Fix apt on old unsupported Ubuntu releases
After discovering an old server that was still running Ubuntu 11.10 I found that apt-get was no longer working as support for this version ended 9 months after it was released, quite some time ago!
I was seeing errors from apt-get update like:
W: Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/main/source/Sources 404 Not FoundAnd errors from apt-get upgrade like:
Err http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates/main ncurses-bin i386 5.9-1ubuntu5.1
403 ForbiddenSince the server isn't quite ready to be replaced I had to find a temporary solution.
Luckily ubuntu provides a repository for old releases, aptly named old-releases.ubuntu.com.
To use it, open /etc/apt/sources.list with your favourite text editor (you'll need to be root or use sudo) and replace all occurrences of archive.ubuntu.com or security.ubuntu.com with old-releases.ubuntu.com.
My sources.list now looks like this:
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric main
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric main
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates main
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates main
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric universe
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates universe
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security main
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security main
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security universeAfter you have updated the sources run an update:
$ sudo apt-get updateIf you're still getting any 404 or 403 errors then double check your sources are correct. Otherwise you should now be able to upgrade your packages:
$ sudo apt-get upgradeThe above solution should work for Ubuntu releases as old as 4.10 (warty), though I haven't tested this.
You can avoid this problem in the future by using only LTS (long term support) releases which are supported for 5 years.
Written by James Wyse
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6 Responses
Thank you!! I spent the past hour trying to get my oneiric instance to install python-dev. The 403 Forbidden errors were driving me crazy!
Yes, this works. Thanks !
Great! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you. I have a basic server for which I just needed one package (for now) and this solved my problems. Marcos
Replacing all occurrences of archive.ubuntu.com and security.ubuntu.com with old-releases.ubuntu.com in the etc/apt/sources.list file was the missing piece of the puzzle to get the pesky warning triangle to disappear from the upper panel in my no-longer-supported Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx installation. Thank you!
You are a life saver.
I have an old PC which haven't been used for like 10 years, and it's birth is 1999.
I wanted to test if it still work and it did, even with newest Debian 9.1.
However, Mesa has droped 3D support for many old cards including mine 'Creative 3D Blaster Savage 4 32mb - AGP' with Mesa 8.
So, the only way to resurrect an accelleration on this PC was with a system that had Mesa 7.11 or earlier, and my system of choice become Mint 12. However, after installation, I saw issues with repositories, couldn't install anything, sad thing.
And now I found your description of how to fix it, thank you very much!!
Mate is too heavy, but now I can install 'Awesome', JWM or LXDE :)
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