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apt-get update slow when LANG != C?

For a few weeks now, aptitude is really slow updating the package list — downloading the lists is actually fast as normal but it always waits for a minute or so with a 99% [Warten auf Kopfzeilen] (Waiting for headers) message. I tried apt-get update — same problem.

Now the funny thing is: LANG=C apt-get update or LANG=C aptitude -u works just fine! I also tested with LANG=de_DE, it_IT, fr_FR and even en_US — always slow, so it looks it always occurs when LANG is not set to C?

Anyone else noticed this problem? I skimmed through the bug reports of apt, but didn’t find a similar bug.

Update: Looks like google-chrome is the problem! Commenting out the content of /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list, as Jaime suggested in the comments, everything worked fine again.

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9 Responses to “apt-get update slow when LANG != C?”

  1. Frank Groeneveld Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 10:08 am

    Bizarro! I have the exact same behaviour. Good to know this work-around, because it was annoying to wait.

  2. Axel Beckert Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 10:09 am

    I remember that “aptitude update” also shows messages about downloading translations after downloading package lists. It probably doesn’t do that if LANG=C is set. Maybe “aptitude -u” misses to display that information in the user interface. In fact I can’t remember having seen that message in text-mode user interface. But it’s also possible that I just never have noticed it…

    Not sure if apt-get update downloads them, too.

  3. Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 10:25 am

    No such problem here.

  4. Jaime Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 10:29 am

    I don’t know if your problem is the same as mine, but I had exactly the same symptoms until I remmed out the contents of /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list (apparently there’s a known bug about this).

  5. Bastian Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 10:35 am

    Thanks Jaime, that’s it. Do you have a link to the bug report?

  6. Michael Croes Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 11:06 am

    Same issue for me, but I also have the google-chrome repo… Good work spotting this one!

  7. Jaime Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 11:08 am

    Hi Bastian. I’m glad that I could help you. Try:

    http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=38608
    http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=39119
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/528925
    http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=49962

    Jaime :-)

  8. Vakio Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 12:33 pm

    Here’s the bug report: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=38608

  9. Robert Says:
    March 30th, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    Thanks for the tip.

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