[Solved] Can ping mirrors, but pacstrap/pacman cannot resolve them

smudge145 · 2014-09-11 19:59:22

Hi guys,
I am trying to install Arch on my desktop following the beginners guide. The live disk has internet access (via ethernet), at least as far as pinging websites is concerned, however when it comes to "Install the base system" I hit a problem. I run

#pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel

, and pacman times out trying to connect to the mirrors with the following error:

error: failed retrieving file `core.db` from <mirror> : Resolving timed out after 10520 milliseconds

I can ping the mirrors that I try connecting to just fine. I have tried using mirrors from the mirrorlist generator linked on the wiki. I have also tried changing the DNS server in /etc/resolv.conf to the google DNS servers (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4). I still cannot get pacman to resolve the mirrors.

What am I missing here?

Last edited by smudge145 (2014-09-23 15:46:42)

Spider.007 · 2014-09-11 20:10:25

A quickfix might be to use XferCommand in pacman.conf. You could enable curl with a verbose flag; maybe that tells you what's happening

smudge145 · 2014-09-11 20:20:22

Thanks for the reply, in /etc/pacman.conf there is a commented line:

XferCommand = /usr/bin/curl -C - -f %u > %o

Do I just uncomment this and add -v to the end? What should this tell me? I'm not familiar with curl, and from a quick google it does not look particularly simple.

karol · 2014-09-11 22:19:49

First see if using curl or wget let you download the packages.

smudge145 · 2014-09-12 10:07:41

I tried

wget http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/archlinux/core/os/x86_64/core.db

as this is the first file that it tries to download each time I run pacstrap. The command ran fine and the file was downloaded by wget.

Spider.007 · 2014-09-13 18:15:43

Well we can help you with the curl output; put it on pastebin or here on the forums. Alternatively you can run `pacman --debug -Sy` and tell us what that outputs

smudge145 · 2014-09-23 15:45:32

Thanks for the replies guys, and sorry for being so slow to respond - got caught up with other things. Anyway, the solution to pacman being unable to resolve mirrors was to add

options timeout:1

to the end of resolv.conf.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-09-11 19:59:22

[Solved] Can ping mirrors, but pacstrap/pacman cannot resolve them

#2 2014-09-11 20:10:25

Re: [Solved] Can ping mirrors, but pacstrap/pacman cannot resolve them

#3 2014-09-11 20:20:22

Re: [Solved] Can ping mirrors, but pacstrap/pacman cannot resolve them

#4 2014-09-11 22:19:49

Re: [Solved] Can ping mirrors, but pacstrap/pacman cannot resolve them

#5 2014-09-12 10:07:41

Re: [Solved] Can ping mirrors, but pacstrap/pacman cannot resolve them

#6 2014-09-13 18:15:43

Re: [Solved] Can ping mirrors, but pacstrap/pacman cannot resolve them

#7 2014-09-23 15:45:32

Re: [Solved] Can ping mirrors, but pacstrap/pacman cannot resolve them

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