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When I try to do sudo apt update it idles with a 0% [Waiting for headers] [Waiting for headers] message and does not run for a long while. After several minutes the terminal spits out a line indicating that the update got ignored. E.g.:

Ign:66 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-udates/universe i386 Packages

then moves on to the next one where the same thing happens again.

I've tried a couple of things including manually editing /etc/apt/sources.list based on this: Updating Ubuntu & understanding errors thrown by APT, change the mirror site based on this:Stuck at 0% [waiting for headers], and cleaning apt's history based on this: Ubuntu problems on update....:/

I'm on Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS (xenial). I am behind a corporate firewall, but i have the proxy parameters set up in /etc/environment, /etc/sudoers and /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/95proxies according to this: How do I configure proxies without GUI?.

My internet seems to be connected, i can get ping responses from 8.8.8.8 or ubuntu.com.

I tried to do this with disabled firewall (ufw disable), with the same -negative- result.

I kinda out of the ideas here, any help is appreciated.

Geri
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1 Answers1

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If it doesn't work for a while and then it starts working with no changes by you, that generally happens because either the download server or the network between you and the download server was down or having issues.

You can switch servers from the command line by using any of the answers to "How do I change mirrors in Ubuntu Server from regional to main?".

You can alternatively set up a mirror of all the repositories on your local network if your management is OK with that. This requires downloading and storing on disk every package in the repositories and redownloading each whenever it changes.

At the cost of all that bandwidth and disk space, this will allow you to set everyone's repository server to a server on your local network, which will be both fast-to-access and updated fairly well.

You can probably have IT punch a hole in the firewall for this only during hours when the office is closed so that this doesn't use bandwidth during working hours.

Chai T. Rex
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