503 response codes from the store when upgrading the chromium deb to the snap

store
1

Since the release of Ubuntu 20.04, I am seeing bug reports of a failure to upgrade the chromium-browser deb package, such as bug #1874837. The preinstallation script for the updated deb installs the snap, and it appears the store is returning 503 error codes:

=> Installing the chromium snap
==> Checking connectivity with the snap store
==> Installing the chromium snap
error: cannot install "chromium": cannot query the store for updates: got unexpected HTTP status
       code 503 via POST to "https://api.snapcraft.io/v2/snaps/refresh"

My stock answer so far has been to try and reinstall, which seems to consistently succeed.
This is not happening all the time, but I’ve gotten enough reports that I think this should be looked into. Are there known availability problems with the store? What can be done to improve/fix this?

2

The Snap Store was briefly unavailable a few times over the weekend, due to load from the release of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. We’ve expanded capacity and things have been stable for 48 hours now.

You can always find the latest Store status at https://status.snapcraft.io/. It’s updated automatically, but we also add manual status updates when things are happening.

3

I noticed that on reddit as well. The reality is: this is the internet. Things break sometimes. Perhaps there are some things on the store that can be improved, but that won’t prevent this from ever happening. Is there a way to make that deb installation process more robust to such failures?

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