Repo issue for offline booting

I am  using merlin 3.3.0 in an embedded application.  Things are working Ok 
for the most part, but  occasionally I get error like the following that 
prevent me for booting my app:

Exception: org.apache.avalon.repository.RepositoryRuntimeException
Message: Could not create initial context.
---- cause 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Exception: org.apache.avalon.repository.RepositoryException
Message: None of the repositories 
[file:c:/dev/cs-src/storm/build/servicenet/repository;http://www.dpml.net,http://www.ibibli
o.org/maven,] contained the metadata properties for 
artifact:avalon-repository/avalon-repository-impl#2.0.0
---- cause 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Exception: java.net.ConnectException
Message: Connection timed out: connect
---- stack trace 
---------------------------------------------------------------
java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out: connect
java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(PlainSocketImpl.java:305)
java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(PlainSocketImpl.java:171)
java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(PlainSocketImpl.java:158)
.
.
.


So, I concluded that http://www.dpml.net or http://www.ibiblio.org happened 
to be down (our internal network perhaps is bad). Regardless, I would think 
that sense the application booted successfully many times before, the local 
repository should have been populated with required jars.  But it does not 
seem to have the meta files (avalon-repository-impl-2.0.0.jar.meta).

Are the meta files not supposed to get downloaded too?

If not, how do I ensure the local repository contains all the files (jars 
and meta) required to boot the application offline?

Also to note, when I use my "-offline" and set “avalon.repository.hosts” to 
my local repo, I still get similar exception.

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