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I'm using a docker image as a base for my own development that adds the jessie backports repository in its Dockerfile and uses that to install a dependency. This image uses the following command to add the repository:

echo "deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

The problem is that fetching packages from the backports repository now fails with the following error (this used to work previously):

W: Failed to fetch

http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie-backports/main/binary-amd64/Packages

404  Not Found



W: Failed to fetch

http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie-updates/main/binary-amd64/Packages

 404  Not Found

I looked on that server, and those paths are indeed not present there.

I tried to figure out on the Debian backports site whether this particular repository should still be available, and I didn't find any indication that this was deprecated or something like that.

Is this a temporary issue with the repository, or is the jessie-backports repository not available anymore? And if this is not a temporary issue, what options do I have to use this or an equivalent repository without upgrading to the newer Debian stable version?

Wheezy and Jessie were recently removed from the mirror network, so if you want to continue fetching Jessie backports, you need to use archive.debian.org instead:

deb [check-valid-until=no] http://archive.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main

(Validity checks need to be disabled since the repository is no longer being updated. Jessie’s apt doesn’t support the check-valid-until flag, see inostia’s answer for details, and the configuration summary further down in this answer.)

The jessie-updates repository has been removed: all the updates have been merged with the main repository, and there will be no further non-security updates. Security updates will continue to be provided, on LTS-supported architectures, in the security repository, until June 30, 2020.

Since you’re building a container image, I highly recommend basing it on Debian 9 instead.

To say on Debian 8 (Jessie), your repositories should end up looking like

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ jessie main

deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ jessie main



deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main

deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main



deb http://archive.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main

deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main

without the jessie-updates repository, and you’ll need to disable validity checks in /etc/apt/apt.conf:

Acquire::Check-Valid-Until "false";

(which will apply to all repositories).

After trying solutions suggested by @inostia and @Stephen Kitt I was still getting the following error:

W: Failed to fetch http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie-updates/main/binary-amd64/Packages  404  Not Found



E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

I figured out that it can be solved by removing the line deb http://deb.debian.org/debian jessie-updates main from /etc/apt/sources.list.

I ended up with the following snippet in my Dockerfile:

RUN echo "deb [check-valid-until=no] http://archive.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie-backports.list

RUN sed -i '/deb http://deb.debian.org/debian jessie-updates main/d' /etc/apt/sources.list

RUN apt-get -o Acquire::Check-Valid-Until=false update

This happened to me provisioning a Vagrant box that was using Debian "Jessie".

Following Stephen Kitt's answer, switching to archive.debian.org worked for me, but I had to add it to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie-backports.list, rather than to /etc/apt/sources.list.

echo "deb http://archive.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie-backports.list

I then also got a security error running apt-get update.

Following How to work around "Release file expired" problem on a local mirror, this fixed that error:

apt-get -o Acquire::Check-Valid-Until=false update

For those using NodeJS with older docker image foundations. I had some frozen images that had these older sources for the compilation of extra libs.

Context: if you wanted to install python during a docker build you ran into this issue during a build of the image (within the last 24 hours) as it failed to source dependencies during a docker build.

I tried the archive path recommendations in this post but couldn't get past the 404's. (also coming from the archive.debian.org location as of today)

Solution: I ended up switching to the latest container version of node (which has python libs already pre-installed) that, and updating some libs in the package json (which now also include binary libs that used to want pythyon) made the issue obsolete.

In the end, updating the foundation image for the container stack (node:latest) seemed to be the most straight-forward path to resolution.

Be wary of stale image stacks with binary dependencies included, they'll probably take a while to update the core OS layer.