Why does the eclipse installation of new software failed?

Question

I have just download the eclipse and go to Help -> Install new Software, choose the Helios - http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios

as the repository, then the exception coms out as ,

org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core.ProvisionException: Unable to connect to repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios/compositeContent.jar at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.repository.CacheManager.updateCache(CacheManager.java:357) at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.repository.CacheManager.createCache(CacheManager.java:205) at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.metadata.repository.CompositeMetadataRepositoryFactory.getLocalFile(CompositeMetadataRepositoryFactory.java:74) at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.metadata.repository.CompositeMetadataRepositoryFactory.load(CompositeMetadataRepositoryFactory.java:99) at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.metadata.repository.MetadataRepositoryManager.factoryLoad(MetadataRepositoryManager.java:57) at

I am sure I could download the compositeContent.jar file from http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios/compositeContent.jar for I have downloaded it within the firefox.

So what's wrong?

Answer 1

Since eclipse would typically catch a completely failed connection, your error suggests you are getting part of the update site but not all of it. There's quite a few files in an update site, mainly xml and jars.

If a proxy isn't the issue as Bobby suggested i would first try creating a new workspace and updating then to make sure eclipse hasnt cached anything corrupt. Otherwise you might have to resort to creating a local mirror of the update site.