can not access melpa packages- hung up at Contacting host: elpa.gnu.org:80

Question

I am trying to access the melpa packages but when typing:

package-refresh-contents

emacs gets hung up at: "Contacting host: elpa.gnu.org:80"

I am completely new to emacs and fairly new to Linux and I have been stuck on this for a few hours.

I found this question on stackoverflow below:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29085937/package-refresh-contents-hangs-at-contacting-host-elpa-gnu-org80

and added:

(setq package-archives '(("gnu" . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/")
             ("marmalade" . "http://marmalade-repo.org/packages/")
             ("melpa" . "http://melpa.org/packages/")))

but it did not help.

I also tried switching https to http but that did not help either.

Can someone please help? Any suggestions or references would be much appreciated. Below is a screen shot of my code.

Answer 1

I was not able to overcome this problem although I tried the solutions suggested here and there.

I ended up by installing emacs25 and this problem did not occur.

Answer 2

Here are some alternatives for you in case you cannot access the official sites.

First:

(setq package-archives '(("gnu"   . "http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/elpa/gnu/")
                         ("melpa" . "http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/elpa/melpa/")))

Second:

(setq package-archives '(("gnu"   . "http://elpa.emacs-china.org/gnu/")
                         ("melpa" . "http://elpa.emacs-china.org/melpa/")))

choose one to replace your settings listed above.

You can try to open the sites in your browser to check which sites you can access.