Arch Linux

motm95

Member

Registered: 2006-06-28

Posts: 8

Pacman was fine, now won't connect

Hey all -

I've just delurked to ask my first question.  Arch has been working that well for me it's been running fine on 2 systems for about 6 months. 

Anyway, on one machine I can't install anything with pacman.  I do "pacman -Sy netselect" and it just stalls while trying to connect to the current repository.  I tried different repos in /etc/pacman.d/current and no change.  I have internet access from the gui and can ping google.com from the terminal.  I just installed this package on another Arch box and it connect and downloaded just fine, so I don't think it's a server problem.

Pacman just seems stuck.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  TIA.

twiistedkaos

Member

Registered: 2006-05-20

Posts: 666

Re: Pacman was fine, now won't connect

Hey all -

I've just delurked to ask my first question.  Arch has been working that well for me it's been running fine on 2 systems for about 6 months. 

Anyway, on one machine I can't install anything with pacman.  I do "pacman -Sy netselect" and it just stalls while trying to connect to the current repository.  I tried different repos in /etc/pacman.d/current and no change.  I have internet access from the gui and can ping google.com from the terminal.  I just installed this package on another Arch box and it connect and downloaded just fine, so I don't think it's a server problem.

Pacman just seems stuck.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  TIA.

Try copying the working pacman configuration files from the working computer. /etc/pacman.conf and /et/pacman.d/* files.

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: Pacman was fine, now won't connect

You could also uncomment the XferCommand line in pacman.conf to use wget instead of pacman's internal downloader. Wget might work better.

motm95

Member

Registered: 2006-06-28

Posts: 8

Re: Pacman was fine, now won't connect

I did all of the above suggetions and no luck.  It still sticks at synchronizing package databases.

motm95

Member

Registered: 2006-06-28

Posts: 8

Re: Pacman was fine, now won't connect

Now my other machine is doing the same thing!  This is what I get when I do pacman -Sy packagename

:: Synchronizing package databases... 
 current                  [                     ]   0%       0K     0.0K/s  00:00:00

It just sits there and does nothing.  If anyone can help, I'd be very appreciative.  Thanks!

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: Pacman was fine, now won't connect

Did you tried with different mirrors?  Maybe the mirror you were using doesn't respond anymore.

motm95

Member

Registered: 2006-06-28

Posts: 8

Re: Pacman was fine, now won't connect

Yeah, as I mentioned in my first post, I tried several different repos and no change.

motm95

Member

Registered: 2006-06-28

Posts: 8

Re: Pacman was fine, now won't connect

Sorry I keep bumping my own thread here, but I am trying to figure this out.  Here is a further clue:  I can't ftp into any /0.7.2/os/i686 directory in any of the arch mirrors.  If I can't ftp in, I'm sure that's why pacman can't connect.  I fire up gftp, go to ftp.archlinux.org, then navigate to /0.7.2/os/i686 and I never get a directory listing.

Why on earth would I not be able to ftp in?

Bebo

Member

From: Göteborg, Sweden

Registered: 2006-06-07

Posts: 207

Re: Pacman was fine, now won't connect

Do you have problems doing ordinary surfing as well? I encountered some similar problems after the big update last week; when syncing pacman's database to the mirrors, pacman just got stuck after a few percent. But also I had troubles surfing at work - at home everything was as usual. Really strange.

Yesterday, I found a thread here on this forum, which helped me solve the problem. Don't know if it is the same problem that you have, but the 2.6.17 kernel has different default settings for the TCP window scaling; this has been discussed on kerneltrap.org.

Anyway, try doing

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_window_scaling

and see if that fixes anything.

motm95

Member

Registered: 2006-06-28

Posts: 8

Re: Pacman was fine, now won't connect

Bebo, THANK YOU!  Yes, that did it!  Geez, I _never_ would have figured that out by myself.  I will add it to /etc/sysctl.conf as mentioned in the other thread and hopefully that will take care of it.

Thanks again, Bebo, for pointing out that thread.

Bebo

Member

From: Göteborg, Sweden

Registered: 2006-06-07

Posts: 207

Re: Pacman was fine, now won't connect

You're welcome - glad I could help I've actually had this TCP window scaling problem before, one or two years ago, but I had forgotten the "symptoms". Anyway, cheers!