Arch Linux

gfx010

Member

Registered: 2010-07-05

Posts: 21

Pacman: error: failed retrieving file...

Greetings to everyone,

Let me explain the problem I'm having:

Lets say I have 6 different mirrors defined in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist:
mirror1
mirror2
mirror3
mirror4
mirror5
mirror6

Lets say I want to download a package called gnome-pack that requires 6 dependencies:
gnome-pack
gnome-pack-dep1
gnome-pack-dep2
gnome-pack-dep3
gnome-pack-dep4
gnome-pack-dep5
gnome-pack-dep6

When I issue the command: pacman -S gnome-pack

when it starts to the downloading process, I get many errors:
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep1 from mirror1 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 1)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep1 form mirror2 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 2)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep1 from mirror3 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 3)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep1 from mirror4 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 4)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep1 from mirror5
(1/6) Installing gnome-pack-dep1 [#########] 100% (gnome-pack-dep1 was found in mirror5)

.... downloading gnome-pack-dep2 from mirror1
(2/6) Installing gnome-pack-dep2 [#########] 100% (gnome-pack-dep2 was found in mirror1)

.... downloading gnome-pack-dep3 from mirror1 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 1)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep3 form mirror2 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 2)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep3 from mirror3 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 3)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep3 from mirror4 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 4)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep3 from mirror5 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 5)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep3 from mirror6 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 6)

------------------------(If you noticed you can see that gnome-pack-dep3 was not found in any of the mirrors)

.... downloading gnome-pack-dep4 from mirror1 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 1)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep4 form mirror2 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 2)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep4 from mirror3 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 3)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep4 from mirror4 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 4)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep4 from mirror5 (error: failed retrieving file from mirror 5)
.... downloading gnome-pack-dep4 from mirror6
(4/6) Installing gnome-pack-dep4 [#########] 100% (gnome-pack-dep4 was found in mirror 6)

Do you see what I mean, some dependencies are found in some mirrors and some other dependencies are not found in that same mirror that other dependencies were found, some dependencies are not even found in any of the mirrors, keep in mind that I got those mirrors form the (Pacman Mirrorlist Generator http://www.archlinux.org/mirrorlist/ ) so they are supposed to be working fine but they are not, and I get the same problems if I use the default mirrors from the mirrorlist.

I also noticed that it takes a long time (probably 15-25 seconds) between dependencies to start downloading or to start checking the mirrors for the new dependency.

Why is this happening? This is the only distro that I have come across that has this problem with mirrors, is there a list of mirrors that have all the packages? Is this a mirror problem or is there something wrong with some configuration file that is causing this problem?

Any help would be appreciated thank you.

Last edited by gfx010 (2010-11-16 21:53:39)

wonder

Developer

From: Bucharest, Romania

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 5,941

Website

Re: Pacman: error: failed retrieving file...

its important the (error: failed retrieving file ) and if you are up to date when you are doing that.
1) libfetch too old and you are hitting a bug only when using ftp:// in mirrorlist.
solution is to update libfetch first
pacman -Sy libfetch && pacman -Su

2) old database
solution pacman -Syu

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