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#1 2008-10-07 02:10:09
- ahunavairya
- Member
- Registered: 2008-10-01
- Posts: 25
Lots of problems....
I have had some sort of problem pop up every time I reinstall Arch. I had a working system that starting giving me trouble so I just decided to reinstall since I had wanted to anyway for a while but I was a bit hesitant. One of my problems was some errors with pacman not being able to retrieve files due to a mysterious "not logged in" error, and I stil don't know what was triggering that. It seems it was/is an error with the mirror i was using(ftp.ibiblio.org) because I reinstalled and tried to use that one and the same thing happened. No matter what mirror I use it goes slow, compared to before anyway, or has an error. Sometimes it can't retrieve packages, sometimes it gives the "not found in sync db error", sometimes it can't connect although when i got that error ping and links worked.
I reinstalled again a couple of times just to see and the same thing happened, with a different error each time, and now it's the klibc error with -Syu even though I wasn't using testing. Also on one of the first 'just to see' reinstallations it could not find the reboot or shutdown commands when i switched from root to user. It couldn't find them for a bit in root but i kept trying and it finally rebooted. I know I have configured everything properly, I configured it just like before when it actually worked, this also seems to be a pacman and/or mirror problem as well. Not to mention X won't set the screen resolution properly when using the same method as my working install with the same monitor and card. What is going on????
خيام اگر ز باده مستى خوش باش
با ماه رخى اگر نشستى خوش باش
چون عاقبت كار جهان نيستى است
انگار كه نيستى، چو هستى خوش باش
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#2 2008-10-07 04:23:34
- dav7
- Member
- From: Australia
- Registered: 2008-02-08
- Posts: 674
Re: Lots of problems....
One of my problems was some errors with pacman not being able to retrieve files due to a mysterious "not logged in" error, and I stil don't know what was triggering that.
An out of date cache, possibly? Be sure to pacman -Sy before installing anything new if you haven't run pacman in more than a week.
t seems it was/is an error with the mirror i was using(ftp.ibiblio.org) because I reinstalled and tried to use that one and the same thing happened.
It will make things go quite slow, but edit /etc/pacman.conf and use your editor's batch copy/replace (nano's is alt+r, or esc, r, if you're using xterm) to replace "#Server" with "Server", so that all servers are enabled. This is more of a hacky, "is it the server or me" problem-solver - once your pacman config seems valid, start to narrow servers down until you find one that works for you.
No matter what mirror I use it goes slow, compared to before anyway, or has an error. Sometimes it can't retrieve packages, sometimes it gives the "not found in sync db error", sometimes it can't connect although when i got that error ping and links worked.
Can't retrieve packages = is your database synced?
"not found in sync db" = 
Can't connect = 
I reinstalled again a couple of times just to see and the same thing happened, with a different error each time, and now it's the klibc error with -Syu even though I wasn't using testing.
Ouch.
Also on one of the first 'just to see' reinstallations it could not find the reboot or shutdown commands when i switched from root to user. It couldn't find them for a bit in root but i kept trying and it finally rebooted.
Huh?
I know I have configured everything properly, I configured it just like before when it actually worked, this also seems to be a pacman and/or mirror problem as well.
You got that right 
Not to mention X won't set the screen resolution properly when using the same method as my working install with the same monitor and card.
I can say with a fair degree of confidence that that's probably because X got upgraded to a newer version in the repos before you reinstalled it. So you'd be using a newer version of X.
X is in a very big state of flux, what with all the ATI specifications being open sourced (even if you don't use ATI, this might affect you), and there's a lot of work going into support for Intel cards (again, if you don't use Intel this might affect you). NVidia support is also stable, but steadily updating and (I'd hope/assume!) getting better.
Yeah, pretty run-of-the-mill, stereotypical responses here but these are all I can think of. Someone else might have a better chance of getting into the nitty gritty.
-dav7
Last edited by dav7 (2008-10-07 04:26:57)
Windows was made for looking at success from a distance through a wall of oversimplicity. Linux removes the wall, so you can just walk up to success and make it your own.
--
Reinventing the wheel is fun. You get to redefine pi.
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#3 2008-10-07 06:21:49
- ahunavairya
- Member
- Registered: 2008-10-01
- Posts: 25
Re: Lots of problems....
An out of date cache, possibly? Be sure to pacman -Sy before installing anything new if you haven't run pacman in more than a week.
I run pacman a lot more than once a week, and it did that on one of the fresh installs.
It will make things go quite slow, but edit /etc/pacman.conf and use your editor's batch copy/replace (nano's is alt+r, or esc, r, if you're using xterm) to replace "#Server" with "Server", so that all servers are enabled. This is more of a hacky, "is it the server or me" problem-solver - once your pacman config seems valid, start to narrow servers down until you find one that works for you.
The first part of that was unclear... but it made sense so yeah, I understand.
Can't retrieve packages = is your database synced?
"not found in sync db" =
Can't connect =
As I said, it happened on one of my fresh installs. Seems like every fresh install there was a new problem, when I was doing the exact same thing.
