Ubuntu apt-get unable to fetch packages [closed]

Answer 1

Ran into a similar issue.

This is linked to using a non LTS version of Ubuntu called an "End of life version". As those have discontinued support. You can check if your Ubuntu is at the end of life version on this link.

The simplest solution is to do the following two steps:

1. Backup your sources list sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.backup

2. Open the sources file /etc/apt/sources.list and rename all the instances of us.archive or archive in

   http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/

   to

   http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/

   Also do the same for the http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/saucy-security/universe/binary-i386/Packages

3. Run sudo apt-get update after doing the above.

That should fix the issue.

Warning: Please update your ubuntu to an LTS version as soon as possible otherwise you won't be getting the latest security patches. This is definitely not a solution that you would deploy on production machines.

Answer 2

I tried this really interesting solution today, which worked for me on an Ubuntu server. Some DNS or another issue in the apt was making it adamant to not installing some packages from a custom PPA. What I did was install the apt-fast package and use it to install my packages instead of apt.

apt-fast is an alternative to apt which works on top of apt but uses aria2c to download packages. It is used to increase the download speed. In my case, it also solved whatever network problem was making apt to fail.

Using it is exactly the same as apt:

sudo apt-fast install package-name

Answer 3

Ran into issues like, while running sudo apt-get install python3-env on Ubuntu WSL:

Err:1 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security/universe amd64 python3.5-venv amd64 3.5.2-2ubuntu0~16.04.9 
404  Not Found [IP: 2001:67c:1360:8001::23 80]

Running

sudo apt-get update

fixed those issues.

Answer 4

I tried using :

sudo do-release-upgrade

and then use :

sudo apt-get update

after that you will be able to install any packages.

If this did not worked for you try to change the network conf in apt.conf

Answer 5

I got this issue when the Virtualbox had the wrong networking. I've updated to NAT and was able to get on internet and download packages from us.archive.ubuntu.com

Answer 6

This can be caused by the use of a proxy as well. Check if you have proxy definitions in the /etc/environment file:

cat /etc/environment

If you have anything with http_proxy or https_proxy upper or lower case then unset each of them.