How can I work around "something wicked happened resolving" mirror errors?

I see the following being queried all over. But don't see any answers or did I miss them ? Seems to be a strange use of language. Something wicked happened. Is this a form of malware ? How do I get the Update Manager to move on ?

W: Failed to fetch http://za.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/e/eglibc/libc-bin_2.11.1-0ubuntu7.10_i386.deb
  Something wicked happened resolving 'za.archive.ubuntu.com:http' (-5 - No address associated with hostname)

It seems its a DNS resolve problem..

To solve this edit your /etc/resolv.conf (sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf) and add the google public DNS addresses like this:.

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

Do the ping test again on a known server and if that passes do a apt-get update..

Hope this helps, if not say so, gl. ;)

I know this may not address your problem, but I had this problem and it was because I had added a domain only accessible through VPN to my /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01proxy file. I commented out the line and it worked.

I wanted to share just to show where other errors might originate from.

I have had the same issue myself, usually it occurs when there is a lot of high usage on my home network and update manager has a hard time contacting the server.

Try again after a few minutes and I think you will find it will be resolved.

I had this problem for about 2 days. Finally, I switched my ADSL router off and back on. That fixed it for me.