I can't use update manager, access Ubuntu related sites or Launchpad

I turned on my computer today and when I tried to run updates through Update Manager, it would just sit there slowly loading a repository forever.

Then I tried to access ubuntuforums.org and it wouldn't load. Then I tried one.ubuntu.com, launchpad.net, and none of them will load. Everything was working fine yesterday, but now the only sites I can access seem to be anything non Ubuntu related (Google, Yahoo, Twitter, IMDB, they all work).

This is one of the strangest things I've encountered and I can't figure it out.

Solution 1:

It is very likely, that you are suffering from a problem at Telia Sonera. They have major network problems in London, close to Canonicals own networks that host Ubuntu related services.

To see if you are affected, open a terminal and make sure traceroute is installed (sudo apt-get install traceroute), then type traceroute 91.189.92.184 | grep --color=auto telia. If your universe repository is also based at Canonical (e.g. not a local mirror), see below on how to install traceroute withouth apt.

If this command outputs anything, then Telia is most likely the cause of your problems. If this command does NOT output anything, it is still possible, that you are affected, because of asynchronous routing.

This problem is not within Canonicals reach, so they cannot really do something about it (besides building global redundancy), but it should be temporary.

(This answer is only valid close to the time of writing! If you read this in a couple of weeks or months, then this does most likely NOT help you!)

How to install traceroute without apt You can download traceroute from a mirror that is not affected by that issue and install it via dpkg.

For amd64 arch run wget http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/t/traceroute/traceroute_2.0.18-1_amd64.deb && sudo dpkg -i traceroute_2.0.18-1_amd64.deb

For i386 arch run wget http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/t/traceroute/traceroute_2.0.18-1_i386.deb && sudo dpkg -i traceroute_2.0.18-1_i386.deb