Comment 0 for bug 179767

Binary package hint: update-notifier

A mirror might be off-line because of hardware or network problems or other reasons, and currently there is will be no indication of that in the UI. Of course this is a potential security risk, because affected people won't install security updates.

I understand that reporting an unreachable server every time might not be useful either; people might be on the road with their laptop, so it's normal to have no internet access sometimes. But a warning if checking for updates wasn't possible for a certain number of days seems appropriate. The dialog should allow the user to tell the system that things are okay ("I'm crossing the Antarctic by feet and there are no hotspots here") as well as to change the current mirror (e.g. by launching the software sources dialog) in case they think something is wrong (because they do have internet access).