Server issues (solved)

Update:

The repositories are now working fine and everything is back to normal.

There simply were too many users for the bandwidth capacity of the server (and also for some of the mirrors). We removed the bandwidth limits on the server and everything worked as expected. We were using 75Mbps as opposed to the 20Mbps we are currently allowed. To face the demands associated with our growing user base we’re currently negotiating with our host to give our repositories more bandwidth. We’re also considering redundancy scenarios where we would have two repository servers sharing the load under the same sub-domain.

Original message:

We’re experiencing server issues with the Linux Mint repository at the moment.

While we’re investigating the problem, you can switch to one of our mirrors by launching the “Software Sources” tool.

  • From mintMenu: Menu->Administration->Software Sources
  • From the command line: sudo software-properties-gtk

Then simply click on “Download from Main Server”, select “Other”, and choose a mirror close to your geographical location.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

47 comments

  1. Happy to take the load off your back. I am now using mirrors “closer to home” in Germany. The only reason for not having done so long ago was that the mirrors might possibly not be as up to date as the main server.

  2. sorry to say that, but it looks as if mirror servers have problems, too.

    I’ve tried different servers from Germany and the Netherlands and they hung at 99%.

  3. Good to hear that you guys have picked up on it! I’m now using the Germany Mirror, until the general one comes Online again! Thank You guys!!

  4. In case you are using LMDX (mint debian xfce), you can edit the source from synaptics. Go to > Settings > Repositories > click on the “download from main server” and select others.. click on the check the best server, then press select server.

  5. Desde hace años uso linuxmint,(helena) fue mi primera distro y para mi fue impresionante la liberación que sentí. ¿Cuando liberan la siguiente actualización? …estoy ansioso. Gracias!
    Linuxmint use for years, (Helena) was my first distro and I was impressed by the liberation I felt. When released the next update? … I’m anxious. Thanks!

  6. I tried two different servers (French and NL) but they didn’t seem to work either. Then I tried Germany/linux-mint.froonix.org and that one worked! I also had to edit the julia/kde upstream thing in the sources list (second panel…).

  7. I think most of us can handle any inconvenience, but thanks anyway to Clem and the team for the apologies, and also thanks for all the hard work you guys do.

  8. I’m having problems with Main, a couple in Germany, France, and Belgium… Can’t seem to find one that works. :'(

  9. Hm… Same here. But if none of the mirrors are working, are you sure that this is a server-side problem? All server has got the same problem?

  10. Clicking the button “Choose Best Server” will find the closest working server from where you are.
    The Canadian mirror is working.

  11. The fact that it involves multiple servers makes it seem like a problem with a recent operating system update that the servers are running; I wonder what OS the servers use?

  12. I downloaded the mint 10 dvd from the uk mirror today, in the early hours of monday 1st may, and it was a perfect download so they must be ok now.

  13. @Pete: The Latvian servers are now having problems as well, in fact I haven’t found a single server anywhere that is working…..

  14. From the “Download From -> Other” dialog, you can hit the “Select Best Server” button. That’ll run a speed test on all the mirrors (pretty short, about 30 sec total), and you’ll get the “fastest” (may be just responsiveness speed tested, or actual bandwidth speed too, not sure exactly how the test is composed).
    Any non-responsive servers won’t make the cut.
    For me, from Indiana, one server in Canada seems to be best for the time being.

  15. I personally used the French mirror during the issue and it worked quite well. Our main repository server is now working fine again. We’re investigating the cause of the issue and meeting with the host to talk about our bandwidth consumption.

    There was an update on the icon theme recently. We don’t think it’s related, but looking at our bandwidth it became apparent that we were using much more than we initially predicted.

    It’s still unclear to us why the slow-down occurred and how we’ll tackle this to make sure it doesn’t happen again. For now, it’s working fine but I’ll get back to you on this blog as soon as we know more.

  16. I’ve been trying 6-7 different servers and none of them manage to do the “refresh” without producing loads of failures…

  17. Canadian servers are working fine for me here in the States in Colorado. No timeouts or failures. Thanks for the heads up and I hope it gets fixed soon!

  18. During the issue, the ‘select best server’ did NOT find working servers. The servers were actually okay, the downloads that failed were all linked to the same repository.

