Getting upgrade prerequisites failed - Distribution Upgrade on KUbuntu 7.10

[Titus]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Version:
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=7.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=gutsy
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 7.10"

dpkg reports:
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-f/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/t-aWait/T-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
un update-manager <none> (no description available)

This happened after clean-installing KUbuntu 7.10. First of all, Adept Manager failed to update the system (I think the last thing I saw was something about libqt3), then the Distribution Upgrade got stuck at "File 68 of 69" for about 10-15 minutes and then it crashed.

apt.log says:
Error: "/var/tmp/kdecache-titus" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.

main.log says:
2008-02-08 20:29:39,302 INFO release-upgrader version '0.81' started
2008-02-08 20:29:39,888 DEBUG lsb-release: 'gutsy'
2008-02-08 20:29:39,888 DEBUG _pythonSymlinkCheck run
2008-02-08 20:29:40,558 DEBUG checkViewDepends()
2008-02-08 20:29:40,558 DEBUG getRequiredBackports()
2008-02-08 20:33:40,750 ERROR IOError in cache.update(): 'Failed to fetch http://ro.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/feisty-backports/Release.gpg Could not connect to ro.archive.ubuntu.com:80 (192.129.4.120), connection timed out
Failed to fetch http://ro.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/feisty-backports/main/debian-installer/i18n/Translation-ro.bz2 Could not connect to ro.archive.ubuntu.com:80 (192.129.4.120), connection timed out
Failed to fetch
'. Retrying (currentRetry: 0)
2008-02-08 20:37:40,846 ERROR IOError in cache.update(): 'Failed to fetch http://ro.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/feisty-backports/Release.gpg Could not connect to ro.archive.ubuntu.com:80 (192.129.4.120), connection timed out
Failed to fetch http://ro.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/feisty-backports/main/debian-installer/i18n/Translation-ro.bz2 Could not connect to ro.archive.ubuntu.com:80 (192.129.4.120), connection timed out
'. Retrying (currentRetry: 1)
2008-02-08 20:41:40,946 ERROR IOError in cache.update(): 'Failed to fetch http://ro.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/feisty-backports/Release.gpg Could not connect to ro.archive.ubuntu.com:80 (192.129.4.120), connection timed out
Failed to fetch http://ro.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/feisty-backports/main/debian-installer/i18n/Translation-ro.bz2 Could not connect to ro.archive.ubuntu.com:80 (192.129.4.120), connection timed out
'. Retrying (currentRetry: 2)
2008-02-08 20:41:40,946 ERROR doUpdate() failed complettely
2008-02-08 20:41:41,704 ERROR Can not find backport 'release-upgrader-apt'

I think it's the same cause as in a previous report : a local server is not accessible.