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I am trying to copy some files from a disused Ubuntu 8.10 system.

To do that I need to install nfs, portmap, etc., since those are not already installed.

So I open Synaptic to install the packages. It figures the dependencies and lists the needed packages. I click 'Apply' and get a warning that the sources cannot be authenticated. I click 'Apply' anyway and get an error message like:

W: Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/main/pool/p/portmap/portmap_6.0-6ubuntu1_i386.deb 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.167 80]

Where is there a repository for the most recent 8.10 packages?

Thanks for your detailed answer.

I used vi instead of sed, and just replaced each occurrence of 'us.archive' with 'old-releases' using: :g/us.archive/s//old-releases/g

I believe that that is equivalent although my sed skills are a little rusty.

First I simply replaced the 'archives' without getting rid of 'us.' and got the same 404 errors as before, so that part is important.

It seems to be working so far!

I did get some errors like:

Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/intrepid-security/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.166 80]

when I clicked 'Reload' in Synaptic. Should I do something about that?

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The repositories for v8.10 of ubuntu have been moved. There are repositories available at http://old-releases.ubuntu.com

The reason for this is that it is now out of support and no longer receiving updates and security patches.

I would urge you to consider a supported distribution such as 10.04 or later. If your computer is too old in terms of memory or processor then you should consider a distribution such as Lubuntu or Xubuntu.

If you want to continue using 8.10 then using your favourite text edit, edit /etc/apt/sources.list

Look for the text archive.ubuntu.com. It will look like, for example, us.archive.ubuntu.com

Replace us.archive.ubuntu.com with old-releases.ubuntu.com

Similarly - if you have text, for example, security.ubuntu.com then replace this with old-releases.ubuntu.com

You can do this with sed

sudo sed -i -e 's/us.archive.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo sed -i -e 's/security.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

then update with

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
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    In this case you'd want to run sudo sed -i -e 's/us.archive.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list (note the addition of the us.).
    – Oli ♦
    Feb 15, 2012 at 10:35
  • @oli fossfreedom Good answer. Thank you. This must be almost an FAQ, so it should have been easy to find some previous equivalent answer. Even now, I search for: old releases, and do not get a hit on this answer. So you might consider adding some tags or text to the answer so that it pops up in an askubuntu or google search. Some candidates: old release version unsupported expired support Intrepid Ibex repository update archive. Maybe assigning appropriate tags is easier said than done. Sorry if I sent an empty comment previously. Seems it was sent unexpectedly when I merely hit 'enter'.
    – Lizard Boy
    Feb 15, 2012 at 22:17
  • @LizardBoy Thanks - I'll look into trying to make this easier to search for. If the answer has been helpful, please click the tick button to close the question.
    – fossfreedom ♦
    Feb 15, 2012 at 22:19

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