  19. Thanks Clem for letting us know. The Canadian mirror less.cogeco.net came out on top of the ‘select best server’ for me here in Toronto and it’s working fine as of 8pm Eastern on May 2nd.

  20. Still no joy – get the following error message from any selected server
    Is this still a server problem or do I need to look elsewhere?

    E: Malformed line 1 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (URI parse)
    E: The list of sources could not be read.
    Go to the repository dialog to correct the problem.
    E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

    1. Andre: This is different. It looks like your sources aren’t defined properly. Edit your sources with “sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list”, it’s reporting a malformed URL on line 1.

  21. romanian:
    cei care utilizeaza lmde sau ultimul xfce si traiesc in Moldova pot sa utilizeze repozitoarele locale debian, care sunt cu mult mai rapide decat repozitoarele oficiale debian, dar asta nu e legat de problemele cu care se confrunta mint.

    english:
    those who use lmde or newest xfce edition and live in Moldova, can use local debian repositories, which are much faster that official debian repositories, but this is unrelated to mint repos problem.

    info on http://www.debian.md

    p.s:
    those who live in other countries can google for their local repositories

  22. Clem Thankyou :Removed line 1
    “deb Germany julia main upstream import”

    Working fine now.

  23. Hi Clem, sorry to be off topic, but will you put up some information on the progress of Linux Mint 11, on the forum or here on the blog?

  24. One thing to keep in mind is that changing servers only applies to Linux Mint. For example, a couple of days ago when the Mint servers were having problems the Debian update servers were all but offline as well with updates trickling in at well below 100kb/s (or not at all) so for everyone using a Mint version based on Debian testing updating would fail no matter what server you selected in “Software sources”. In order to temporarily fix this problem I had not only change Mint servers in “Software sources” but also manually edit my “sources.list” and change Debian servers from the http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ to http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/. Then updates flew in as usual.

    Just sayin’. 😉

  25. The two sources “links” in my previous post are incorrect. For some reason “http://” prefix was automatically added to both when the comment posted. Unfortunately, WordPress has a bad habit of doing this and I completely forgot about it. Must fix this on my own site as well.

  26. Has the problem been fixed? I’m about to install Mint 10 and I’d like to know if I’ll be able to update.

  27. This “server issue” reminds me of an idea I had some time ago – to create a system which would download the packages via p2p rather than from a given server. (Packages would be digitally signed by the Mint team of course.)

  28. The fact that the servers were using much more bandwidth than intended is a good thing, as it shows that there are many more people actively using Linux Mint than previously estimated. Perhaps the bandwidth usage can be added to the monthly statistics that is published every month?

  29. How difficult would it be to add a feature to the update & install tools to automatically evaluate the connections to the main & mirror repositories? It might help balancing out the load across the different servers.

  30. I think maybe you should consider changing the auto-refresh interval on mintupdate to hourly, especially if Mint 11 gets converts from (the poorly received) Ubuntu 11.04

  31. Have just updated from Australian “optusnet” server. Selected by “find best server” and it’s working fine.

  32. FOR THOSE WHO ARE SCREAMING ABOUT BAD CHOICES:
    First of all, if you are running ATI Video Card, you will find a big fail with Gnome-Shell as it would not run properly for sure. Try it and I am sure to see you all kiddos coming back here to clean Linux Mint. All that Gnome-Shell/Unity thing is just a kinda of a fashion game between apple introducing Mac Os X Lion, and Mark Shuttleworth not wanting to say in the dust. Both Gnome-Shell and Unity is not ready for regular users or every day using. Just try it for a longer time than a week, you will see.

  33. May 6th 7.oo pm in Paris France
    Servers still not available (tried main, french one, german one and an australian one).
    No complain but I just wanted you to know.
    I’m using LMDE.

  34. I just tried to edit also my source.list changing

    http://ftp.debian.org/debian/

    for http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/

    as suggested by Kirk M it doen’t change anything for me here’s the message I’ve got
    ————————-
    http://ftp.us.debian.org_debian_dists_testing_main_binary-i386_Packages Somme de contrôle de hachage incohérente
    Le téléchargement de quelques fichiers d’index a échoué, ils ont été ignorés, ou les anciens ont été utilisés à la place.
    —————————

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