Pacman wtf

The Vaxorcist · 2007-02-01 22:49:48

This is worth a laugh.

[root@poseidon ~]# pacman -S nvu

Targets: nvu-1.0-2

Total Package Size:   9.1 MB

Proceed with upgrade? [Y/n]

:: Retrieving packages from community...
Control socket read failed: Success
error: cannot connect to ftp.archlinux.org

WTF??

Pierre · 2007-02-01 22:51:25

You should use another mirror.

picpak · 2007-02-02 01:28:06

I think he was talking about

Control socket read failed: Success

Very weird error, indeed...

baze · 2007-02-02 01:35:13

i had this error too sometimes yesterday, but now it works fine again

codemac · 2007-02-02 03:43:42

PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE

Unless you are a TU or Developer, you should really not be using ftp.archlinux.org as your mirror. It's incredibly overloaded all the time. Find a mirror near you and use it. When you get those errors it means that so many people are connected to archlinux.org's ftpd that it can't hand out more connections.

Please use a mirror if you can. It really puts unneeded and unnecessary stress on archlinux.org.

edit: that sounded harsh... I just think it's silly people don't use their mirrors. May I suggest http://mirror.cs.vt.edu/pub/ArchLinux or ftp://mirror.cs.vt.edu/pub/ArchLinux if you live on the east coast of th united states.

Last edited by codemac (2007-02-02 03:47:26)

Acid7711 · 2007-02-02 06:32:45

I think that's another thing Arch needs built in; automated mirror selecting that works without suxoring up your mirror lists like certain nameless tools I had this problem too on my other computer and realized it was still using the mirrors that came with it.

If it had some kinda auto mirroring built in, none of this would be happening. I know coming from Gentoo in my make.conf I always had the random mirror for the rsync goin. Made it nice and hardly ever had an issue with it. I can understand the main servers getting overloaded, that's completely understandable, but leaving it like that for everyone to use from stock along with Arch's user base growing at the rate it is? That's not very smart considering most new users will automatically be like, "Omg! Wtf! Arch is broken! I'm going back to Red Hat y0!"...

Last edited by Acid7711 (2007-02-02 06:34:13)

tomk · 2007-02-02 11:33:20

You may have noticed by now that Arch doesn't really automate things - there are some exceptions, but as a rule, we like to leave people in control of their systems. In this particular case, we provide details on the available mirrors, and we trust users will consider the advantages of mirror usage, both for themselves and for the overall Arch community, and choose a mirror accordingly.

Incidentally, despite being a dev, I use heanet for everything except the testing repo.

Spider.007 · 2007-02-02 11:44:07

codemac wrote:

[...]
It's incredibly overloaded all the time. Find a mirror near you and use it
[...]

If the load is really such a big problem; how about:
* letting the installer end with a mirror-selection
* letting pacman show a warning when ftp.archlinux.org is being used
* put a newsitem on the frontpage / newsletter asking people to run [that utility that searches all mirrors for the fastest one]

madeye · 2007-02-02 11:58:41

Perhaps if all the mirrors in the config file was commented out, and then people could be asked by the installer to enable the mirrors they want to use? Would that be possible?

I just looked in the official install guide, and couldn't find any text suggesting that the mirror list should be edited. Perhaps a note in the install guide would be useful too?

tomk · 2007-02-02 12:14:44

Good suggestions. Please post them in a feature request.

madeye · 2007-02-02 15:15:21

Sorry if this seems to be a stupid question. But where exactly do I post a feature request? I couldn't find anything in the forums...

wizzomafizzo · 2007-02-02 15:21:45

On the bug tracker.

tomk · 2007-02-02 15:24:01

Click on "Bugs" up in the top right corner, register, then post, making sure you select "Feature Request" in the Task Type drop-down.

madeye · 2007-02-02 15:36:56

Thanks, I'll do that.

Mikos · 2007-02-02 15:56:09

I have read somewhere that pacman3/libalpm will support Metalink natively, is this true? If yes, then it will solve all these problems. Thanks to Metalink, you will not need to choose mirrors manually - every package will be downloaded segmentally from more mirrors at once, so it will distribute load on mirrors (overall load on single mirror will be lower) and also if you have fast connection, downloads will be faster for you.

If this will be realized, it will be one of greatest things in pacman3 and Arch Linux ever :-)

phrakture · 2007-02-02 16:06:28

Mikos wrote:

I have read somewhere that pacman3/libalpm will support Metalink natively, is this true?

It's in the cards. pacman 3.0 is more or less a "big code changes, lets make sure it works mostly the same" release. pacman 3.1 will probably be the first release containing metalink support.

codemac · 2007-02-02 16:31:04

Judd wrote a python script that gives the current pacman metalink support.

