Update Manager hangs in Ubuntu 8.04 (and how to fix it)

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by

Simon Scullion

Since I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04, I had noticed that Update Manager was hanging, but not bothered to look into fixing it.

Tonight I did, and a quick search on google lead me to this post on Joe Wein’s blog with a clear explanation on how to solve the issue:

Last month I upgraded my notebook from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 (”Hardy Heron”). Since then, whenever I tried tried to install the up to 133 updates that had become available, the Update Manager would hang indefinitely instead of prompting me for the user password.

If you’re in the same situation, the following tips might help you. Edit /etc/hosts with an editor of your choice (e.g. sudo vi /etc/hosts). There should be two entries with IPv4 addresses starting with 127.0.x.x, like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 mycomputername.mydomain

Remove the domain name from the entry starting with 127.0.1.1, leaving only the computer name and save the file. Now try again.

When I made this change I got the password prompt as expected and all the updates where downloaded and applied.

Thanks Joe!

Comments

2 responses to “Update Manager hangs in Ubuntu 8.04 (and how to fix it)”

  1. Honus Wagner avatar
    Honus Wagner

    Awesome! Thanks for the post!

    Reply
    1. Simon Scullion avatar
      Simon Scullion

      Hi Honus, glad it helped, thanks for stopping by!

      Reply

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