App Manager get stuck on "checking for updates" on wi-fi, works fine on cellular

[krisse]

Wasn't sure where to put this as the Troubleshooting forum is now "old", but...

If I'm using wlan/wi-fi on the N900, it continually gets stuck on the "Checking For Updates" dialogue box of the Applications Manager.

The device hasn't crashed, I can run other applications fine.

The Wi-Fi connection is fine too as I can surf the web on the same device, use Skype etc.

AFAIK the problem is entirely confined to the Application Manager. It just carries on checking for updates, and eventually times out. I've only had this device a couple of days now, but I have never managed to get the Application Manager to update through wi-fi.

If I switch the connection to cellular (either 3G or EDGE) I can use the App Manager without any problems.

This has me scratching my head, the wi-fi works for everything else, the App Manager works on cellular, so why does the App Manager + Wi-Fi cause problems?

Has anyone come across this? I tried searching and found somewhat similar reports, but not to do with the app manager.

[Ricardo]

Take a look at the log (open the App. Manager menu to find it). It should give you a hint about your problem.

I had a very similar problem (might even be the same one, I guess). Please see this other thread for more information: Can't install SDK: apt-get timeouts inside scratchbox

[kwotski]

Might just be worth checking the command

ping repository.maemo.org

from X-terminal. If you see the IP address 1.0.0.0 come up, then you have a wifi router dns that's not working well with the resolver libs. Other commandline programs would generally have this problem, but the browser doesn't seem to, so if you have used hostnames with programs from the commandline successfully this probably isn't the issue.

[krisse]

Okay, I waited for a time-out again and the Nokia Applications and Nokia System Software Updates catalogues both give the error:

https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fr...mr0/./Packages
Resolving host timed out: downloads.maemo.nokia.com

Here's something interesting though, if I disable those two catalogues and enable Maemo Extras (which is at http://repository.maemo.org/extras/), it updates through wi-fi without any problems.

So the downloads.maemo.nokia.com catalogues cannot update through wi-fi, but the repository.maemo.org catalogue can.

[krisse]

...so can we assume that downloads.maemo.nokia.com is somehow incorrectly configured? Because everything else works fine.

[sljonson]

Originally Posted by krisse

...so can we assume that downloads.maemo.nokia.com is somehow incorrectly configured? Because everything else works fine.

That is the proper host name. The error message you posted is a DNS error. The error means that the N900 didn't get any answer when trying to get the IP address to downloads.maemo.nokia.com. Ther are either network issues between your N900 and Nokia's DNS servers. Or Nokia's DNS server are having some issues.

In short, the problem isn't on your end. You can't fix it. You can try to open a ticket with your ISP. They should be able to figure out very quickly (when they get to it) if it's a network connectivity problem. I haven't seen the anyone else complain that Nokia.com, et al is down. So I'm gonna guess it a network connectivity or routing issues of some sort.

[krisse]

Hmm... if I try to visit https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fr...e/mr0/Packages through my PC's browser, I get the warning: "Certificate belongs to a different site, which could indicate an identity theft"

Could it be that the security certificate on downloads.maemo.nokia.com displaying the wrong address is causing these problems?

[krisse]

Also, looking at the log file, it contains the phrase "Ignoring version from wrong domain" which sounds a bit like the PC browser warning about the security certificate.

I'm not an expert on this, but could nokia.com's certificate error be the cause here?

[sljonson]

No. As I posted. The problem was a DNS timeout error. In the venacular is that DNS resolver on the N900 failed to resolve the host name of the site. Basically it means a device looking up the IP address of for a given host name.

[krisse]

The certificate belongs to Akamai, so this sounds like some kind of cacheing problem perhaps?

That might explain why I'm seeing this problem when others aren't.