"No suitable download server found"

Question

I bumped into the problem that I can't download any updates or new packages. I had this problem before which I could solve through several steps

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/* -vf
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update

This gives me still a

W: Failed to fetch
http://ucmirror.canterbury.ac.nz/ubuntu/dists/quantal-security/multiverse/binary-i386/Packages
404  Not Found

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

I tried a different server by hand, and get a 'No suitable download server found' when I ask Ubuntu to find one for me. I am not behind a firewall, there is no proxy server set up in the settings or anything like that.

Solution 1

you version of ubuntu is end of life, you can change your version or you can replace the soures in /etc/apt/sources.list,

1)you can do this manually by changing the sources to old-releases.ubuntu.com

2)in terminal by sudo sed -i -e 's/ucmirror.canterbury.ac.nz\|security.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

Solution 2

From the error message, the version of Ubuntu you are using is Ubuntu 12.10 quantal.

This version is out of its support time, you need to install a newer release.
For this, see How to install software or upgrade from an old unsupported release?

The actual error is that the server does not longer have package files for quantal.

For details on the support times of releases, see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
Quantal is listed in table "End of life".

Comments

[Volker Siegel]

Are you using Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal"?