Arch Linux

Somerandomnerd

Member

Registered: 2022-01-25

Posts: 21

Pacman -Syu: no servers configured for repository

So I normally use reflector for my pacman mirrorlist. However, I wanted to switch to the pacman-mirrorlist package. But when I do that, everything else works fine, but:

$ sudo pacman -Syu
:: Synchronizing package databases...
error: failed to synchronize all databases (no servers configured for repository)

This happens. Same for -Fy.

What is happening here? If I use reflector again it works. Here's a diff of my pacman.conf from the default one.

33c33
< #Color
---
> Color
36,37c36,38
< #VerbosePkgLists
< #ParallelDownloads = 5
---
> VerbosePkgLists
> ParallelDownloads = 5
> ILoveCandy

Also I just now noticed, everything in the mirrorlist seems to be commented out. Is that normal??

skunktrader

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2010-02-14

Posts: 1,520

Re: Pacman -Syu: no servers configured for repository

Also I just now noticed, everything in the mirrorlist seems to be commented out. Is that normal??

Yes. Completely normal. You are supposed to uncomment the mirrors in your region. See the wiki

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,039

Website

Re: Pacman -Syu: no servers configured for repository

The wording in the wiki is slightly different: “uncomment mirrors you would like to use.” Not all mirrors in your region. The difference is significant: by uncommenting all, you effectively use only the first mirror listed. Which is likely a poor choice.⁽¹⁾

Is there any particular reason you do not want to use reflector? You wrote “I wanted to switch to the pacman-mirrorlist package”. But reflector doesn’t use anything else: it’s the same mirrors list, but without reflector you are missing all the data on mirror performance.

If you are still willing to manually choose mirrors, be sure to understand how pacman treats multiple Server entries provided for a single repository or multiple repositories with different Server entries. That part is often misunderstood.
____
⁽¹⁾ Not because the mirrorlist is ordered in a particular way. The effect is purely probabilistic: since most mirrors are far from optimal, any single randomly chosen mirror will be in that group.

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Sometimes I seem a bit harsh — don’t get offended too easily!