"The App Store is temporarily unavailable." Why can't I connect?

Question

Level 2

311 points

"The App Store is temporarily unavailable." Why can't I connect?

Ever since I installed Mountain Lion 10.8.5 I have not been able to fetch any updates from The App Store. Whenever I click on the App Store toolbar button that says there are updates available or I try to get to the updates from Software Update, the spinner activates in the App Store toolbar for a minute or so, and then the App Store displays the following drop-down dialog:

We could not complete your App Store request.

The App Store is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

Trying again later is useless. I've probably tried a dozen times, on different days, at different times of the day, all to no avail. It's not an Internet connectivity issue. I can connect to the App Store itself, and I can log in to my account.

I would just as soon not even use the App Store for software updates, but it appears that Apple doesn't provide an alternative. I would appreciate any help in either a solution or a workaround.

Thanks!

Posted on Apr 4, 2014 10:14 AM

Reply

Answer 1

seventy one

Level 7

27,424 points

Apr 4, 2014 10:33 AM in response to freevito

Do you have any anti Virus (Norton etc) installed? If so which.

Reply

Answer 2

freevito Author

Level 2

311 points

Apr 4, 2014 10:48 AM in response to seventy one

I have Sophos Antivirus for Mac installed. I turned off the On-access Scanning in case that was the problem, but it didn't solve the problem.

Reply

Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,541 points

Apr 4, 2014 11:25 AM in response to freevito

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.

Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try the action that you're having trouble with again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).

When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Reply

Answer 4

Apr 4, 2014 11:29 AM in response to freevito

We could not complete your App Store request.

The App Store is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

Have you tried restarting your Mac ??

Reply

Answer 5

freevito Author

Level 2

311 points

Apr 4, 2014 1:44 PM in response to Carolyn Samit

Carolyn Samit wrote:

We could not complete your App Store request.

The App Store is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

Have you tried restarting your Mac ??

Yes...at least once daily.

Reply

Answer 6

freevito Author

Level 2

311 points

Apr 4, 2014 2:15 PM in response to Linc Davis

Linc Davis wrote:

Launch the Console application...

Then try the action that you're having trouble with again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).

Hi Linc:

Thanks for your reply. I didn't need to clear all messages from Console. It was easy enough to visually monitor the display and see what messages appeared during the process, start to finish, of attempting to connect to the App Store. Here they are:

2014/4/04 1:47:03.014 PM storeagent[338]: CKSoftwareMap: updateRequestBodyData:includeInstalledApps:includeBundledApps:conditionally:had UnadoptedApps:waitUntilMapIsLoaded: timed out waiting for mdSemaphore

2014/4/04 1:47:03.766 PM App Store[13691]: CKSoftwareMap: updateRequestBodyData:includeInstalledApps:includeBundledApps:conditionally:had UnadoptedApps:waitUntilMapIsLoaded: timed out waiting for mdSemaphore

2014/4/04 1:47:08.082 PM cfprefsd[270]: CFPreferences: error renaming file com.apple.loginwindow.6F7E361B-80C3-5C21-AF21-FC249B14F73C.plist.VN4wivi to com.apple.loginwindow.6F7E361B-80C3-5C21-AF21-FC249B14F73C.plist, errno was 1.

2014/4/04 1:47:13.774 PM App Store[13691]: CKSoftwareMap: updateRequestBodyData:includeInstalledApps:includeBundledApps:conditionally:had UnadoptedApps:waitUntilMapIsLoaded: timed out waiting for mdSemaphore

2014/4/04 1:47:13.778 PM App Store[13691]: Persistent UI failed to open file file://localhost/Users/xxxxx/Library/Saved%20Application%20State/com.apple.apps tore.savedState/window_1.data: No such file or directory (2)

2014/4/04 1:47:14.090 PM App Store[13691]: FRWebDelegate: Received http status code 500 on response.

2014/4/04 1:47:19.883 PM Dock[279]: LaunchPad: __53-[LPAppManager(StoreSupport) _acceptStoreConnection:]_block_invoke_0 app store xpc message error: Connection invalid

2014/4/04 1:47:23.782 PM storeagent[338]: CKSoftwareMap: updateRequestBodyData:includeInstalledApps:includeBundledApps:conditionally:had UnadoptedApps:waitUntilMapIsLoaded: timed out waiting for mdSemaphore

2014/4/04 1:47:38.085 PM cfprefsd[270]: CFPreferences: error renaming file com.apple.loginwindow.6F7E361B-80C3-5C21-AF21-FC249B14F73C.plist.6EJ9dwW to com.apple.loginwindow.6F7E361B-80C3-5C21-AF21-FC249B14F73C.plist, errno was 1.

The Console log shows that App Store was waiting for mdSemaphore, which immediately suggested that it might have something to do with Spotlight (...which I have deliberately disabled). So I opened Terminal and used the following command...

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

...to re-enable Spotlight, and then retried the connection to the App Store. That solved the problem. I'll download the Safari update and then disable Spotlight again...and I'll just have to remember to re-enable it whenever I need to fetch updates from the App Store.

Problem solved! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, amigo! 😀

Reply

Answer 7

ramzasar

Level 1

0 points

Feb 28, 2015 4:34 PM in response to Linc Davis

Link Hi could you please help???

I updated my Mac operating system to 10.8.5 Mountain Lion and since then I am having that same issue when attempting to go to the App store to download printer driver updates

The error message is "The App Store is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."

Can you help?? I followed your suggestion about clearing the messages in the console and tried again and it still didn't work

Here are the new host of errors

2015-02-28 7:17:52.499 PM Dock[167]: LaunchPad: __53-[LPAppManager(StoreSupport) _acceptStoreConnection:]_block_invoke_0 app store xpc message error: Connection invalid

2015-02-28 7:18:11.582 PM App Store[428]: CKSoftwareMap: updateRequestBodyData:includeInstalledApps:includeBundledApps:conditionally:had UnadoptedApps:waitUntilMapIsLoaded: timed out waiting for mdSemaphore

2015-02-28 7:18:21.595 PM App Store[428]: CKSoftwareMap: updateRequestBodyData:includeInstalledApps:includeBundledApps:conditionally:had UnadoptedApps:waitUntilMapIsLoaded: timed out waiting for mdSemaphore

2015-02-28 7:18:21.890 PM App Store[428]: FRWebDelegate: Received http status code 500 on response.

2015-02-28 7:18:34.200 PM App Store[428]: No alternate URLs found for packageId MobileDevice

2015-02-28 7:18:35.094 PM App Store[428]: No alternate URLs found for packageId com.apple.pkg.MakeQueuesScript

2015-02-28 7:31:46.000 PM kernel[0]: [BluetoothHCIReadDeviceAddress] fails because POWER IS OFF

2015-02-28 7:31:46.000 PM kernel[0]: [BluetoothHCIReadScanEnable] fails because POWER IS OFF

Reply

Answer 8

Neza1

Level 1

0 points

Aug 4, 2015 1:12 PM in response to Linc Davis

Hey I ran into your post and was wondering if you can please take a look at information I recived from my console below,

8/4/15 4:05:31.354 PM App Store[414]: FRWebDelegate: Received http status code 400 on response.

8/4/15 4:05:36.575 PM App Store[414]: No alternate URLs found for packageId com.apple.pkg.MakeQueuesScript

8/4/15 4:05:36.577 PM App Store[414]: No alternate URLs found for packageId MobileDevice

My app store has been giving the un available status for some time now, I'm trying to upgrade my O.S

Thanks in advance for your time.

Jeff

Reply