Arch Linux

Malvineous

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2011-02-03

Posts: 193

Website

[SOLVED] pacman doesn't see .tar.xz files copied into /var by hand

Hi all,

To save some bandwidth, I have copied the .tar.xz files from one upgrade into /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ on a different Arch instance and then run 'pacman -Syu', expecting it to pick up these packages so I don't have to download them all again.

Unfortunately however, pacman doesn't see them, and still downloads the same files all over again.  It actually deletes the .tar.xz file, downloads it with .part on the end of the filename, then renames it back to .tar.xz, with exactly the same content that was there before!

What's odd is that if I stop the process and then re-run 'pacman -Su' the amount to download has decreased by the packages that *were* downloaded, but the ones I copied there manually are still included in the remaining download amount.  All the package versions are exactly the same.

How can I make pacman use the .tar.xz files I copied there instead of re-downloading the same files?  I had assumed that just copying the files there would be enough, given that the wiki instructions for network sharing the pacman cache imply that having .tar.xz files in that folder is all that is required.

Last edited by Malvineous (2012-06-17 03:49:46)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,462

Website

Re: [SOLVED] pacman doesn't see .tar.xz files copied into /var by hand

Did you also move the sync databases?

If this is a one time event to get the new machine up and running, you could just do `pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/*`

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

Malvineous

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2011-02-03

Posts: 193

Website

Re: [SOLVED] pacman doesn't see .tar.xz files copied into /var by hand

No, I didn't move the sync databases - aren't these updated with 'pacman -Sy'?  Where are they stored?

Thanks for the -U suggestion - yes, this is a one time event so that will work, many thanks!

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,318

Re: [SOLVED] pacman doesn't see .tar.xz files copied into /var by hand

You could also create a custom repository in another folder and use it to install the packages. (add it before the core repo in your config) After the installation remove the custom repo to use the official repositories from now on. pacman -U is easier faster, though.

Last edited by progandy (2012-06-17 03:21:03)

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Malvineous

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2011-02-03

Posts: 193

Website

Re: [SOLVED] pacman doesn't see .tar.xz files copied into /var by hand

Ok, turns out this was my error.  I intentionally skipped some packages (which I thought were breaking the system) so when I did the upgrade it was actually picking up the copied packages and trying to download just the ones which were skipped.  It just happens those packages were quite large, and I wrongly assumed it was trying to download everything because of the download size.

So in fact copying the .tar.xz files worked properly.  After running -U and then running 'pacman -Syu' again, it only showed four remaining packages with the same download size as before - these were the ones I skipped previously.

@progandy: Thanks for the suggestion - I had thought of this too, but because it was hopefully a one-off I was hoping I could avoid the hassle of setting up my own repo!