Arch Linux

Deuterium

Member

Registered: 2009-09-26

Posts: 50

[SOLVED] cannot search for non-[core] packages with pacman

hello all, I recently installed archlinux as a virtual machine.  I followed the beginner guide and it was succesfully installed the ping command works as well.

Anyways, i went to try to search for some packages using pacman (such as powerpill and kde) by using:

pacman -Ss powerpill

and

pacman -Ss kde

however both display nothing.  I tried using

pacman -Ss

and it returned a lot of packages but all are preceded with 'core/...' I am unsure what has gone wrong, though its probably a simple problem due to me overlooking something!

I tried finding out some information which could help figure it out:
in the /etc/pacman.conf file, the core, extra and community repos are enabled and look like this:

[extra]
# Add your preferred servers here, they will be searched first
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

the mirrorlist file (/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist) has multiple mirrors enabled which look like this:

# Australia
#Server = ftp://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/archlinux/$repo/os/i686
Server = http://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/archlinux/$repo/os/i686
...and a couple more...

I also looked in the /var/lib/pacman directory, and found 2 subdirectories: 'local' and 'sync'.
'local' contains a bunch of files (Im presuming they are packages which were installed during the archlinux setup) and the 'sync' directory contains only the 'core' subdirectory (which i think isnt like most peoples?) this core subdirectory contains a bunch of files there too.

So with this information, is anyone able to help me out and see what is wrong? any commands i should print the output of?

Last edited by Deuterium (2009-09-26 05:47:38)

MadTux

Member

Registered: 2009-09-20

Posts: 553

Re: [SOLVED] cannot search for non-[core] packages with pacman

Did you synchronize your repositories and did it download all configured repositories?

pacman -Syy

You should see a distinct line for every repository database.

Deuterium

Member

Registered: 2009-09-26

Posts: 50

Re: [SOLVED] cannot search for non-[core] packages with pacman

Did you synchronize your repositories and did it download all configured repositories?

pacman -Syy

You should see a distinct line for every repository database.

o.O <shame> i didnt know i had to issue that command, i thought it was to update my system? i hadnt done anything needing updating so i was going to wait till after i installed more packages   i knew it would have been something i overlooked! thanks for the quick reply! </shame>

thanks MadTux