Knowledge Base

Updating Plesk or system packages on CentOS 8 server fails: Failed to download metadata for repo: Cannot prepare internal mirrorlist: No URLs in mirrorlist

After January 31st, 2022, updating Plesk or system packages either via Tools & Settings > System Updates or manually with dnf update on a server with CentOS 8 fails:

Failed to check system configuration - Yum utility finished with errors. Installation may fail.
dnf.exceptions.RepoError: Failed to download metadata for repo 'appstream': Cannot prepare external mirrorlist: No URLs in mirrorlist

Plesk pre-upgrade check
Error: Cache-only enabled but no cache for 'appstream'
WARNING: Unable to detect package duplicates: /usr/bin/package-cleanup --dupes returns 1.Output is:

Note: repository name in the error may be different, for example, baseos or powertools.
In the Tools & Settings > Updates menu buttons may be greyed out and the following error may be present:

There are no products for your operating system
( 'CentOS' 'Linux' '8.2.2004' 'x86_64' ) available
from the selected source.

CentOS 8 reached its end-of-life on December 31st, 2021, and thus, since January 31st, 2022, repositories for that OS were disabled by its vendor and archived to https://vault.centos.org/.

Use one of the solutions:

Convert the server in-place to AlmaLinux 8 (recommended), Rocky Linux 8, or CloudLinux 8 (note that CloudLinux is a paid OS).
Deploy a new Plesk server with a supported operating system and migrate to it using Plesk Migrator.
Temporary solution: configure archived repositories (not recommended)
1. Connect to the server using SSH.
2. Edit the files /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Linux-AppStream.repo, /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Linux-BaseOS.repo, and /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Linux-PowerTools.repo so they look like below:
  - /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Linux-AppStream.repo:
    
    [appstream]
    name=CentOS Linux $releasever - AppStream
    baseurl=http://vault.centos.org/$contentdir/$releasever/AppStream/$basearch/os/
    gpgcheck=1
    enabled=1
    gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-centosofficial
  - /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Linux-BaseOS.repo:
    
    [baseos]
    name=CentOS Linux $releasever - BaseOS
    baseurl=http://vault.centos.org/$contentdir/$releasever/BaseOS/$basearch/os/
    gpgcheck=1
    enabled=1
    gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-centosofficial
  - /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Linux-PowerTools.repo:
    
    [powertools]
    name=CentOS Linux $releasever - PowerTools
    baseurl=http://vault.centos.org/$contentdir/$releasever/PowerTools/$basearch/os/
    gpgcheck=1
    enabled=1
    gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-centosofficial