Ubuntu

linux-firmware 1.79.4 just continuously downloads

Asked by Neal Starr

I just got done performing a fresh install of 12.04 LTS to an older Toshiba laptop. It has an AMD K125 Athlon II Neo CPU in it, 4GB of RAM, and an 80GB SSD.

When I update the system, however, the package for linux-firmware 1.79.4 just continuously downloads over and over again and never actually installs, and eventually I have to cancel it.

Using the GUI Update Manager, the progress bar just jumps around all over the place on % complete, and typically shows that 32.7MB is downloaded for a file that is reported as being 23.1MB in size, but whenever it finally hits 100%, it just starts over again with the download, and never finishes.

From the command line, doing apt-get upgrade produces similar results - it just continually prints lines like:

Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main linux-firmware all 1.79.4 [23.1 MB]'
Get:2 ...
Get:3 ...
Get:4 ...

ad infinitum, no matter how long I let it sit for. Each time when it gets to 100% downloading it, the system pauses for a second and then just starts over downloading it again.

I can find the file in /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/, but that's about it.

Is there something wrong with this file? All of the other 248 updates that were found after initial install, updated just fine, so I'm stumped about this one package and why it keeps doing this. I've also installed this same version of Ubuntu on other machines in the recent past and have never hit this particular snag on any of those.

Thanks.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

i suggest you report a bug

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Neal Starr (ketzer7) said : 		#2

Ok.. bug filed

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Neal Starr (ketzer7) said : 		#3

Is there any workaround for this problem?

I saw mention of using a dpkg --force-install in another PR, but that seemed to be for a install failure, not the problem I have seen.

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Neal Starr (ketzer7) said : 		#4

And the bug I opened was just set to Invalid..

Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury) wrote 6 minutes ago: #2

Doesn't seem to be a kernel bug.
Changed in linux-firmware (Ubuntu):
status: New → Invalid

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Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#5

A possible workaround (not solving the root cause whatever it might be):

Download the file from http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.79.4_all.deb to a download directory
Copy it to the /var/cache/apt/archives directory (use a terminal command like sudo cp ...)
Open update-manager, deselect all updates, select the update for linux-firmware and press 'update'

If there are any error messages shown please copy/paste the into this question document.

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Kasper Lund (kasper-9) said : 		#6

I have the same problem. Actually the network guy came to me and asked if i knew anything about this url:dk.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.79.4_all.deb - it had generated around 8 TB (TeraBytes) of network traffic the last month!

I had autoapt enabled, and it just downloaded the package forever.

I just tried to fetch the package manually like suggested, and this is what wget does:

tryg@ubuntu-decentral:~$ wget http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.79.4_all.deb
--2013-06-20 08:01:22-- http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.79.4_all.deb
Resolving companyproxy (companyproxy)... 20.60.46.57
Connecting to companyproxy (companyproxy)|20.60.46.57|:3128... connected.
Proxy request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 23128098 (22M) [application/x-debian-package]
Saving to: `linux-firmware_1.79.4_all.deb'

99% [===========================================================================================================> ] 23,117,824 564K/s in 29s

2013-06-20 08:01:52 (779 KB/s) - Connection closed at byte 23117824. Retrying.

--2013-06-20 08:01:53-- (try: 2) http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.79.4_all.deb
Connecting to companyproxy (companyproxy)|20.60.46.57|:3128... connected.
Proxy request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 23128098 (22M) [application/x-debian-package]
Saving to: `linux-firmware_1.79.4_all.deb'

52% [========================================================> ] 12,118,776 872K/s eta 13s ^C

It seems that the connection closes before it's 100% finished and therefore it tries again.

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