It happened on my first working install too after a while, and my database was definitely synced in both cases.
Ouch.
Basically
Huh?
There was no reboot command found in /bin/bash temporarily for some unfathomable reason
You got that right
?
I can say with a fair degree of confidence that that's probably because X got upgraded to a newer version in the repos before you reinstalled it. So you'd be using a newer version of X.
X is in a very big state of flux, what with all the ATI specifications being open sourced (even if you don't use ATI, this might affect you), and there's a lot of work going into support for Intel cards (again, if you don't use Intel this might affect you). NVidia support is also stable, but steadily updating and (I'd hope/assume!) getting better.
I do use ATI, and it may be that but it's like it wants to do everything BUT what I say. I need 1024x768@70 but it goes to 1024x768@75, or a totally different resolution depending on how I edit the config. Xrandr will set 1024x768@70 if it detects it but otherwise it's ignored...
Yeah, pretty run-of-the-mill, stereotypical responses here but these are all I can think of.
-dav7
Well anyway thanks for replying :]
خيام اگر ز باده مستى خوش باش
با ماه رخى اگر نشستى خوش باش
چون عاقبت كار جهان نيستى است
انگار كه نيستى، چو هستى خوش باش
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#4 2008-10-07 08:12:47
- dav7
- Member
- From: Australia
- Registered: 2008-02-08
- Posts: 674
Re: Lots of problems....
ahunavairya wrote:An out of date cache, possibly? Be sure to pacman -Sy before installing anything new if you haven't run pacman in more than a week.
I run pacman a lot more than once a week, and it did that on one of the fresh installs.
Oh.
It will make things go quite slow, but edit /etc/pacman.conf and use your editor's batch copy/replace (nano's is alt+r, or esc, r, if you're using xterm) to replace "#Server" with "Server", so that all servers are enabled. This is more of a hacky, "is it the server or me" problem-solver - once your pacman config seems valid, start to narrow servers down until you find one that works for you.
The first part of that was unclear... but it made sense so yeah, I understand.
I meant that since you'd be enabling all mirrors, pacman would probably select one very far away from you and you would therefore get slow transfer speeds.
Can't retrieve packages = is your database synced?
"not found in sync db" =
Can't connect =As I said, it happened on one of my fresh installs. Seems like every fresh install there was a new problem, when I was doing the exact same thing.
It happened on my first working install too after a while, and my database was definitely synced in both cases.
How confusing
Huh?
There was no reboot command found in /bin/bash temporarily for some unfathomable reason
I contextually referred to:
I know I have configured everything properly, I configured it just like before when it actually worked, this also seems to be a pacman and/or mirror problem as well.
You got that right
I can say with a fair degree of confidence that that's probably because X got upgraded to a newer version in the repos before you reinstalled it. So you'd be using a newer version of X....
I do use ATI, and it may be that but it's like it wants to do everything BUT what I say. I need 1024x768@70 but it goes to 1024x768@75, or a totally different resolution depending on how I edit the config. Xrandr will set 1024x768@70 if it detects it but otherwise it's ignored...
Ah, I see.
A while ago I had a similar problem - my ATI card (or CRT) wasn't correctly reporting a resolution I knew the CRT was capable of. A bit of asking around on IRC and I turned up a solution. I went looking in my IRC logs to find this conversation but turned up nothing, then turned to a google search and was rather impressed to discover what I was looking for - it's the first hit. Search in the page for "Um, xrandr. The manpage should explain everything." and just scan what you see.
I found a more pertinent link in/from that IRC log, http://wiki.debian.org/XStrikeForce/HowToRandR12 - you'd want to pay attention to the "Adding new modes" section probably, and I'll just say that since your hardware doesn't exactly like cooperating on a continual basis you'll need to learn, if you don't already know, the wonder of the incomprehensible X modeline. Thankfully, there are many online calculators out there, but they simply need some video timing information - if your display is a CRT, this info will be more exotic (and should be included with your monitor's manual or available online), but if your display is an LCD (or your actual PC is a laptop 
) this shouldn't be too hard to figure out. I don't have any experience with configuring modelines for LCDs so don't know about that though.
BTW, the lower part of this message was a SOQ (Sea Of Quotes). I was continually pestered with "The BBCode syntax in the message is incorrect. Missing start tag for [/quote]." while I wrote it
The tags were placed where they are as a layout hack, to give the quote boxes a decent amount of space between them so that readability was improved (and I "escaped" those s above by using "", btw, and the "
" was similarly escaped with [/b][b] by using "
", but I closed and reopened the bold tag in the latter case to keep the text bold).
*me*[quote][quote][quote]*you*[/quote]
*me*[/quote]
[/quote]
[b]
[/b][quote][quote]*me*[/quote]
*you*[/quote]
*me*-dav7
Last edited by dav7 (2008-10-07 08:35:31)
Windows was made for looking at success from a distance through a wall of oversimplicity. Linux removes the wall, so you can just walk up to success and make it your own.
--
Reinventing the wheel is fun. You get to redefine pi.
Offline