Failed to download ‘melpa-stable’ archive. GnuTLS : Contacting host: 443

Question

I am trying to install packages/modes from melpa on my emacs27.1, but I am unable to do so. If I run M-x package-refresh-contents , I get the following error :

Importing package-keyring.gpg...done
Contacting host: elpa.gnu.org:443
gnutls.el: (err=[-50] The request is invalid.) boot: (:priority NORMAL:-VERS-TLS1.3 :hostname elpa.gnu.org :loglevel 0 :min-prime-bits nil :trustfiles (/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt) :crlfiles nil :keylist nil :verify-flags nil :verify-error nil :callbacks nil)
Failed to download ‘gnu’ archive.
gnutls.el: (err=[-50] The request is invalid.) boot: (:priority NORMAL:-VERS-TLS1.3 :hostname stable.melpa.org :loglevel 0 :min-prime-bits nil :trustfiles (/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt) :crlfiles nil :keylist nil :verify-flags nil :verify-error nil :callbacks nil)
Package refresh done
Failed to download ‘melpa-stable’ archive.
You can run the command ‘package-refresh-contents’ with M-x pa-r- RET
Failed to download ‘melpa-stable’ archive.

My emacs init file has the following commands corresponding to this function:

(setq gnutls-algorithm-priority "NORMAL:-VERS-TLS1.3")
(package-initialize)
(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("melpa-stable" . "https://stable.melpa.org/packages/") t)

By tracing a little I thought the error might be due to GnuTLS and it could not connect to the internet. So I tried M-x eww RET https://www.wikipedia.org/ RET, it stops at Contacting host: www.wikipedia.org:443 and does not load anything.

Prior to this, I was running on emacs25 (updated to 27.1 thinking this error would go away), and when I ran M-x eww RET https://www.wikipedia.org/ RET on emacs25, I would get

Contacting host: www.wikipedia.org:443
gnutls.el: (err=[-50] The request is invalid.) boot: (:priority NORMAL:-VERS-TLS1.3 :hostname www.wikipedia.org :loglevel 0 :min-prime-bits 256 :trustfiles (/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt) :crlfiles nil :keylist nil :verify-flags nil :verify-error nil :callbacks nil)
gnutls-negotiate: GnuTLS error: #<process www.wikipedia.org>, -50

Though I am running on Ubuntu 18.04LTS I tried the answer mentioned here hoping it would work, but unfortunately it did not. Please let me know if I need to add something more to my init file, or download some certificate or anything else.

Answer 1

Not much of an answer but too long for a comment...

Among the various Emacs that I'm using, I use the default emacs-nox package from Ubuntu 18.04 (v25.2.2), and the default emacs-nox package from Ubuntu 21.04 (v27.1). I ​have the following for my package+use-package config. Connections to elpa/melpa, and https websites via eww are working fine for me. This is basically universal to all my Emacs configs.

If it wasn't for your errors with eww I'd have just blamed your issue on elpa being elpa...

Maybe the addition to gnutls-trustfiles ​will make a difference for you?

(require 'package)
(when (>= emacs-major-version 27)
 ​(setq gnutls-algorithm-priority "NORMAL:-VERS-TLS1.3"))
(add-to-list 'package-archives
            ​'("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/") t)
(package-initialize)

;; Bootstrap 'use-package'
(eval-after-load 'gnutls
 ​'(add-to-list 'gnutls-trustfiles "/etc/ssl/cert.pem"))
(unless (package-installed-p 'use-package)
 ​(package-refresh-contents)
 ​(package-install 'use-package))
(eval-when-compile
 ​(require 'use-package))
(require 'bind-key)