.com quantal-updates Release.gpg Unable to connect to archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.177 80] Err archive.ubuntu.com quantal-backports Release.gpg Unable to connect to archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.177 80] Err archive.ubuntu.com quantal-security Release.gpg Unable to connect to archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.177 80] Reading package lists... Done W: Failed to fetch archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/quantal/InRelease W: Failed to fetch archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/quantal-updates/InRelease W: Failed to fetch archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/quantal-backports/InRelease W: Failed to fetch archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/quantal-security/InRelease W: Failed to fetch archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/quantal/Release.gpg Unable to connect to archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.177 80] W: Failed to fetch archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/quantal-updates/Release.gpg Unable to connect to archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.177 80] W: Failed to fetch archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/quantal-backports/Release.gpg Unable to connect to archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.177 80] W: Failed to fetch archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/quantal-security/Release.gpg Unable to connect to archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.177 80] W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
I am using Ubuntu 12.04. This is the command I used after installing Ubuntu from window installer. I am sure my laptop is connected to internet. What can I do now?
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Admin over 11 yearsI removed http:// before all links.. So, they can't be seen as links
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Admin over 11 yearsI didn't upated it.. It's a fresh install using a ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso file
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Admin over 11 yearsI changed the software source to other near by servers and run the command again,still the same problem is repeating, with the exception archieve.ubuntu.com is replaced with mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in
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Admin over 11 yearsI have an ubuntu server 12.04.1 as the master dns server including dhcpd. in my options file I had only the secondairy dns-server's ip in the allow query list, when I added 127.0.0.1 the same problem was fixed. Though, in the presented detection method (previous answer) I could not ping archive.ubuntu.com.
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Rakesh Godhala over 11 yearsPING archive.ubuntu.com (91.189.92.156) 56(84) bytes of data. --- archive.ubuntu.com ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2015ms
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Rakesh Godhala over 11 yearsPING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data. --- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 1999ms
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Rakesh Godhala over 11 yearsI am getting 100% packet loss instead of 0% loss..
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Rakesh Godhala over 11 yearsAny suggestions??
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rosch over 11 yearsyou have to first take care of your internet connection. These links might help: help.ubuntu.com/10.04/internet/C/connecting-wireless.html help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessTroubleShootingGuide
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Admin over 11 yearsShouldn't the answer also address "0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 21 not upgraded?" In other words, OP will want to do a dist-upgrade?
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Eliah Kagan over 11 years@vasa1 There's no reason to think that will still be the case once
sudo apt-get update
is successfully run. It's based on information about available packages that is out of date. Also, just saying "runapt-get dist-upgrade
" wouldn't be a sufficient response to that, as sometimesdist-upgrade
does not resolve dependencies in a good way--important packages might end up removed. (Probably not, but it's important to inspect what it proposes to do, rather than running ahead with it.) If this issue persists, I think it would likely be best asked as a separate question. -
Rakesh Godhala over 10 yearsThnQ .. It worked really well
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pzkpfw about 10 yearsThis did not work for me. Why would it?
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David Okwii over 8 yearsGood suggestion. I had taken it for granted to check for my internet connection.
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IgorGanapolsky almost 8 yearsFollowing option 3, I still get an error:
some index files failed to download
. -
earthmeLon over 7 yearsIt should be noted that this could also happen if the repository no longer exists (permanently), when you update to a new version of Ubuntu, as well as many other reasons.
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MustModify over 5 years
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-extras-keyring
did not resolve this issue for me.