Stretch apt update failing, missing InRelease file on mirrors

Question

I tried to manually update packages two hours ago. The InRelease is indeed missing from my mirror http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/InRelease, but also from the CDN one http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/InRelease.

Is it expected that this InRelease file to be missing for stretch?

me@stretch:~$ LANG=C sudo apt update
Err:1 http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian stretch InRelease
  Temporary failure resolving 'ftp.fr.debian.org'
Err:2 http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates InRelease
  Temporary failure resolving 'security.debian.org'
Err:3 http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian stretch-updates InRelease
  Temporary failure resolving 'ftp.fr.debian.org'
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.
W: Failed to fetch http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/InRelease  Temporary failure resolving 'ftp.fr.debian.org'
W: Failed to fetch http://security.debian.org/debian-security/dists/stretch/updates/InRelease  Temporary failure resolving 'security.debian.org'
W: Failed to fetch http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch-updates/InRelease  Temporary failure resolving 'ftp.fr.debian.org'
W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

Manually trying to wget the InRelease file (network connection is OK, as you can see):

me@stretch:~$ LANG=C wget http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/InRelease
--2018-10-28 23:29:52--  http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/InRelease
Resolving deb.debian.org (deb.debian.org)... 2001:67c:2564:a119::148:14, 2001:4f8:1:c::15, 2001:41c8:1000:21::21:4, ...
Connecting to deb.debian.org (deb.debian.org)|2001:67c:2564:a119::148:14|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/InRelease [following]
--2018-10-28 23:29:52--  http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/InRelease
Resolving cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org (cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org)... 2a04:4e42:1d::204, 151.101.120.204
Connecting to cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org (cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org)|2a04:4e42:1d::204|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2018-10-28 23:29:52 ERROR 404: Not Found.

Answer 1

If you running Debian within a Docker container you can try to restart the Docker daemon.

sudo systemctl restart docker

This solved it for me.

Answer 2

The only reason InRelease is mentioned is that that's the first file apt tries to download. The actual error comes right after:

Temporary failure resolving 'ftp.fr.debian.org'

(and the same for 'security.debian.org')

An error like that would cause problems downloading any file, so obviously it fails on the first.

You should look at your network configuration to find out why those names can't be resolved.

Answer 3

On my debian system, I verified that:

• DNS resolves both ipv4 A and ipv6 AAAA records of the debian mirror I use (confirmed with the "dig" commmand, with the default DNS stored in resolv.conf)
• when trying to download the same URL than apt-get, wget succeeds

Hence, independently of apt, my debian system don't have DNS or internet connectivity problems. But apt kept failing, even when using alternative mirrors in /etc/apt/source.list.

The only work around I found: replacing debian mirror DNS names by ipv4 or ipv6 addresses directly in the source.list.

Answer 4

You need to switch from deb.debian.org to archive.debian.org.

For more, see this answer.