Question

5

How to avoid "apt-get" to stuck?

rated 0 times [ 5] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 3559 / 3 Years ago, fri, august 27, 2021, 11:53:33

In some conditions like those :

Slow internet connections

Slow PPA or sources

Wifi internet access or 3g internet access

apt-get may stuck during update, install, upgrade or dist-upgrade.... endlessly (up to you to force it to close)

When I say stuck : it downloads the files, start the download, slow down and wait at some point and simply stop to download but still waiting the end of the file.

From what I understand it seems to occurs when there is a lot of latency variations (so when a server is saturated or with a wifi/3g internet access)

This effect affects also with official repositories. so it's not a source.list thing.

How can we tell to apt-get :

to stop waiting endlessly

retry to download when there is a timeout or a packet loss during the download

I am looking for a solution that does not involve brute force methods such as Ctrl+C or kill. I am looking for something more compatible with scripts (so no "human" intervention when the apt-get line has been launched).

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errettas

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4 Years ago

answered 3 Years ago whoppinolo · Accepted Answer

You can use the timeout command (installed by the package by the same name) to run a command and kill it if it takes more than N seconds. I'd be careful about when to use it though. Killing apt-get during a package installation could mess things up, so I suggest only running the download part with timeout. Something like this bash function:

upgrade() {

    local retry=5 count=0



    # retry at most $retry times, waiting 1 minute between each try

    while true; do



        # Tell apt-get to only download packages for upgrade, and send 

        # signal 15 (SIGTERM) if it takes more than 10 minutes

        if timeout -15 600 apt-get --assume-yes --download-only upgrade; then

            break

        fi

        if (( count++ == retry )); then

            printf 'Upgrade failed

' >&2

            return 1

        fi

        sleep 60

    done



    # At this point there should be no more packages to download, so 

    # install them.

    apt-get --assume-yes upgrade

}

See How do I run a command, and have it abort (timeout) after N seconds? for more.