[SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

Nareto · 2009-07-18 10:57:16

Hello, installing Arch for the first time, i'm having problems because of my internet connection being momentarily unreliable - it works ok sometimes, but most of the time it's very slow or even i get disconnected. My ISP is taking care of this, but I know from experience it could take some weeks.

Precisely the problem is during the "Install Packages" step: many packages fail downloading.

Is there a way I can manually retry to install only those packages that failed downloading? For this i would first need to know which failed, possibly without having to stay in front of the computer during the long download process. Is there some file where this info is stored? There's nothing on tty7.

Or another, possibly better, way round would be to have avaiable the list of links of the files that need to be downloaded, then i could retriever those packages by other means (on some other connection), bring them over here on a usb pen and then tell pacman to use those instead of downloading... is this possible/reccomended?

Anyway this is not critical, as it's a test installation in VirtualBox in Ubuntu, so I still have a working desktop. I'll wait for a decent internet connection for the real installation.

Last edited by Nareto (2009-07-19 19:13:47)

djszapi · 2009-07-18 12:51:23

Hello Nareto!

I don't have internet connection at the company too, i use a pendrive for it.

pacman -Swp > /media/disk/download_list. After it i go to the pc, which has network connection, and i use there wget -i download_list (after proxy setting, because my system uses proxy), and back to the devel pc, and put the downloaded file to the /var/cache/pacman/pkg/, and pacman -S what_you_want.

You can update your system such a way, just download the $repo.db.tar.gz, and untar it to the /var/lib/pacman/sync/$repo

Hope this helps

Nareto · 2009-07-18 13:05:39

ah! just discovered i can scroll in the list once it finished downloading what it could!
In the end i get:

warning: failed to retrieve some files from core
...something..
Package installation failed

Unfortunately, i mispressed some keys on the keyboard (that's the why of the "something" above, I can't look anymore) and I returned to the main menu, so now I'll have to wait again for it to download those some packages... couldn't i tell him they're allready downloaded somewhere?

Nareto · 2009-07-18 13:09:56

djszapi wrote:

Hello Nareto!
I don't have internet connection at the company too, i use a pendrive for it.
pacman -Swp > /media/disk/download_list. After it i go to the pc, which has network connection, and i use there wget -i download_list (after proxy setting, because my system uses proxy), and back to the devel pc, and put the downloaded file to the /var/cache/pacman/pkg/, and pacman -S what_you_want.
You can update your system such a way, just download the $repo.db.tar.gz, and untar it to the /var/lib/pacman/sync/$repo
Hope this helps

thank you very much, I'll be trying this

Nareto · 2009-07-18 13:31:03

djszapi wrote:

You can update your system such a way, just download the $repo.db.tar.gz, and untar it to the /var/lib/pacman/sync/$repo

Not sure what repo.db.tar.gz is... when i run pacman -Sy it tries to fetch core.db.tar.gz

djszapi · 2009-07-18 15:13:29

$repo means the core, extra, community, testing repositries.

Hope this helps.

Nareto · 2009-07-18 16:56:13

Ok so running

# pacman -Sy
# pacman -Swpu > /media/pen/download-list

gave me the wanted list of URLs, now I'll proceed downloading them, copyin' them to /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ and running pacman -Su

Last edited by Nareto (2009-07-18 17:01:21)

djszapi · 2009-07-18 21:08:07

Yeah, that's the procedure, but you must do syncing manually often too, because it can cause problems after avoiding it for a long period.

onthenickel · 2009-07-19 08:05:40

Nareto,

The problem might not be a problem with your internet connection, instead, it might be that the package the installation is trying to download simply does not exist on the server.

When you receive the error "Installation Failed (see errors below)" please check the following:

If you scroll down, you can see which packages failed to install...

Then if you scroll to the right, you can see WHY the packages failed to install...

For example, you might see this:

downloading (package name)...
downloading (package name)...
downloading (package name)...
downloading (package name)...
error: failed retrieving file '(package name)' from (mirror name) : Not Found
downloading (package name)...
downloading (package name)...
downloading (package name)...

If you see this "Not Found" error, it is 99.99999% probably NOT a problem with the internet connection, it is probably that the file simply does not exist on the server, and so you will get the same error no matter how many times you run the install.

I have noted that there are a number of files which do not exist on the server I am using, but only when I select to install ALL packages. When I select only the base and the base-devel packages, they all install okay. I am opening a new topic to ask about this...

Nareto · 2009-07-19 12:54:08

mm, I'm quite sure it *is* my internet connection. If I rerun "Install Packages" from /arch/setup I'll check if I get that error.

I managed getting the files and copying them to /var/cache/pacman/pkg.

I have only this problem now, when i run pacman -Su i get an error because of conflicts: it is triyng to install both intel-536ep-utils-2.5.6 and intel-537-utils-2.60

Removing any combination of those, rerunning pacman -Syy and then again pacman -Su doesn't solve the problem...

Nareto · 2009-07-19 19:03:56

i had copyied packages to /var/cache/pacman/pkg while the correct path was /mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg

now i resolved this and I'm moving on with installation!
thanky you very much djszapi

Arch Linux

#1 2009-07-18 10:57:16

[SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

#2 2009-07-18 12:51:23

Re: [SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

#3 2009-07-18 13:05:39

Re: [SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

#4 2009-07-18 13:09:56

Re: [SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

#5 2009-07-18 13:31:03

Re: [SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

#6 2009-07-18 15:13:29

Re: [SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

#7 2009-07-18 16:56:13

Re: [SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

#8 2009-07-18 21:08:07

Re: [SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

#9 2009-07-19 08:05:40

Re: [SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

#10 2009-07-19 12:54:08

Re: [SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

#11 2009-07-19 19:03:56

Re: [SOLVED] reinstalling failed to download packages

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