If you’re getting this error but you’re still connected to the internet this page might help. This error is sometimes caused by repository’s which are down or broken.

From terminal run the following command:

If the output runs through a few [...]]]>

If you’re getting this error but you’re still connected to the internet this page might help. This error is sometimes caused by repository’s which are down or broken.

Failed to download repository information

Check your Internet connection.

From terminal run the following command:

If the output runs through a few repositorys but ends with something similar to the below (most probably with different repositorys failing) and ultimately stopping your updating process then there is a good chance you can fix it by just removing those failing sources from the software sources.

Err http://ppa.launchpad.net maverick/main Sources
404 Not Found
Err http://ppa.launchpad.net maverick/main amd64 Packages
404 Not Found
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/bugs-sehe/gparted/ubuntu/dists/maverick/main/source/Sources.gz 404 Not Found
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/bugs-sehe/gparted/ubuntu/dists/maverick/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz 404 Not Found
E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

Software Sources can be found under either:

Applications > Ubuntu Software Centre > Edit > Software Sources..
OR
System > Administrator > Synaptic Package Manager > Settings > Repositorys

Click the Other Software tab.

Nnow find the repositories which caused the failure on the update and uncheck them and then close the Software Centre.

Re-run the update command and hopefully everything will work!

Check the example below where gparted was causing the error:

Having gone through several upgrades and countless repository’s added to the software sources, things can begin to get really messy really quickly and often begin to screw up when updating the system if you’re not careful. You may find yourself, like I have, wanting to restore your sources.list file back to its default in [...]]]>

Having gone through several upgrades and countless repository’s added to the software sources, things can begin to get really messy really quickly and often begin to screw up when updating the system if you’re not careful. You may find yourself, like I have, wanting to restore your sources.list file back to its default in order to get things working again.

In order to do this there is a pretty handy webapp available called the “Ubuntu Sources List Generator” - http://repogen.simplylinux.ch/

By moving through each section it enables you to select your country, release and then check each repository you want to add, not only does it support all the official ones for things like security and updates, it also allows for 3rd party repos such as Banshee, Chromium, Conky and VLC amongst a bunch others. Once you have what you want hit generate and it’ll create a nice, comment, new sources.list file ready for you to replace your old one with.

You may want to backup your old sources.list just in case with the following command:

Once you have that you can open the sources.list and simply paste the new one in from the repogen:

Paste, Save and Close the file and now you should paste the generated GPG keys, found just below the generated sources.list file, into your terminal.

Everything should be back to default and allow you to once again update everything.