Question

Looks to me like there may be a problem with the Ubuntu EC2 mirrors. After a fresh apt-get update, I’m seeting this:

$ apt-get install -yq git
E: Unable to locate package git

After a few more apt-get‘s, it will often succeed.

Answer 1

The mirrors still seem to be broken, but I was able to work around the issue with a dumb loop:

# stupid loop to get around ubuntu package mirror problems
for attempt in 1 2 3; do
  if [ ! -z "`which git`" ]; then
    break
  fi
  echo "Trying to install git, attempt $attempt"
  sudo apt-get update -yq --fix-missing
  sudo apt-get install -yq git
done

3 attempts is usually enough to find a working mirror.