[SOLVED] core.db error

CoolMan · 2024-07-03 11:19:52

I have been using arch for about a month now and everything has been going smoothly thus far, but for some reason yesterday I couldn't update my system because of a core.db error

:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core.db failed to download
error: failed retrieving file 'core.db' from mirror.f4st.host : Failed to connect to mirror.f4st.host port 443 after 10001 ms: Couldn't connect to server
error: failed to synchronize all databases (download library error)

I have tried:

pacman -Syu

pacman -Syyu

pacman -Syyuu

I looked at some old forums as well and nothing really worked...

Last edited by CoolMan (2024-07-03 13:59:08)

gromit · 2024-07-03 11:22:25

Whats the output of "grep -v '#' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist | head -1"?

Last edited by gromit (2024-07-03 11:22:45)

CoolMan · 2024-07-03 11:24:26

It just skips one line, it doesn't throw an error or anything

Last edited by CoolMan (2024-07-03 11:27:04)

gromit · 2024-07-03 11:40:29

So you do not have any mirrors enabled in the mirrorlist, hmmm ...

Whats the output of "grep -E 'Include|Server' /etc/pacman.conf | grep -v '^#'"? Maybe you have added something to the pacman.conf directly ..

CoolMan · 2024-07-03 11:48:31

It shows this code:

Usage: grep [OPTION]... PATTERNS [FILE]...
Try 'grep --help' for more information.

I edited this because I pasted it wrong before...sorry

Last edited by CoolMan (2024-07-03 12:03:43)

gromit · 2024-07-03 12:04:35

Then probably something with the quoting went wrong, I'll post the command on a single line:

grep -E 'Include|Server' /etc/pacman.conf | grep -v '^#'

CoolMan · 2024-07-03 12:05:33

It shows this code:

Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

yeah sorry

Last edited by CoolMan (2024-07-03 12:17:06)

Trilby · 2024-07-03 12:19:35

`grep -v '#' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist | head -1` is a bad command to use, it does not skip blank lines which are perfectly valid - in fact many generated mirrorlists will have comments at the top, then a blank line, then the actual mirrors. So the "head -1" will result in only the blank line printing. Just post your mirrorlist. Or if we are to grep: `grep '^Server' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist` would be reasonable.

Also just showing the first mirror would be (mostly) pointless, we already know it is mirror.f4st.host which is not even included on the mirrorlist status page. In contrast to other assertions here, (at least one) mirror has been enabled in your mirrorlist, but it is not a good / valid arch linux mirror.

(edit: also pedantic note "grep <pattern> | head -1" should also just really be "grep -m1 <pattern>", so "grep -m1 ^Server /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist" could be a reasonable diagnostic command.)

edit 2: f4st.host belongs to a Florian Voit who may have previously maintained an arch mirror, but mirror.f4st.host no longer appears to provide any such service.

Last edited by Trilby (2024-07-03 12:28:10)

gromit · 2024-07-03 12:20:39

It seems like you have not enabled a mirror. Please enable one in "/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist" either by region, with the global mirrors or https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Reflector

Edit: See comment above by @Trilby!

Last edited by gromit (2024-07-03 12:22:14)

CoolMan · 2024-07-03 12:28:22

Yeah you are right, if I type

grep '^Server' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

it gives me this result:

Server = https://mirror.f4st.host/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

So this server went bad and I don't have any other back ups?

Trilby · 2024-07-03 12:30:49

We don't know whether you have backups: are there additional lines in the mirrorlist? If there are, you may be able to just delete that one. I believe pacman only uses the first listed mirror to get databases, other mirrors may be used for retrieving packages. But in any case, I'd just update your whole mirrorlist. The wiki has several options for this: reflector is popular, or the arch website itself has a tool to just get an appropriate set for your location.

gromit · 2024-07-03 12:34:29

The mirror did shut down a few days ago:
https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/li … WPSEQFCB7/

CoolMan · 2024-07-03 13:40:08

YESS! It took me like an hour to access the mirror servers but I found the commands, I replaced the server with my country servers from the mirror list generator and saved it. Now it works! Thank you both so much and I apologize for my ignorance, I didn't know that could happen

(edit) for anyone who might see this afterwards the command to access your server list is:

$ sudo nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

if nano doesn't work try gedit

Then access this website: https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/ which is the mirror list generator and find your country, generate a list

Copy the contents and paste them on your terminal.

Then remove the comment "#" from the servers you wanna use

Then save and done

Last edited by CoolMan (2024-07-03 14:45:25)

cryptearth · 2024-07-03 13:48:13

CoolMan wrote:

I didn't know that could happen

to put it this way: arch is one of the few families of distros where this can happen
others like deban or suse offer one central url which uses anycast and loadbalancing so you don't notice any issues
arch or pacman rather lacks a feature to just point to some centralized url like mirror.archlinux.org and have the infrastructure of the internet do its magic
so it's a good idea to install reflector and get a list of two dozen mirrors - and regular update it

CoolMan · 2024-07-03 13:53:24

it's a good idea to install reflector and get a list of two dozen mirrors - and regular update it

I am gonna do exactly that then thank you as well. One last thing how do I change this forum to solved?

Whoracle · 2024-07-03 13:56:23

Edit your first Post - there you can also edit the title.

