Upgrade to Karmic failed because site became unavailable during distribution release.

klompen, it is indeed likely that this is due to server overload. Ubuntu 9.10 was released yesterday and for a few days the load on all Ubuntu package archive mirrors is very high. Could you try again early next week and report back whether it works?

I tried again about an hour later and it worked. The only thing that I
think is a "bug" is that the exit from this situation wasn't as graceful as
I'd like and it didn't give me a "retry" button for the upgrade. I had to
log off/on to get back the upgrade button. Not a major thing, but since
this is likely to occur during the next release in 6 months it might be
worth thinking about.

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Lars Wirzenius <email address hidden> wrote:

> klompen, it is indeed likely that this is due to server overload. Ubuntu
> 9.10 was released yesterday and for a few days the load on all Ubuntu
> package archive mirrors is very high. Could you try again early next
> week and report back whether it works?
>
> ** Changed in: update-manager (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> --
> Upgrade to Kubuntu 9.10 failed because site became unavailable
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/464087
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “update-manager” package in Ubuntu: Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: update-manager
>
> Upgrade started, then connection to download server appears to have been
> lost. Internet connection is fine so must be server overload.
>

I agree, there is at least one other bug report (marked it as a duplicate of this one) where the user was left hanging for a long while without knowing what is going on. Maybe a shorter time-out would be nice.

I don't know how well the Retry button idea would work, though, because the installer is already doing that behind the scenes, trying out different mirrors (or at least, it should be doing that...).

I don't think a retry button is really essential. I just expected that after
I watched the install back out that it would put back the button that I used
to launch the upgrade. When it didn't do that I figured that I probably
needed to log out/in and in fact that restored the button as expected. A
message at the end of the back-out process that told me I needed to restart
or log out/in would not have been unexpected and would have taken care of
things.

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:02 AM, WeatherGod <email address hidden> wrote:

> I agree, there is at least one other bug report (marked it as a
> duplicate of this one) where the user was left hanging for a long while
> without knowing what is going on. Maybe a shorter time-out would be
> nice.
>
> I don't know how well the Retry button idea would work, though, because
> the installer is already doing that behind the scenes, trying out
> different mirrors (or at least, it should be doing that...).
>
> --
> Upgrade to Kubuntu 9.10 failed because site became unavailable
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/464087
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “update-manager” package in Ubuntu: Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: update-manager
>
> Upgrade started, then connection to download server appears to have been
> lost. Internet connection is fine so must be server overload.
>

> I don't know how well the Retry button idea would work, though, because
> the installer is already doing that behind the scenes, trying out
> different mirrors (or at least, it should be doing that...)

Since the desktops of my system are still hosed, I decided to aid recovery by downloading a 'live CD' .iso file.
So I told the web dialog that I'm in the United States, and it proceeded to download at a data rate of 15-20 kbps, with an expected completion time of ~15 hours. I aborted the download, thinking that maybe mirrors in some other country wouldn't be so busy. My lucky choice was Finland, which sent the file over at ~500 kbps!

This result implies than any Ubuntu mirror load balancing is within the chosen country, rather than worldwide. There may be policy reasons for this, but the results are pretty bad for people in the States, and it could happen in other countries with a shortage of mirror bandwidth, too. The obvious suggestion is to do load balancing against all sites worldwide, rather than for a specific country -- or some variation of that, e.g., monitor all mirrors and report to the user which mirrors (or countries) are least loaded. This could make for much better (balanced) mirror utilization -- and happier users.

I have recently done several major updates to my Win Vista system, and while they were pretty slow (1-2 hours for the full upgrade), the experience was fairly painless. I apologize for making the comparison, but I view them as the competition, if not the enemy, and it's what I actually experienced.

Anyway, thank you for your comments and suggestions. I really appreciate it.

Cleaning up. Is this still an issue in the most current stable release?
---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

This has not been a problem, but the current release 11.04 is too buggy
to use on my laptop.
--
  mike jacobson
  <email address hidden>

On Thu, 25 Aug 2011 05:02 +0000, "RedSingularity"
<email address hidden> wrote:
> Cleaning up. Is this still an issue in the most current stable release?
> ---
> Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
> http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad
>
> ** Changed in: update-manager (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (467761).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/464087
>
> Title:
> Upgrade to Karmic failed because site became unavailable during
> distribution release.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/464087/+subscriptions
>

--
http://www.fastmail.fm - mmm... Fastmail...

Thanks for confirming. Closing report.
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Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad