[SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

dkuo1128 · 2008-08-20 20:32:41

Hi,
I just installed Arch Linux yesterday using the Beginners Guide. I'm stuck at the point where you go

pacman -Syy

I do have a network connection: I can ping www.google.com just fine, but trying to ping the mirrors returns

ping: unknown host (mirror URL)

My /etc/hosts shows

127.0.0.1     localhost.localdomain     localhost   David

My /etc/rc.conf shows under the Networking Section

HOSTNAME = "David"
eth0="dhcp"
INTERFACES=(eth0)
gateway="default gw 192.168.0.1"
ROUTES=(!gateway)

My /etc/pacman.conf shows

[core]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[extra]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[community]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

My /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist shows only

Server = ftp://locke.suu.edu/linux/dist/archlinux/$repo/os/i686
Server = ftp://mirrors.unixheads.org/archlinux/$repo/os/i686
Server = ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/archlinux/$repo/os/i686
Server = http://mirror.neotuli.net/arch/$repo/os/i686

uncommented with the other US mirrors commented out and the foreign mirrors deleted

Pacman does work... but at a snail's pace of sub-1.0K/s and takes hours to finish -Syy

Thanks in advance!
dkuo1128

Last edited by dkuo1128 (2008-08-24 22:58:21)

Misfit138 · 2008-08-20 20:36:34

Put a faster mirror at the top of the mirrorlist. Easynews is a pretty good one for U.S. users.

fwojciec · 2008-08-20 20:44:39

Some additional suggestions/things to try:
1) Disable IPv6: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/IPv … the_Module
2) Change DNS to OpenDNS servers.

dkuo1128 · 2008-08-20 21:23:36

Wow, fast responses!
I put easynews at the top, disabled ipv6, changed the DNS to OpenDNS, rebooted, and ran pacman -Syy again
it's faster, but still hangs... generally the core repository downloads really quickly, but the extra repository has been hanging at about 14% downloaded for quite a while...
do you guys think it's a pacman problem or a network problem?

thanks again for your help!

fwojciec · 2008-08-20 21:38:27

Are you using xfs as root filesystem, by any chance?

asmodaous · 2008-08-20 21:39:37

I think it is a problem on arch side, I had easynews but just changed it today because it was stuck at trying to sync. I could not download or pacman -Syy since yesterday.

asmodaous · 2008-08-20 21:43:03

also I noticed you had this.....

[core]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[extra]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[community]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

It should be that is if your using easynew.com.....

[core]
Server = mirrors.easynews.com/linux/archlinux/$repo/os/i686 or x86_64
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[extra]
Server = mirrors.easynews.com/linux/archlinux/$repo/os/i686 or x86_64
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[community]
Server = mirrors.easynews.com/linux/archlinux/$repo/os/i686 or x86_64
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

dkuo1128 · 2008-08-20 22:48:30

nope i'm using ext3 on / and /home partitions (no /var partition)

I've done added the server line to each repository in /etc/pacman.conf and it went through yay!
however... when i moved on to pacman -Syu, it had me upgrade pacman itself first... so pacman -Sy pacman
it went okay at first, but then got hung up at 28% downloading libarchive-2.5.5-1-i686
Is it normal for pacman to get hung up like that, is it just something wrong on the arch side these couple of days, or is something wrong with my setup?

asmodaous · 2008-08-20 22:50:55

i don't think it's you. I just tried to use easynews again and it seems to be working now. But like I said earlier it was down since yesterday.

dkuo1128 · 2008-08-21 20:27:49

what is pacman's performance usually like? i.e. how long does it take usually to pacman -Syy and pacman -Syu?

though easynews may be working again, pacman is still frustratingly slow (1-2 Kb/s) and almost inevitably hangs.

Is there anything I can check or try to boost pacman's performance?

fwojciec · 2008-08-21 21:01:03

$ time pacman -Syy
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 testing                   30.9K  279.4K/s 00:00:00 [###################################################] 100%
 core                      31.3K  253.8K/s 00:00:00 [###################################################] 100%
 extra                    396.6K  904.0K/s 00:00:00 [###################################################] 100%
 community                354.1K  828.3K/s 00:00:00 [###################################################] 100%

real    0m3.799s
user    0m0.183s
sys     0m1.997s

I do have a pretty fast hard drive, though.

This is the mirror I'm using:

$ cat /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist | grep ^Server | head -1
Server = http://mirror.umoss.org/archlinux/$repo/os/x86_64

Last edited by fwojciec (2008-08-21 21:04:56)

dkuo1128 · 2008-08-22 06:17:25

Wow, pacman -Syy for me goes at most 4 K/s and takes a good half hour to hour to synchronize the package database.