CoolMan · 2024-07-03 13:58:10

Oh okay, I thought it was an setting or something

gromit · 2024-07-03 15:02:19

cryptearth wrote:

others like deban or suse offer one central url which uses anycast and loadbalancing so you don't notice any issues
arch or pacman rather lacks a feature to just point to some centralized url like mirror.archlinux.org and have the infrastructure of the internet do its magic

We have the GeoMirrors manged by the DevOps Team

https://geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com/

Trilby · 2024-07-03 15:15:29

Assuming a single central mirror detected the user location and forwarded them to a suitable source to download actual content, then that design may be good for some distros, but arguably not for one that is updated frequently. For example, I am in the middle of the USA - if I update daily, it'd not make sense for me to connect daily to some global-central mirror just for it to forward me to a local mirror every single day. It makes more sense for me to pick local mirrors once then just use those every day.

In other words, the value of "pre-computing" a good mirror increases with the frequency of updates. Certainly it could make sense to automate a recheck of these local mirrors periodically by checking in with a central global resource. But this is exactly what a timer service running reflector or a similar tool is for. We have that already.

And this logic is not even considering the cost of every single url request needing to be forwarded. In a single update there may be dozens of urls requested, why should each one first go to the global server just to for each one to be processed there and then forwarded one by one to the appropriate local server? I find it odd when people re-run reflector for every single update, but even when that is done it is still only checking the global resources once, and then sending each individual url request directly to the local mirrors.

Before we start implementing things in arch that seem "convenient" in other distros, we should first ask if they even make any sense for arch. We should (continue to) favor technical competence over trendiness; though in many ways I feel that that ship has already sailed.

(note: for simplicity I'm using the word "local" above to represent the ideal mirror(s) for a given user, this may or may not always be geographically close to them.)

Last edited by Trilby (2024-07-03 15:23:10)

cryptearth · 2024-07-03 19:02:17

for the sake of argue let's say: we talk about two different things

what you think about: one centralized server which accepts all connections, gets the remotes location, searches a database with all mirrors and replies with a redirect to the mirror that is logical closest to the user ... well, ok, that's one way to do it

what I actual mean: dns based load-balancing via anycast
have a look at how google dns or quad9 are implemented: everyone around the world just uses 8.8.8.8 or 9.9.9.9 - yet behind these single IPs are several hundrets to thousands machines around the globe - and thanks to the magic of the infrastructure of the internet I get connected to instances logically peered near my ISP at the DE-CIX while you're connected to some instance whereever your isp is peered to one
another example: suse - it only has one url: download.opensuse.org - yet it's load-balanced around the world so once again I get connected to a mirror logical near me (actual in Berlin, which is about 150km to the east from Magdeburg) while my server at OVH in Robaix, France is redirected within thier own network to thier own mirrors
debian works the same

point is: there're several techniques to implement this to take advantage of the infrastructure of the internet and leverage its power without having to put your own into place - Arch as one of the few major roots (in terms of slack, redhat(/fedora), debian, gentoo - and arch) should be able to provide what most of the others do

even if one just invest an afternoon to implement a few dozen routes for the about 200 ccTLDs - hiding behind "yea, but we have the mirror list and reflector" is just that - hiding behind an excuse instead of implement one proper solution vy just use what the internet already provides and what's used by so many services - is arch really that strange kid of the block which does this difference just for the sake of being different?
Why do I have to run reflector about every other week because for whatever reason the about 20 mirrors change almost completely?

Trilby · 2024-07-03 19:11:43

Yes, true DNS-based load balancing would be great. I wasn't thinking of that approach. Though I wonder how practical that would be with volunteer-maintained servers not controlled by the same people who control the load balancing: some mirrors fall out of maintenance, or just cease to function.

gromit · 2024-07-03 21:34:06

The Arch managed geo mirrors I have mentioned in my previous post are pretty much what you have just described: GeoIP based mirrors with several locations around the globe ...
We have locations in a few places: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/ … ads#L27-32 which then get resolved via https://geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com/ to the one fitting to you (i.e. for me geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com gets resolved to 89.187.191.12 which is europe.mirror.pkgbuild.com)

In the future we're also planning to implement something via a proper CDN, but both is not with the idea of replacing the existing mirror-infra but rather to compliment it.

Arch Linux

#1 2024-07-03 11:19:52

[SOLVED] core.db error

#2 2024-07-03 11:22:25

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#3 2024-07-03 11:24:26

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#4 2024-07-03 11:40:29

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#5 2024-07-03 11:48:31

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#6 2024-07-03 12:04:35

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#7 2024-07-03 12:05:33

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#8 2024-07-03 12:19:35

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#9 2024-07-03 12:20:39

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#10 2024-07-03 12:28:22

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#11 2024-07-03 12:30:49

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#12 2024-07-03 12:34:29

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#13 2024-07-03 13:40:08

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#14 2024-07-03 13:48:13

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#15 2024-07-03 13:53:24

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#16 2024-07-03 13:56:23

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#17 2024-07-03 13:58:10

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#18 2024-07-03 15:02:19

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#19 2024-07-03 15:15:29

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#20 2024-07-03 19:02:17

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#21 2024-07-03 19:11:43

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

#22 2024-07-03 21:34:06

Re: [SOLVED] core.db error

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