I don't know exactly what the rationale is, but Ubuntu makes it a bit harder to install packages on versions that they no longer support. It seems that Ubuntu is nice enough to continue hosting files for the older versions, but you are on your own to discover how to access those files.
This is managed from /etc/apt/sources.list
and additional files under /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
. Getting to know the content of these lists is helpful for managing your installable components. Note: This is documented at man sources.list
.
Let's say you have something like the following...
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick main restricted universe
Notice that this line contains a URL component. The trick is that the line is only a shorthand for the actual URL(s) that are indicated, which in this case, are...
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick/main/
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick/restricted/
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick/universe/
The question is, are these URLs still valid? The answer is no, they no longer exist.
The solution is to identify the defunct lines in your sources.list files and modify them with the updated location -- which in this case is...
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick main restricted universe
Note: There are typically multiple entries in sources.list. It may be that not all of them require this type of modification -- so you have to be a bit selective, for example manually checking each entry. The short answer is: replace archive.ubuntu.com
with old-releases.ubuntu.com
.
After modifying this file, you need to run the following before running apt-get install
:
$ sudo apt-get update