apt-get update hangs when apt-transport-https is not installed

I'm not sure when we fixed that, but we did. So bionic works fine. Not sure about artful.

Queued the fix for xenial in my repo for CI.

Is it possible to backport this to trusty too? This bit us hard, and there are a lot of people out there posting this problem but with no solution.

I think so, but I don't think it's worth pushing out an update just for that change. It's been broken since forever, so it's not like it's fixing a regression or something; so I'd probably wait for something else to attach it to.

Or rather, I'm not sure it's worth it. I plan to look at other fixes in 1.6 soon, and see which of these we need for stable series.

In our case it burned a number of days of dev time, so this is definitely causing pain.

We've never seen this before because until docker, we have not encountered a system where apt-transport-https wasn't installed by default.

Hello Graham, or anyone else affected,

Accepted apt into xenial-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/1.2.27 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed.Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-xenial to verification-done-xenial. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-xenial. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

No package in proposed yet.

curl http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial-backports/main/binary-amd64/Packages.xz | xzcat | grep ^Package

does not show apt. odd.

huh, why did it say backports? Me looks again, and sees the package.

Verified now, despite me not changing my verification script. Odd.

with 1.2.26, it times out:

+ lxc exec lp1762766-xenial -- sh -c 'apt-cache policy apt libapt-pkg5.0 | grep Inst ; timeout 5s apt update'
  Installed: 1.2.26
  Installed: 1.2.26
0% [Working]+ lxc stop lp1762766-xenial

with 1.2.27, it works fine:

+ lxc exec lp1762766-xenial -- sh -c 'apt-cache policy apt libapt-pkg5.0 | grep Inst ; timeout 5s apt update'
  Installed: 1.2.27
  Installed: 1.2.27
Reading package lists... Done
E: The method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/httpx could not be found.
E: The method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/httpx could not be found.
E: Failed to fetch httpx://invalid.mirror.example.com/dists/bionic/InRelease
E: Failed to fetch httpx://invalid.mirror.example.com/dists/bionic-updates/InRelease
E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

The verification of the Stable Release Update for apt has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.

This bug was fixed in the package apt - 1.2.27

---------------
apt (1.2.27) xenial; urgency=medium

  [ David Kalnischkies ]
  * don't hang if multiple sources use unavailable method (Closes: 870675)
    (LP: #1762766)

  [ Julian Andres Klode ]
  * Fix lock counting in debSystem (LP: #1778547)
  * apt.conf.autoremove: Catch some new Ubuntu module packages (LP: #1778551)

 -- Julian Andres Klode <email address hidden> Tue, 26 Jun 2018 12:55:03 +0200