Upgrade Problems With Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy”? Try a Different Repository

By | 2007/10/01

Many of you know that I’ve been running and testing Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy” since early in the alpha stage. There have been no show stoppers and its been fun to see the development continue to happen, and be able to contribute to that by submitting bugs. Again, I have not seen any major bugs, just little oddities here and there. If you can please consider upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 beta (released 9-27-07) and help us finish what is left of the bugs.

I have heard from a few people that had a few odd issues upgrading. One “fix” that I used worked in my situation and may work for others so I thought I would share it.

If you get an error about having upgrades available but when you try to retrieve them they are not accessible my guess (again, this may not be completely accurate) is that repository data between the many mirrors is not synced properly with the actual repository. I have found changing your repository to a different mirror often helps clear up this issue.

You can find a *very* long list of available mirrors in System > Admin > Software Sources : “Download From” drop-down, select “other”. At this point you can select one from the list or “Select Best Server”.

In the long run I would suggest more people select the best server for their area. In any event, try a new repository and see if that helps refresh your list and get the updates that should be available. I hope this helps.

22 thoughts on “Upgrade Problems With Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy”? Try a Different Repository

  1. Fredrik

    Very interesting. This could be the problem for me – I can’t install sensors-applet.

  2. Thorns

    Yes, it has happened to me also. I switched to UK mirrors and guess what? Greater speeds too! :O

  3. hype

    Would it be possible for ubuntu to automatically do that test when installing and having it “select best server”?

  4. Wolfger

    Hype: I can see where you’re coming from, but I think that’s a bad idea. At least, it’s a bad idea if there isn’t an opt-out for advanced users who might have a good reason for wanting a “not best” server.

  5. Big Dan

    I upgraded from Feisty to Gutsy over the weekend, everything went well even the download speed of the US mirrors was decent. In doing previous beta upgrades, even in the Alpha stages I remember download speed sometimes as slow as 50kbps and I’m on cable.

    My guess is with so many people upgrading the server just cannot keep up with requests. I have the best luck with downloading updates around 9-10 AM.

  6. Elaine

    I am running Feisty on an AMD-64, and use all sorts of repositories to get the proprietory codecs. (I know, bad Elaine, no cookie.) If I try to do a dist-upgrade when the time comes, should I first disable all those other repositories and just leave the standard set? And, if so, what is considered the standard set: universe but not multiverse?

    I love my Feisty on AMD-64, even if I do have to run Firefox32 to get flash and stuff.

  7. Elaine

    PS. Usually I look forward to the next release, but damn if things don’t work so well now that I am feeling somewhat reluctant to upgrade.

  8. Ubuntu Tutorials

    Elaine – the official upgrader after the final release will automagically deactivate your third-party repositories and, yes, if you do it manually it will be a good idea.

  9. tom

    did the upgrade, adventures chronicled at

    some grief, but no comparison to the heartache of the last two … I can spell linux and that’s about it- so challenges can be … challenging.

    then came the using of it, chronicled at

    why did the upgrade change my ip to that of the only xp system that was running at the time? Only the Penguin knows … muahahahaha …

    the upgrade also added a user “foo” for no reason that I know of, and _every_ time I close Dolphin, it errors out
    “Unable to save bookmarks in /home/tom/.kde/share/apps/d3lphin/bookmarks.xml. Reported error was: Permission denied. This error message will only be shown once. The cause of the error needs to be fixed as quickly as possible, which is most likely a full hard drive”

    at 59% empty, I’m assuming this is a bug which will get fixed some day??

    perhaps some day I’ll get brave enough to try it again on this (my main) machine- although the grief I went through with just upgrading TBird a couple of months ago was just barely worth it …

    we’ll see.

    so, there you go: a Windows refugee tryin’ da bes’ dat I kan 🙂

  10. Ryan

    The best arrangement I’ve found is to use a mirror for all of the gutsy, gutsy-updates, and gutsy-security entries, and then put in one of the ubuntu.com repos at the end of sources.list. This way you pull from a fast mirror if a package is available, but if it hasn’t been synced there yet, apt will pull it directly from Ubuntu.

  11. Pingback: OpenRadix.org - Faster Ubuntu Upgrade to Gutsy

  12. RascalNet

    I was having a problem because ubuntu.beryl-project.org was not responding. So I disabled it in sources.list. It seemed to do the trick.

  13. Paul Brain

    I’ve been getting the same ‘Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)”

    Have changed repositories, but cannot get past this.

    Paul

  14. Paul Brain

    Found the solution ::

    In Software sources change the local repository and select ftp instead of http.

    I’m now in full upgrade mode.

    Paul

  15. zelrik

    I couldnt upgrade it on my laptop. After trying to configure it he told me something like “Sorry man, I failed, so I’ll backup to 7.04”

    :,(((

  16. lennart

    hi
    since a few hours i’m even working with this problem but i still can’t fix it. i changed the sources to ftp but it still won’t work.
    is there anybody who can help me?

  17. Al-Karim

    i have tried to upgrade from Fiesty 7.04 to the new gusty. i have tried changing the software sources but still the same results. I get this message after i change the soft ware source:
    W: GPG error: http://mirror.noreply.org feisty Release: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY CFF71CB3AFA44BDD

    then this one when i try to do the upgrade

    Failed to fetch http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/dists/gutsy/partner/binary-i386/Packages.gz Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)
    Failed to fetch http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/dists/gutsy/partner/binary-i386/Packages.gz Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)

    any one got any ideas why or what software source i should use i am going with the best fit one it gives you.

  18. ianm

    I had problems (stopping at fetching file 78 of 80) but by disabling a third party software source (something like tux.java) the whole process worked . . . I can clarify if anyone needs it.

  19. clvg

    Thanks for the tip…I’ve been putting off my desktop upgrade for months due to a sources error I couldn’t pin down. This fixed it right up. Cheers!

  20. Frank

    I have this problem of upgading from 7.10 Gutsy to 8.04.
    There is no more support for 7.10, repositories are not available anymore, and this is quite too much, no support after 2 years of release.
    Now, probably will be possible to upgrade on 9.04, but who knows how will this going on, since, I have a several PC's to upgrade,
    and my VGA's aren't very good, already had the problems with VGA…

  21. Krastyo

    Ok I would like an advise too. I installed Ubunutu 7.10 on my desktop and upgraded the copy via the user interface. It all upgraded OK, but know when I check the repositories (System -> Software Source) it is all showing the 7.10 links instead of 8.04 ones… When I change servers as mentioned above I get err msg:

    Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/gutsy/univ… 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.45 80]
    Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

    Any ideas apart from downloading the 8.04 CD and install form it? Thank you.

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