Microsoft loves Linux so much that packages.microsoft.com has fallen and can't get up

Ubuntu fans report 404 errors amid 'space issues' TITSUP*

Microsoft demonstrated its deep and meaningful affection for all things penguin overnight by borking packages.microsoft.com and leaving some Linux fans bereft of the company's wares.

For some of the hardcore, an absence of Microsoft software on their fiercely open-source setups might not be such a bad thing. For others, however, getting a 404 from an apt-get is a major workflow blocker.

The issue looks, at first glance, to be related to the Ubuntu paths as users struggled with the likes of Microsoft's OpenJDK and its flagship .NET platform.

ODBC packages were also borked, as well as the package link for Visual Studio Code and even poor old Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft has yet to respond to our request for more information, although a software engineer at the Windows behemoth, Rahul Bhandari, posted on GitHub: "Our infra team is still working to resolve this issue. They ran into some space issues but this issue should be resolved quickly. Unfortunately, I do not have an ETA yet."

"Space issues."

If only Microsoft had some super-scalable cloud in which it could stash data. Something that could expand to meet the needs of users. Or just an AWS S3 bucket, if not.

Hey @AzureSupport is there any news on https://t.co/va1rjBSlOf and when it's going to be back online fully? I have customers who's production workloads are now blocked by the multi-hour outage

— pip install darren (@dazfuller) June 17, 2021

The problems appear to be centred around Debian packages on packages.microsoft.com. Some users have reported success using Snap to install .NET while others have spotted the missing packages by using a VPN to connect to a different regional endpoint.

The latter hints to us that maybe there is something amiss with how mirroring has been configured, although we can't imagine Microsoft making a configuration change to its servers that leads to borkage.

For now, however, things remain a little poorly, as it was for us when we tried a tentative apt-get on a sacrificial Ubuntu setup.

We will update this piece should Linux-loving Microsoft get back to us. ®

*Tottering Infrastructure To Scupper User Programming