Issues with apt/adept

[brian]

Hello, another Kubuntu-noob here (making the break from Mandriva, so not a complete linux newbie). I've just installed Kubuntu 6.06 LTS Dapper on my IBM Thinkpad X20, and all appears well, but I don't seem to be able to access any of the repositories. I've enabled the appropriate repositories in the "Manage repositories" window in Adept, but cannot download headers from them. As an alternative, I've also used http://www.ubuntulinux.nl/source-o-matic to create myself a new /etc/apt/sources.list file (having placed it in the appropriate place), and tried again - but to no avail. Symptoms are that adept just stays on 0% progress and claims to be downloading headers, or apt-get claims to be connecting to gb.archive.ubuntu.com, but gets no further.

I have a working internet connection, and browsing the net is no problem. What concerns me slightly is that apt-get says (1.0.0.0) after the repository address, which suggests to me that it's not resolving DNS correctly. Am I right in this assumption? And if so (and indeed if not), how can I resolve this?

Thanks in advance,
Brian

[stux]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

If you run

apt-get check

what do you get?

[brian]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done

Then it drops me back at a prompt. I'm very confused - one time I clicked on Fetch Updates in Adept, it managed to download them (and I hadn't changed any settings), but since then has returned to its previous (non-working) behaviour. I wonder if it's a problem with the gb.archive.ubuntu.com server rather than my setup maybe?

[Fenyx]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

If I'm not mistaken, the gb.archive.ubuntu.com servers have been having some problems. I think using the uk.archive.ubuntu.com servers might solve your problem.

[brian]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

I've just tried uk.archive.ubuntu.com, us.archive.ubuntu.com and just plain ol' archive.ubuntu.com, all to no avail, so I'm now starting to suspect that it's not the server after all.

Do you knowledgeable people have any more suggestions? This is the first time I've used apt, so I really don't know much about it! Any help would be gratefully received!

[SigmaX]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

For starters does internet/DNS work at all? :-P

SigmaX

[brian]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

As I said in the first post, yes. The 'net is fine and I can surf it as usual - DNS works perfectly as far as I can tell. I can ping uk.archive.ubuntu.com successfully, and it looks up the IP, sends the ping and receives the pong fine. One thing that might be a problem is I can't seem to retrieve the gpg keys for the repositories - again, I can ping the subkeys.pgp.net server fine, but every time I try to retrieve a key, it times out.

Thanks for all your help - keep it coming!

[ketnoe]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

I'm having the identical problem! I tried everything you did once I ran across this post, and some I had already done. Pretty much, Adept Hangs on WAITING FOR HEADERS.

I tried changing the servers, us, uk, archive, etc. tried apt-get.

It has no problem building from security.ubuntu.com, but the main repositories and universe hang.

would love to find a solution for this.. or maybe another way to install synaptic??

[brian]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

Solved! I've finally worked it out (alas only after giving up on Kubuntu and trying Debian, but never mind...). For anyone else who has the same problem, here's the explanation.

It's an odd thing with DHCP - my internet connection is an ADSL line connected through an ADSL modem/router with NAT. For some reason, this works perfectly for browsing internet and stuff like that, but not for APT/Adept. What happens is that Kubuntu/Debian tries to use the router as the DNS server, and this does not get forwarded to the appropriate DNS server, so each repository (like uk.archive.ubuntu.com etc.) gets assigned the incorrect IP address (1.0.0.0). Anyway, the solution (in Debian at least - might possibly be slightly different in Kubuntu, but it'll be pretty darned similar I'll wager) is to edit the /etc/resolv.conf file and change the line "nameserver 168.192.1.1" (if you've got a typical router, the router's IP will be 168.192.1.1) to "nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" where you fill in the correct DNS server from your ISP. This is a temporary workaround - when your DHCP server (i.e. the router) renews your IP address, this file will get overwritten with the old setting. For a more permanent change, I've read that if you append the line "prepend domain-name-servers xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx;" to your /etc/dhclient.conf file, it should add the appropriate line to the top of the /etc/resolv.conf file when the IP address is renewed. I've not tried this second thing, so I can't confirm it, but the first definitely works for me!

[bootdoc]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

What do you mean by  "append the line..."
Charlie

[brian]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

"append" means add to. Just stick the line in the file.

Oh and I made a mistake with the actual file - it's located at /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf and not where I said originally.

[caulktel]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

Hey Brian, I just picked up a Thinkpad X20 laptop. Can you tell me anything about how you installed it? mine doesn't have a CDRom drive. I was wondering if you used a external cd drive or a network install, or what? I am looking forword to installing Kubuntu on it. Anything you can tell me would be helpfull.

Joel

[stux]

Re: Issues with apt/adept

Hi caulktel

Can you boot with the external CDRom?