update-manager does not accept debian proxies

[Hadmut Danisch]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Hi,

this basically reopens bug #73463.

I have about half a dozen of ubuntu machines which I wanted to upgrade from 7.10 to 8.04.

I am running an approx proxy in order to have every package downloaded only once.

Unfortunately, update-manager disables all my deb entries in /etc/apt/sources.list pointing to
http://myserver:9999/ubuntu/... and adds its own to the archive.

The same problem was discussed in #73463 and that bug was closed, but I do not see that
that problem had been fixed.

regards
Hadmut

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

Can you please attach your /etc/apt/sources.list file to the bugreport (and maybe /etc/apt/sources.list.d/* if those exists)?

The problem might be a forgotten "deb http://" uri that points to a official mirror.

Thanks,
 Michael

[Hadmut Danisch (hadmut)]

Ah, sorry, I am away from home until end of week (business trip) and didn't take that particular
machine with me. But If I remember correctly that machine had the same apt entries as the
notebook I am just working with, which are

deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy-security main restricted universe multiverse

and similar deb-src entries.

update-manager complained about "third party" entries and disabled them all by prepending a
# character and adding it's own entry.

BTW, I have a much more serious problem with that: I am taking care of some more ubuntu machines
in a protected network completely without any internet access. I was installing them with ubuntu
mirrors on DVD or usb harddisk. But if update-manager insists on using it's own, network based upgrade
repository, I don't see how these machines could be upgraded (except by manually changing the
deb entries from gutsy to hardy and doing an apt-get dist-upgrade).

update-manager should test and verify every existing deb entry (including DVDs and file:/// entries)
whether it could be used as a repository for the intended upgrade.

regards
Hadmut

[Hadmut Danisch (hadmut)]

Just another comment:

The proxy was not active on that particular machine at the moment of upgrade.

Usually I have entries of the form

deb http://debian:9999/ubuntu gutsy ...

where "debian" is an alias for the machine running the approx proxy.

regards
Hadmut

[Richard Birnie (rbirnie-deactivatedaccount)]

Hadmut,

Just a comment regarding your attempts to upgrade using a DVD. According to the instructions on this wiki page https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardyUpgrades#head-e7f287c730b93116f89de7ea7e05efbe95fa6dd1

Using the alternate CD as a repository is supposed to work. If that is not the case then that's something we need to look into. Coud you check the wiki page and see if that agrees with what you were trying to do. I'll download the alternate CD myself and give this a try.

[Hadmut Danisch (hadmut)]

Well, I didn't try it that way, thanks for the hint.

What I was trying to do is to have a complete ubuntu mirror (created with debmirror) and to use that for upgrading machines, either with the mirror on a USB hard disk or with the mirror burned onto three double layer DVDs using debpartial, debcopy, and apt-cdrom. Both methods result in having deb entries in the sources file that are not accepted by update-manager.

But I'll give that method with the alternate CD a try...

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

The use-case with non-networked machines is something we do not document that well currently. Here is what you can do:

1. Ensure that the sources.list of the machines point only to the internal mirror (do not mix deb http://archive.ubuntu.com and deb http://internal-mirror lines). The reason for this is that update-manager will not the be able to distinguish between 3rd party sources and inofficial mirrors.

2. Use the alternative CD (or DVD) to initiate the upgrade. "sudo sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade" should be fine. It then will tell you that it can not find a offical mirror in your sources.list and should offer you to simply rewrite all gutsy to hardy entries. Say yes here and it should work.

You can use the same mechanism for dapper->hardy upgrades. Please let me know if you see issues with it.

[DavidWhyte (david-whyte)]

I am trying to upgrade from Gutsy to Intrepid from a machine that normally updates via an approx server. When I start the upgrade, it alerts me that it has disabled my third-party repositories and then comments them all out in sources.list and adds one official mirror with main in it.

Attached is my original sources.list when I start the upgrade.

[DavidWhyte (david-whyte)]

Ooops, in my last post, I am going from Hardy to Intrepid. Sorry!

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thank you. I'm grouping this report with bug 289952 which is about the same kind of issue.