You're mention of having a fast hard drive makes me wonder though ... when I installed Arch, I skipped the step regarding partitioning my hard drive with cfdisk because my hard drive is already partitioned up by a GParted live CD, and went straight to just mounting swap, / and /home and setting up the filesystem (ext3) on each.

The thing is that I'm not sure if just mounting swap, / and /home actually "clean out" whatever was on those partitions from my previous distribution (Hardy Heron) Also, my computer is an old and slow Toshiba laptop with most probably an old and slow hard drive. Do you think these might explain the performance that I'm seeing?

thanks for your help you guys!

Statix · 2008-08-22 06:35:27

When you mounted the drives it would have asked you whether to format them or not. Remember if you selected to?

With / it probably just formats it automatically.

Unless your hard drive is REALLY messed up, I'm pretty sure it shouldn't affect your download speeds. Most modern hard drives (don't know about old ones) run at about 60MB/s, which is more than enough to download at more than 2K/s. A good way to test it is to boot up any livecd and time a file copy.

fwojciec · 2008-08-22 14:19:30

dkuo1128 wrote:

Wow, pacman -Syy for me goes at most 4 K/s and takes a good half hour to hour to synchronize the package database.
You're mention of having a fast hard drive makes me wonder though ... when I installed Arch, I skipped the step regarding partitioning my hard drive with cfdisk because my hard drive is already partitioned up by a GParted live CD, and went straight to just mounting swap, / and /home and setting up the filesystem (ext3) on each.
The thing is that I'm not sure if just mounting swap, / and /home actually "clean out" whatever was on those partitions from my previous distribution (Hardy Heron) Also, my computer is an old and slow Toshiba laptop with most probably an old and slow hard drive. Do you think these might explain the performance that I'm seeing?
thanks for your help you guys!

Even my old-ish slow-ish laptop can resync repos in around 10 seconds, so there is definitely something wrong on your system. My guess would actually be some network related problem, rather than hardware performance one. In one of your earlier posts you wrote that you can't ping the mirror host -- this must be related, I'd say this is your best lead at the moment.

winfield · 2008-08-22 14:54:06

You can try to download something(whatever) to see the download speed, Guess it's a network issue.

rooloo · 2008-08-22 15:09:37

if your in the states, use the RIT server. Rochester Institute of Technology, updates very often and always max's my connection at 600kb/s, but I live exceptionally close to the server. Still, it 100mbit education network connection.

Last edited by rooloo (2008-08-22 15:10:39)

dkuo1128 · 2008-08-22 19:19:37

fwojciec wrote:

Even my old-ish slow-ish laptop can resync repos in around 10 seconds, so there is definitely something wrong on your system. My guess would actually be some network related problem, rather than hardware performance one. In one of your earlier posts you wrote that you can't ping the mirror host -- this must be related, I'd say this is your best lead at the moment.

Yes, that's true... when I try to ping any mirror host I get an error

ping -c 3 http://mirrors.easynews.com/linux/archlinux/$repo/os/i686
error: unknown host http://mirrors.easynews.com/linux/archlinux//repo/os/i686

it returns the mirror URL but replaces $ with / ... have any of you guys run across something like that before?

I looked over my /etc/hosts and /etc/rc.conf (above) and they seem to be okay. I also switched my DNS server to OpenDNS like you suggested
/etc/resolv.conf

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
nameserver 192.168.0.1

Any ideas as to what could be wrong?
Thanks a bunch for your help you guys You guys are awesome!

fwojciec · 2008-08-22 19:20:56

try pinging just "mirrors.easynews.com"

dkuo1128 · 2008-08-22 19:37:53

you know what? i think it's just a bum ethernet cable. I switched the ethernet cable and now things are working great!
pinging mirrors.easynews.com worked great
pacman -Syy took less than 10 seconds

thanks for your help you guys, i learned a lot (even though the problem ended up being a stupid ethernet cable)

tigrmesh · 2008-08-23 05:12:49

I'm glad you found a solution! Please mark this thread as solved (edit your first post). That way others with this problem can find help. Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-08-20 20:32:41

[SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#2 2008-08-20 20:36:34

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#3 2008-08-20 20:44:39

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#4 2008-08-20 21:23:36

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#5 2008-08-20 21:38:27

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#6 2008-08-20 21:39:37

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#7 2008-08-20 21:43:03

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#8 2008-08-20 22:48:30

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#9 2008-08-20 22:50:55

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#10 2008-08-21 20:27:49

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#11 2008-08-21 21:01:03

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#12 2008-08-22 06:17:25

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#13 2008-08-22 06:35:27

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#14 2008-08-22 14:19:30

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#15 2008-08-22 14:54:06

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#16 2008-08-22 15:09:37

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#17 2008-08-22 19:19:37

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#18 2008-08-22 19:20:56

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#19 2008-08-22 19:37:53

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

#20 2008-08-23 05:12:49

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman incredibly slow, help!

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