Arch Linux

kreshta

Member

Registered: 2017-08-22

Posts: 31

[solved] pacman update broken "failed to synchronize all databases".

I tried to do a full system update and got the error
> :: installing libxml2 (2.14.2-2) breaks dependency 'libxml2.so=2-64' required by rest

Searching the error led me to this https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2239439 . So I uninstalled rest (and libxml2)
> sudo pacman -Rncs rest

and tried to update again. I got the error from the title. So I tried using reflector
> sudo pacman -S reflector
> sudo reflector --verbose --sort rate -l 20 --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

I tried again to update
> sudo pacman -Syyu

and got the same error
> error: failed to synchronize all databases (failed to retrieve some files)

I also tried to only update highly rated mirrors
> sudo reflector --latest 20 --protocol https --sort rate --score 10 --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

But that didn't change the result of
> sudo pacman -Syyu

What should I try next?

Last edited by kreshta (2025-05-04 10:35:29)

seroolrom

Member

Registered: 2025-05-01

Posts: 2

Re: [solved] pacman update broken "failed to synchronize all databases".

I got a failure yesterday but it was related to the database being locked and fixed it by removing the db.lck file. 
As I see you have already gone through the suggestions in the wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman#Troubleshooting on 3.4 "Packages cannot be retrieved on installation". 
If it was me, unless you have a suitable Timeshift snapshot, which I would personally use, I would proceed to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman … ing_pacman. 

But I'm a noob! I was just successful following the Arch Wiki for my first troubleshooting, not much experience. Hopefully someone with actual knowlege will hop in.

kreshta

Member

Registered: 2017-08-22

Posts: 31

Re: [solved] pacman update broken "failed to synchronize all databases".

*Update* I edited my /etc/pacman.conf file and removed
> [community]                                                                                                                                                                                             
> Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Now
> sudo pacman -Syyu
works

bobbes

Member

Registered: 2025-04-13

Posts: 3

Re: [solved] pacman update broken "failed to synchronize all databases".

*Update* I edited my /etc/pacman.conf file and removed
> [community]                                                                                                                                                                                             
> Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

The final removal of the community repo was actually mentioned in the News section a couple of months ago: Cleaning up old repositories

There's also a handy RSS feed you can subscribe to if you don't want to miss these kinds of announcements in the future.