How to troubleshoot apt-get connection problems? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
timeout errors in apt-get update/install

I am working at a client where there is no proxy server for connecting to the internet.

I can download URLs with wget from the command line, but trying to install something with apt-get times out after a long time (that is to say, I think it eventually times out, at least it does nothing for a very long time).

How can I troubleshoot connection problems with apt-get? I don't see anything like a verbose switch in the man pages. What does apt-get use for establishing connections? (I assume not wget, because like I said, that works).

Answer 1

My first step when having problems getting packages is to choose a new server. Especially when you are having no other connection issues.

To do this you need to open the software sources dialogue which is available through the software centre.

when you open this you will see in the middle of the first tab a drop down selection. From this you need to choose other... you should then see a window similar to this

Hit the Select Best Server button this will ping all of the servers in the list and choose the closest one for you. Obviously any of the servers which are down will not be selected meaning that which ever is selected will definitely be up.

If you are still having problems after this then it is a more serious problem.

Hope this helps.