16

I am experiencing the following error when running apt update which is causing me to be unable to update the Ubuntu server.

~$ sudo apt update
Ign:1 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-security InRelease
Err:2 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-security Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.91.39 80]
Hit:3 http://ppa.launchpad.net/oibaf/graphics-drivers/ubuntu impish InRelease
Ign:4 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish InRelease
Ign:5 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-updates InRelease
Ign:6 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-backports InRelease
Err:7 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 185.125.190.41 80]
Err:8 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-updates Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 185.125.190.41 80]
Err:9 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-backports Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 185.125.190.41 80]
Get:12 https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu impish InRelease [48.9 kB]
Get:10 https://packagecloud.io/netdata/netdata-edge/ubuntu impish InRelease [24.8 kB]
Hit:11 https://packagecloud.io/netdata/netdata-repoconfig/ubuntu impish InRelease
Get:13 https://packagecloud.io/netdata/netdata-edge/ubuntu impish/main amd64 Packages [13.3 kB]
Reading package lists... Done
E: The repository 'http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-security Release' no longer has a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
E: The repository 'http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish Release' no longer has a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
E: The repository 'http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-updates Release' no longer has a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
E: The repository 'http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-backports Release' no longer has a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

As you can see ping resolves for the hostname:

~$ ping security.ubuntu.com
PING security.ubuntu.com (185.125.190.39) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from aerodent.canonical.com (185.125.190.39): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=75.4 ms
64 bytes from aerodent.canonical.com (185.125.190.39): icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=73.9 ms
64 bytes from aerodent.canonical.com (185.125.190.39): icmp_seq=3 ttl=51 time=73.9 ms
64 bytes from aerodent.canonical.com (185.125.190.39): icmp_seq=4 ttl=51 time=74.5 ms
64 bytes from aerodent.canonical.com (185.125.190.39): icmp_seq=5 ttl=51 time=74.4 ms

To be clear, I have auto-update turned on on the Ubuntu server and this happened recently (past week or 2). Please help!

0

8 Answers 8

23

Impish went EoL on the 14th of July. As such, its repositories can no longer be found on the mirrors, so if you want to continue using this version, you need to use old-releases.ubuntu.com as your mirror.

Be aware however, that there will be no more upgrades for Impish, so you might want to switch to a supported version. The easiest way to upgrade is to run this command: do-release-upgrade

5
  • 15
    More specifically, the following two commands will update your APT sources to use the "old-releases" versions of the packages. After that, your "apt update" and "apt upgrade"` should succeed. Here are the commands: sudo sed -i -r 's/([a-z]{2}.)?archive.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list and sudo sed -i -r 's/security.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
    – MikeF
    Jul 27, 2022 at 14:58
  • Thank you Lacek and MikeF for the help with understanding this error! Jul 27, 2022 at 15:27
  • 1
    I could not update anything, including the upgrade tool because of this missing Release file, so I could not continue using the current version, and could not upgrade to the supported version, either. 😡 Changing to old-releases allowed it to upgrade.
    – endolith
    Jul 29, 2022 at 17:10
  • 3
    @MikeF your comment is very valuable, can you convert it to the "Answer"?
    – 404pio
    Aug 1, 2022 at 12:47
  • For me only this solution worked: askubuntu.com/questions/1385440/…
    – Nah
    Dec 26, 2023 at 14:13
9

I tried this (on a RPI3, Ubuntu 21.10), modify /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports impish main restricted

to

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-security main restricted

Do the same with all entries (make a copy first)

Then

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

In my case the upgrade was successful.

I then tried

sudo do-release-upgrade 

and this failed:

Checking for a new Ubuntu release
Your Ubuntu release is not supported anymore.
For upgrade information, please visit:
http://www.ubuntu.com/releaseendoflife

You have not rebooted after updating a package which requires a reboot. Please reboot before upgrading.

So one reboot later

sudo do-release-upgrade 

= Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04 'Jammy Jellyfish' =

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce Ubuntu 22.04 'Jammy Jellyfish'.

To see what's new in this release, visit: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JammyJellyfish/ReleaseNotes


And I continued with the dist upgrade

Hope this helps

Andrew



3

I want to clear what Andrew Holt wrote -

ubuntu 21 (called impish) got to its end of life, thus its repositories are down. you can use the archive repositories by replacing all

ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports

with

old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu

at the file

/etc/apt/sources.list

then, without reboot or something, just run

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

note that those steps will not upgrade the release...

1
  • It worked for me, thanks! This can be accomplished by running sudo sed -i -r 's/ports.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list and sudo sed -i -r 's/ubuntu-ports/ubuntu/g' /etc/apt/sources.list. Nov 18, 2022 at 15:41
2

The above worked for me, with the following modification.
In /etc/apt/sources.list I changed

deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ impish main restricted

to

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ impish main restricted

i.e. ubuntu-ports is changed to ubuntu for all entries.

Only after getting this right was I able to do sudo apt update, sudo apt upgrade and finally an upgrade to the latest release.

1
  • This is what worked fro me on my raspberry pi
    – Erotemic
    Sep 9, 2022 at 15:29
1

Running the following command allowed me to upgrade the Ubuntu release to the updated and supported version: do-release-upgrade

The apt update command is now working as expected!

0

I got the same error on Ubuntu 22.04

febrin@febrin:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Release:    22.04
Codename:   jammy
Err:7 http://old.releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-security Release        
  404  Not Found [IP: 185.125.190.37 80]
Reading package lists... Done      
E: The repository 'http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-security Release' does not have a Release file.

But the file I had to change was slightly different

febrin@febrin:/etc/apt$ ag "impish-security"
sources.list.d/impish-security.list
1:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-security main

The fix was changing that line in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/impish-security.list file

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-security main

to

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-security main
2
  • I think you are mixing something up. impish is not 22.04, impish indri is 21.10. 22.04 is the most current version, it should not be necessary to use old-releases here. Sep 16, 2022 at 8:55
  • But the error about not having a release file appeared similarly, and I was able to fix it using the old-release. I couldn't find another way. I just hope it might be helpful for someone using 22.04
    – Febrin
    Sep 17, 2022 at 10:13
0

I am running 22.10 on a openstack based cloud provider. I noticed http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/ no longer had kinetic listed but lunar was a listed version so I modified sources.list to point to lunar and update works. The server survived reboot at least

# Backup sources.list
cp /etc/apt/sources.list .
sudo sed -i -r 's/kinetic/lunar/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
-1

The repos for your OS version have removed from most mirrors (because the OS version has reached end of life). Since OS updates are hosted by goodwill of mirrors they try to keep only newer versions hosted.

Below commands will edit your now out of date repo urls to the old-releases mirror - this worked from Impish -> Jammy and potentially for future versions as well. [Credit]

sudo sed -i -r 's/([a-z]{2}.)?archive.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo sed -i -r 's/security.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

After that you can run update, upgrade, and then do strongly consider release upgrade:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

sudo do-release-upgrade

While understandable repos won't be hosted super long, it would be very helpful if this migration could be recognized by the apt tool and the fix automatically suggested/applied. It seems a bit much to step away for 6 months from an absolutely minimal Ubuntu install and come back to a OS that can't update without modifying apt repo paths.

2
  • This answer adds nothing that hasn't been posted in previous answers. Apr 23, 2023 at 10:09
  • The answer converts highly upvoted comment into an answer. The other answers suggest manually editing multiple lines in apt sources file, this answer provides a snippet that will do it for you. Apr 23, 2023 at 10:14

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