Pacman is horribly slow to sync with Community.

Godofgrunts · 2010-04-08 22:38:56

I've really had this problem ever since I started using Arch and I figured I was just screwing something up so I'm here to find out what.

So of course I always run rankmirrors after a new install and currently my mirrors are.

Server = http://archlinux.umflint.edu/$repo/os/x86_64
Server = http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/linux/d … /os/x86_64
Server = http://mirror.rit.edu/archlinux/$repo/os/x86_64
Server = http://mirror.umoss.org/archlinux/$repo/os/x86_64

And when I run a pacman -Syy (or just Sy) core and extra are almost instant, then it will hang on community for like 10-15 seconds (which seems like forever) and then will finally sync. Nothing else seems to be wrong, downloading packages from community is fast as I would expect. I'm on cable with a download of 1.5 MB/s and and upload of about 60 KB/s. This happens at my friends house, and at my work as well.

Am I doing something wrong?

NOTE: This also happens when using yaourt.

Last edited by Godofgrunts (2010-04-08 22:39:22)

Pierre · 2010-04-08 22:44:17

This is related to filesystem and hard drive performance.

karol · 2010-04-08 22:51:29

Community is big, it has many packages = many files. You can play around w/ sqlite or some other db to speed it up. The filedb design is simple but not very effective.

Computers are multitasking machines so you can do sth else while pacman does it's job.

Godofgrunts · 2010-04-08 22:53:46

I find that hard to believe, but I'll give you the specs of those.

My laptop is running on a 7200 500 GB IDE with the XFS file system.

My desktop is running a RAID 0 7200 1TB (total) Sata with the XFS files system.

My Virtual Machine on my parents computer is running on a 320 GB sata using the ext3 filesystem.

All of them have the same issue.

Pierre · 2010-04-08 22:56:18

ext4, reiserfs or even jfs should do a better job with that many small files.

karol · 2010-04-08 22:59:59

XFS is horribly slow when dealing w/ many small files - you know that, don't you Godofgrunts?

I too have this issue. I have an 8yo PATA HDD and even syncing extra after a longer break is slow. But I run pacman and in the meantime I check email, rss etc. so I'm fine.

Edit: Here's one way to fix it http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8586

Last edited by karol (2010-04-08 23:03:47)

chpln · 2010-04-08 23:04:12

I've found pacman-cage to have a dramatic effect in minimising these delays.

Godofgrunts · 2010-04-09 05:06:59

karol wrote:

XFS is horribly slow when dealing w/ many small files - you know that, don't you Godofgrunts?
I too have this issue. I have an 8yo PATA HDD and even syncing extra after a longer break is slow. But I run pacman and in the meantime I check email, rss etc. so I'm fine.
Edit: Here's one way to fix it http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8586

Yes I know, but if you do a ls -1 | wc -l on extra, you'll see that there are 2441 directories and if you do it on community you'll see that there are only 1930. One would think that it would take a longer to sync extra (which literally takes like 2 seconds) than community.

I'll try some of the other things listed here (pacman-cage has sparked my interest) and if that doesn't work, using a different file system for /var and see if that helps.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-08 22:38:56

Pacman is horribly slow to sync with Community.

#2 2010-04-08 22:44:17

Re: Pacman is horribly slow to sync with Community.

#3 2010-04-08 22:51:29

Re: Pacman is horribly slow to sync with Community.

#4 2010-04-08 22:53:46

Re: Pacman is horribly slow to sync with Community.

#5 2010-04-08 22:56:18

Re: Pacman is horribly slow to sync with Community.

#6 2010-04-08 22:59:59

Re: Pacman is horribly slow to sync with Community.

#7 2010-04-08 23:04:12

Re: Pacman is horribly slow to sync with Community.

#8 2010-04-09 05:06:59

Re: Pacman is horribly slow to sync with Community.

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