I just changed some settings to reassign ftp.ne.jp to Japan (and not Australia). Can you retry now?

Once you retried, I would like to run the commands below and then paste me the whole output you get so that I can try to figure out what's wrong...

host ftp.ne.jp
curl -4 -sI http://ftp.ne.jp/Linux/packages/kali/kali/dists/kali-rolling/Release
curl -6 -sI http://ftp.ne.jp/Linux/packages/kali/kali/dists/kali-rolling/Release

echo "deb http://ftp.ne.jp/Linux/packages/kali/kali/ kali-rolling main contrib non-free" >/etc/apt/sources.list
apt update

echo "deb http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/kali/ kali-rolling main contrib non-free" >/etc/apt/sources.list
apt update

Also do you have the same problem with the recently released 2016.2 ISO released recently?

Hi Rhertzog,

Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately the errors still appear so I will provide you with the paste of each of those commands.

host ftp.ne.jp:
ftp.ne.jp has address 192.26.91.193
ftp.ne.jp has IPv6 address 2001:200:601:10:206:5bff:fef0:466c
ftp.ne.jp mail is handled by 200 zen.kddilabs.jp.
ftp.ne.jp mail is handled by 100 mandala.kddilabs.jp.

curl -4 -sI http://ftp.ne.jp/Linux/packages/kali/kali/dists/kali-rolling/Release:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 02 Sep 2016 14:17:45 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.18 (Unix)
Last-Modified: Fri, 02 Sep 2016 00:05:58 GMT
ETag: "73ad-53b7b1850466c"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 29613

curl -6 -sI http://ftp.ne.jp/Linux/packages/kali/kali/dists/kali-rolling/Release:
NO OUTPUT but no error message so I assume success

echo "deb http://ftp.ne.jp/Linux/packages/kali/kali/ kali-rolling main contrib non-free" >/etc/apt/sources.list:
NO OUTPUT but no error message so I assume success

apt update:
Ign:1 http://ftp.ne.jp/Linux/packages/kali/kali kali-rolling InRelease
Err:2 http://ftp.ne.jp/Linux/packages/kali/kali kali-rolling Release
Unable to connect to :http:
Reading package lists... Done
E: The repository 'http://ftp.ne.jp/Linux/packages/kali/kali kali-rolling Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

echo "deb http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/kali/ kali-rolling main contrib non-free" >/etc/apt/sources.list:
NO OUTPUT but no error message so I assume success

echo "deb http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/kali/ kali-rolling main contrib non-free" >/etc/apt/sources.list:
More progress than ever

OUTPUT: Get:1 http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/kali kali-rolling InRelease [30.5 kB]
Get:2 http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/kali kali-rolling/main i386 Packages [13.9 MB]
Get:3 http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/kali kali-rolling/contrib i386 Packages [87.1 kB]
Get:4 http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/kali kali-rolling/non-free i386 Packages [134 kB]
Fetched 14.1 MB in 47s (297 kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
1629 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

To answer your other question no I have not tried the recently released 2016.2 as I have only been using this version. I thought that if the apt-get update was working it would automatically update to that as well. But I am probably wrong. But I have tried this on multiple kali installs which are 2016.1 from memory and all had the same reported error.

I may take 24 hours to reply to future replies as I work during the weekend.

Thanks again!

Do you have working IPv6 configured?

What's the output of the following commands?

ip -6 a
ip -6 r

Hi Rhertzog,

I'm very sorry but I've already shut down my system as I'm about to sleep.

I don't use ipv6 so I wouldn't believe that anything would output under that command. I only use IPv4

Thanks again

Hi Rhertzog,

The output of ip -6 a:

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 state UNKNOWN
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 state UP qlen 1000
inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe30:f86c/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Output of ip -6 r:

fe80::/64 dev eth0 proto kernel metric 256 pref medium

Cheers

Ok, a new set of commands to try to get some more data. First we install strace:

echo "deb http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/kali/ kali-rolling main contrib non-free" >/etc/apt/sources.list
apt update
apt install strace

Then we put back the problematic configuration and run strace to see what happens at the system calls level:
echo "deb http://ftp.ne.jp/Linux/packages/kali/kali/ kali-rolling main contrib non-free" >/etc/apt/sources.list
strace -f -s 200 -o log apt update
gzip log

And you attach here the "log.gz" file that this process created. Thank you!

Hi Rhertzog,

Have run above commands and have uploaded the log.gz file to this thread above in the upload file section!

Thank you!!

Thanks, what does "host _http._tcp.ftp.ne.jp" give on your computer?

I ran the command host _http._tcp.ftp.ne.jp in terminal. When I pressed enter it just went to a new line and no output. Is this what you needed to know?

Bah, it looks like this behaviour is specific to old apt versions. With the latest apt in kali-rolling and kali 2016.2, the access to the mirror is working.

Can you confirm the version of apt that you are using?

dpkg -s apt | grep Version

Version: 1.2.1

Is what came up with that command.

if it isn't fixable, I may download 2016.2 and just tell my colleagues to do the same.

Cheers!

Well, it is fixable by a fix at the DNS level. I pinged the mirror maintainer about it but in the mean time I can only recommend you to use kali 2016.2.

We only ever support our latest release.