Arch Linux

signal11

Member

From: bangalore, india

Registered: 2008-01-09

Posts: 30

simultaneous pacman sessions

hi all,

slight background: i have just moved to arch-linux approx 1 week back (from gentoo) so far i am loving it!

one difference with-respect-to gentoo is that i cannot seem to have simultaneous 'pacman' sessions going on (due to pacman-db being locked). so all the installs need to be serialized. is it possible to have it done parallely ?

please pardon me if this question has already been discussed before. in which case, can you please point me in the right direction ? thanks !

anupam

Cerebral

Forum Fellow

From: Waterloo, ON, CA

Registered: 2005-04-08

Posts: 3,108

Website

Re: simultaneous pacman sessions

You can't install multiple things in parallel, no.  Pacman will allow you to do some operations without DB-locking - mostly read-only ops - but multiple installs at the same time isn't possible.

signal11

Member

From: bangalore, india

Registered: 2008-01-09

Posts: 30

Re: simultaneous pacman sessions

ok. also, on a (slightly) related note: is it possible to do a parallel-fetch of the packages ? i couldn't find anything in the man page for pacman.

thanks

Cerebral

Forum Fellow

From: Waterloo, ON, CA

Registered: 2005-04-08

Posts: 3,108

Website

Re: simultaneous pacman sessions

Well, if you run pacman -Sw it will download the packages, but not install them.  I don't know if it locks the DB while doing this though - you could check.

shining

Pacman Developer

Registered: 2006-05-10

Posts: 2,043

Re: simultaneous pacman sessions

Well, if you run pacman -Sw it will download the packages, but not install them.  I don't know if it locks the DB while doing this though - you could check.

The db is currently always locked as soon as a transaction is started.
But if an exception was made for that particular -Sw case, what would downloading the same package twice do?

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pacman roulette : pacman -S $(pacman -Slq | LANG=C sort -R | head -n $((RANDOM % 10)))

lilsirecho

Veteran

Registered: 2003-10-24

Posts: 5,000

Re: simultaneous pacman sessions

I have been utilizing a cachedir on a flash drive for downloading via pacman.

This is accomplished with :

pacman --cachedir /media/disk/pkg -Sw (package name)

Then to install from cachedir; 

pacman -Udf (package name)

Perhaps using a second cachedir will permit a doubled pacman download?  Dumb idea?

---

Prediction...This year will be a very odd year!
Hard work does not kill people but why risk it: Charlie Mccarthy
A man is not complete until he is married..then..he is finished.
When ALL is lost, what can be found? Even bytes get lonely for a little bit!     X-ray confirms Iam spineless!

hacosta

Member

From: Mexico

Registered: 2006-10-22

Posts: 423

Re: simultaneous pacman sessions

really, i don't think sugesting options d and f is the best idea

lilsirecho

Veteran

Registered: 2003-10-24

Posts: 5,000

Re: simultaneous pacman sessions

Use it for local cachedir with no prob.....

Cachedir can be organized with all depends included with mainpackage folder.

Perhaps my entry in earlier post was incomplete....

 pacman -Udf (package .pkg.tar.gz)

Further,

pacman --cachedir /media/disk/pkg -Syw (package names)

This will download all depends.

Last edited by lilsirecho (2008-01-11 19:25:13)

---

Prediction...This year will be a very odd year!
Hard work does not kill people but why risk it: Charlie Mccarthy
A man is not complete until he is married..then..he is finished.
When ALL is lost, what can be found? Even bytes get lonely for a little bit!     X-ray confirms Iam spineless!