Use it if you get it

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=25611

twanj · 2007-02-02 17:26:29

Mikos wrote:

I have read somewhere that pacman3/libalpm will support Metalink natively, is this true? If yes, then it will solve all these problems. Thanks to Metalink, you will not need to choose mirrors manually - every package will be downloaded segmentally from more mirrors at once, so it will distribute load on mirrors (overall load on single mirror will be lower) and also if you have fast connection, downloads will be faster for you.
If this will be realized, it will be one of greatest things in pacman3 and Arch Linux ever :-)

thanks. I think that would be cool too.

since the location can be added in the mirrors, that can be used. aria2 has something like --metalink-location=cz and it will download from cz mirrors first.

also, check out this slightly related ubuntu thing: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DynamicMirrorDecisions

Acid7711 · 2007-02-02 19:15:50

tomk wrote:

We trust users will consider the advantages of mirror usage, both for themselves and for the overall Arch community, and choose a mirror accordingly.

There's a flaw in that logic, and that's the the user coming over actually knows about switching mirrors. Everyone's a newb at some point. Odiously, if everyone was doing what you are hoping, topics like this wouldn't arise, and people wouldn't be having connection difficulties....

Last edited by Acid7711 (2007-02-02 19:20:59)

tomk · 2007-02-02 20:55:22

Acid7711 wrote:

There's a flaw in that logic, and that's the the user coming over actually knows about switching mirrors.

Correct - as already pointed out by Spider and madeye. My point was more related to the knowledge level of prospective Arch users - I dont think it's unreasonable to expect intermediate and advanced Linux users to know what mirrors are and why they should be used.

Misfit138 · 2007-02-02 21:48:29

And the default ones are ones we shouldn't be using.
Well, I'm glad I learned to switch

phrakture · 2007-02-02 22:33:05

Acid7711 wrote:

tomk wrote:
We trust users will consider the advantages of mirror usage, both for themselves and for the overall Arch community, and choose a mirror accordingly.
There's a flaw in that logic, and that's the the user coming over actually knows about switching mirrors. Everyone's a newb at some point. Odiously, if everyone was doing what you are hoping, topics like this wouldn't arise, and people wouldn't be having connection difficulties....

In addition to what tomk said - I prefer to assume (maybe mistakenly) that everyone is intelligent and CAN figure things out. That is one of the hidden rationales behind the whole arch philosophy in my opinion - hiding things behind configuration mumbo jumbo and fancy doodads has an implicit implication that you, as a user, are not smart enough to figure out what the original author intented, and need help.

Assuming knowledge of server mirrors is not a bad thing, even if not everyone knows what a mirror implies, they are not stupid, and can figure it out. Hell, not everyone knows what a "module" is when they first start using linux, and even at this moment not everyone reading this thread knows what NFS is. I would much rather assume that users have the potential to learn what these things mean, then throw wrapper after wrapper around things to make it fancy and fluffy and pretty.

The Vaxorcist · 2007-02-03 00:28:00

Oops.

Just sorted my mirrors. I usually don't care about mirrors, as I have dialup. Oh well... There needs to be an obnoxious windowsesque warning about this.

Anyway, What caused the error message to read failed: Success? Rather unusual, I think.

retsaw · 2007-02-05 19:16:27

There should be some sort of warning reminding a user to change their mirrors if they are still set to default. I'm far from being a newb, but I just didn't think to change my mirrors, so they were left as default for ages after my last reinstall until I came across a thread in these forums with a script that finds the best mirrors for you.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-02-01 22:49:48

Pacman wtf

#2 2007-02-01 22:51:25

Re: Pacman wtf

#3 2007-02-02 01:28:06

Re: Pacman wtf

#4 2007-02-02 01:35:13

Re: Pacman wtf

#5 2007-02-02 03:43:42

Re: Pacman wtf

#6 2007-02-02 06:32:45

Re: Pacman wtf

#7 2007-02-02 11:33:20

Re: Pacman wtf

#8 2007-02-02 11:44:07

Re: Pacman wtf

#9 2007-02-02 11:58:41

Re: Pacman wtf

#10 2007-02-02 12:14:44

Re: Pacman wtf

#11 2007-02-02 15:15:21

Re: Pacman wtf

#12 2007-02-02 15:21:45

Re: Pacman wtf

#13 2007-02-02 15:24:01

Re: Pacman wtf

#14 2007-02-02 15:36:56

Re: Pacman wtf

#15 2007-02-02 15:56:09

Re: Pacman wtf

#16 2007-02-02 16:06:28

Re: Pacman wtf

#17 2007-02-02 16:31:04

Re: Pacman wtf

#18 2007-02-02 17:26:29

Re: Pacman wtf

#19 2007-02-02 19:15:50

Re: Pacman wtf

#20 2007-02-02 20:55:22

Re: Pacman wtf

#21 2007-02-02 21:48:29

Re: Pacman wtf

#22 2007-02-02 22:33:05

Re: Pacman wtf

#23 2007-02-03 00:28:00

Re: Pacman wtf

#24 2007-02-05 19:16:27

Re: Pacman wtf

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