Unable to resolve host address

Question

[Meghna]

I am trying to download a fastq file using its ftp link on ebi.ac.uk and using the command

wget ftp://ftp.sra.ebi.ac.uk/vol1/fastq/ERR224/002/ERR2240092/ERR2240092_2.fastq.gz 

on Ubuntu but I am getting the error "wget:unable to resolve host address 'ftp.sra.ebi.ac.uk'."

Please advice on how to resolve this problem

Answer 1

[Istvan Albert]

You have a problem with your network/internet connection.

It sounds like the domain name resolution is not working correctly.

Check with your sys admins, sometimes these problems are transitory.

[Meghna]

Goodmorning This is what I have tried to resolve the problem but none of it is working

I have increased both the ram and disc space but it has not worked as winscip is still unable to transfer .It has been able to transfer oy 50% of 1 gb

When I am using the wget or curl command directly to download it is not working it is saying could not resolve host: ftp.sra.ebi.ac.uk

I am trying to open the dns configuration file to check using /etc/resolv.conf as root user but it is saying permission denied

[Istvan Albert]

all these errors come from network services,

sounds like you are running Linux from under windows - if otherwise your windows machine works, for example you can connect to the internet from Windows, then it means that your Linux system cannot talk to the Windows system

these are hard things to troubleshoot,

maybe it is just the DNS lookup, the translation of a domain name to IP number that is inoperational - in that case, you can use the IP numbers directly, and see if the code below works, I replaced the domain name with the number

wget ftp://193.62.193.165/vol1/fastq/ERR224/002/ERR2240092/ERR2240092_2.fastq.gz

if that works then use the number instead of the domain name.

If it does not work, you have more significant problems to solve.