[lug] Debian woes

[David Morris]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 01:16:07PM -0700, Daniel Webb wrote:
> Still having problem with apt-get.  I know no one else
> seems to be having this problem, but wonder if anyone has
> any ideas what might be going on?  I'm getting that same
> problem where "apt-get update" hangs:

Any possibility of network card, DSL/cable/whatever modem,
or ISP troubles?  Also try the "official" us mirrors I list
below.

> $ apt-get update
> <snip>
> 99% [Connecting to mirrors.tummy.com (66.35.36.129)]             
> 
> Web connections seem to be fine, other mirrors work fine,
> but it hangs on the Tummy mirrors.  It's not just a Tummy
> thing, though, this is the same thing I've been
> experiencing for years on 3 versions of Debian and many
> different mirrors on several different net providers in 3
> states with several completely different computers and
> network gear.  The only thing that is common is Debian.
> These hangs happen every month at least (often more) since
> I've been using Debian.  I can ping 66.35.36.129 fine.
> It's extremely irritating because every time it happens an
> "easy" Debian package upgrade ends up taking
> 15 minutes.

You might try the "Official US" mirror,
http://http.us.debian.org, http://non-us.debian.org,
http://security.debian.org.  I've been using these since I
started with Debian many years ago.  It gets very busy
around the time of releases, but other than that I've found
it to be the most reliable.  You can also install old
versions of a package from those mirrors (such as you had to
do with firefox) with "apt-get install <package>=<version>"

One possible solution is to put "apt-get update" in a cron
script that runs every night.  Because the above are the
"official" mirrors, old package versions are always
available.  Even if an update fails one night, the version
of the package you get will be at most a day or two old.
You could even up the odds of a complete update by running
the cron job every 15 minutes for a few hours (e.g. midnight
until 3:00 AM).

--David