Issue Debian Zabbix Packages cause problem for package manager

[TimReeves]

Hi all,

recently I've been seeing quite a lot of E-Mails with error reports like this:

Reason: 2018-01-17 06:29:17 INFO: pum is called with arguments: ['--list', '--repo-info', '--json']
2018-01-17 06:32:09 ERROR: W:Failed to fetch http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/3.2/debian/dists/jessie/main/i18n/Translation-en Unable to connect to repo.zabbix.com:http:
, E:Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
2018-01-17 06:32:09 ERROR: Exited with returncode 1.

Yeah, sure there is probably some problem on the Zabbix-Repo side (called manually it often causes a longish wait). BUT I have not changed anything around the apt sources, and earlier it all worked fine.

What I have noticed is this: When I call apt-get update on such a server, I see:

Hit Zabbix Official Repository jessie/main Sources
Hit Zabbix Official Repository jessie/main amd64 Packages
Hit Zabbix Official Repository jessie/main i386 Packages
Ign Zabbix Official Repository jessie/main Translation-en

Notice that the Translation, which is causing the error mail from PUM, here gets ignored, and apt-get terminates with exit 0.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Tim

 

[IgorG]

I would suggest you check and modify if necessary Zabbix repository setting in something like /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zabbix.list
Maybe you have another path and file name, but it should be in /etc/apt/... anyway.

 

[TimReeves]

This is not a bug in the Zabbix repo. It is the default way APT works - always trying to download at least the "en" translation package, but Zabbix does not provide one. You can tune apt-get to never try fetching ANY package translation files (assuming you are happy with english OS):

# cat >/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99translations
Acquire::Languages "none";
^D

You may also need to remove existing translation files in /var/lib/apt/lists/
# cd /var/lib/apt/lists
# rm *i18n*
(but in my experience after calling "apt-get update" they are autoremoved anyway).

 

[TimReeves]

I've still been having problems, with the zabbix repo not being able to be read sometimes. When I click on the links in the error report, there is no problem, they work fine in the browser. I'm a bit stumped.

But I have found one way to alleviate the problem slightly, by limiting apt to not try to access the i386 versions which I don't need - that saves one possible timeout.

Edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zabbix.list to look like this:
deb [ arch=amd64 ] http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/3.2/debian jessie main
deb-src [ arch=amd64 ] Index of /zabbix/3.2/debian jessie main

That's for Zabbix 3.2 on Jessie, you need to use your own architecture - just add "[ arch=amd64 ]" right after "deb" in the file which is already there.

Hope this helps!