> The https failure is Bug#36749, though I'm surprised to hear that it
> fails with plain http as well.

It fails with a different error:

    (bad-signature "archive-contents.sig")

Also get this error if I apply the workaround suggested in that bugreport.
So, the workaround doesn't help here. Can it be that the signature file
is inherited from some other run, i.e. that deleting `/tmp/elpa' is not
enough to achieve a "clean state"?

> Is your 24.5 Emacs linked against an older version of libgnutls?
> Otherwise I would expect it to have the same problem.

Quite possible.  25.3 is self-compiled, while 24.5 is installed from the OS
(Debian) repository.  I didn't manage to compile anything earlier than
25.3 due to various errors.

Paul

On Sat, 25 Jan 2020 at 16:33, Noam Postavsky <npostavs@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 25 Jan 2020 at 09:55, Paul Pogonyshev <pogonyshev@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >     (file-error "https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/archive-contents" "Bad
> Request")
> >
> > for me.  Also fails if I replace "https" with "http" in the command,
> > though with a different error.
>
> The https failure is Bug#36749, though I'm surprised to hear that it
> fails with plain http as well.
>
> > * The command with different Emacs version: 24.5, 26.3 and 28.0.50
> >   (trunk).
>
> Is your 24.5 Emacs linked against an older version of libgnutls?
> Otherwise I would expect it to have the same problem.
>