[Bug 873468] Re: Update to latest Release failed for overloaded mirrors with no descriptive error message

[Brian May]

@Barry and @Steve, in my case when I see this error, the most probably
cause is that update-manager has misidentified my repositories in
sources.list as third party repositories and disabled all of them.
Without telling me. As such it can't find the essential packages -
because they don't exist! However I am confused because there is no
indication it has disabled the essential repositories - after the
process aborts, the sources.list is reset back to its original value. An
error message that suggested that the problem is due to overloaded
mirror would be very confusing and misleading. It might lead me to file
bug reports against the wrong package, e.g. approx.

I have reported this problem in #773823, which unfortunately was merged
with a different bug. Requests to have this fixed have been ignored. As
such, if the mirrors are getting overloaded, maybe this is because
people are unable to use anything but the official mirrors?

Unfortunately, it would appear Ubuntu really don't care about people who
don't use the official supported mirrors; these mirrors can be expensive
to use due to Internet charges in Australia. I really don't want to have
to download the same files repeatedly for each computer I upgrade over a
slow and expensive ADSL connection if I don't have to.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to update-manager in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/873468

Title:
  Update to latest Release failed for overloaded mirrors with no
  descriptive error message

Status in “update-manager” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “update-manager” source package in Precise:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  When auto updating to Oneiric, the update-manager crashed with the
  following message:

  "After your package information was updated the essential package 'ubuntu-minimal' can not be found anymore.
  This indicates a serious error, please report this bug using the command 'ubuntu-bug update-manager' in a terminal and include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bug report."

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  Package: update-manager 1:0.150.3
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-11.50-generic 2.6.38.8
  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-11-generic i686
  NonfreeKernelModules: wl
  Architecture: i386
  CurrentDmesg.txt:
   [   29.414158] EXT4-fs (sda6): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0
   [   35.168233] eth1: no IPv6 routers present
  Date: Thu Oct 13 18:23:58 2011
  GConfNonDefault:
   /apps/update-manager/check_new_release_ignore=
   /apps/update-manager/first_run=false
   /apps/update-manager/show_details=true
   /apps/update-manager/window_size=(784,600)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
  PackageArchitecture: all
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: update-manager
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-10-13 (0 days ago)

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/873468/+subscriptions