Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

cb474 · 2009-11-06 12:18:54

So is it no longer possible to just browse the file hierarchy on the website and download packages directly, without having to use pacman or wget?

Also, I don't actually see the instructions about how to use pacman and wget to get packages from the new ARM setup. The wiki just says it's possible, without an explanation. And the search page referred to doesn't seem to be working.

Thanks for any help.

grey · 2009-11-06 12:45:06

For packages from before 01-Nov, they are *all* at http://arm.kh.nu/old/<repo>/os/$CARCH. You have the modification dates there, so if you are looking for one package from a particular date, you can get it.

You also have <repo>::<date>.db.tar.gz in that directory for all dates from late 2008 on, so you can get all packages from a particular date by telling pacman to use the db file of that date (as in my previous post).

For packages after 01-Nov, follow the wiki.

cb474 · 2009-11-07 01:02:22

Thanks for the help. Unfortunately I'm still preplexed. I'm not a programmer and sometimes these things just go over my head.

When I go directly to the rollback url, as you listed, I don't see any packages there. I see indexes and databases, presumably referring to the packages. But it seems like I can't just navigate into the directory, for a specific date, as before, and download a package directly using my browser. That was my first question. [Edit: Okay, so it looks like at least in the core repository, it is possible to navigate directly into the directory with the packages up until the end of May 2009, with links like this one http://arm.kh.nu/old/core/os/x86_64/cor … index.html, but then starting in June there are no links like that, which is why I didn't see it, because I was looking for a package from September 2009. Is that just a mistake?][Second Edit: Okay, I see that at the bottom of this directory (http://arm.kh.nu/old/core/os/x86_64/) there are various version of packages, so after June 2009, is that where the packages actually are and the databases for each date just specify which package was used at that date?]

Secondly. if I use pacman, do I just comment out (for example) the line for extra and then put in the line you suggested in your previous post? I'm still a little unclear on exactly what all the steps are.

Third, as far as packages after Nov 1 go, there is no detailed explanation of how to use Arch Rollback Machine there. The wiki in fact refers you to this thread, where I am then being referred back to the wiki, in an infinite loop. Maybe I'm missing something, but if so I really don't see it.

Last, as I mentioned the search page (http://arm.kh.nu/search/) referred to in the wiki and in this thread just turns up a blank page. So I'm wondering what's going on with that as well.

Thanks again, for any more detailed explanation.

Last edited by cb474 (2009-11-07 01:15:40)

grey · 2009-11-07 01:28:05

Here is a snippet of what I see in http://arm.kh.nu/old/core/os/x86_64/

     vpnc-0.5.1-2-x86_64...> 19-Nov-2007 09:12   77K  
      vpnc-0.5.3-1-x86_64...> 18-Dec-2008 01:53   75K  
      wget-1.11.4-1-x86_64..> 10-Jul-2008 11:34  503K  
      wget-1.11.4-2-x86_64..> 03-Aug-2009 17:16  564K  
      wget-1.12-1-x86_64.p..> 27-Sep-2009 19:13  672K  
      which-2.19-2-x86_64...> 27-Jan-2008 14:02   12K  
      which-2.20-1-x86_64...> 23-Sep-2008 09:26   15K

If you hover over these files, you'll see that they are package files (*.pkg.tar.gz), so you can download them and then install them with pacman -U.

do I just comment out (for example) the line for extra and then put in the line you suggested in your previous post

Yes. Then update the package index with pacman -Sy, and after that you can install a specific package with pacman -S.

Regarding packages later than Nov 1: There is a section in the Wiki called "How To" that explains it. Right after "Finding Your Older Version". Did you miss that, or is it not clear?

As for the search not working: I have no idea about that. I'm just a user of the ARM repositories.

Last edited by grey (2009-11-07 01:33:48)

cb474 · 2009-11-07 03:27:07

Thanks. Yes, somehow I missed the How-To section. Duh. I guess since the Wiki article is about downgrading in general and not just about the Arch Rollback Machine, I didn't think for some silly reason that the How-To section was specifically about the Arch Rollback Machine. I just saw ARM discussed in the Finding Your Older Version section. I should have figured it out, but I can see how I made the mistake. Perhaps ARM could have it's own section with the How-To as a subsection of that section, since it only seems to be about ARM. Or the section could just be called, How-To Use Arch Rollback Machine.

Gen2ly · 2009-11-07 13:38:22

brisbin33 wrote:

just to let you know i made a quick bash script to downgrade a single package...
the script can be found here.
...

Thanks for the script brisbin, didn't know someone had done this already - very useful. Because the search on the sight doesn't work yet would it be possible for your script to be able to do so, or would it be too much of a hassle? Loading each dated webpage and search would take a long time but possibly another tool could do it?

kumyco · 2009-11-08 12:13:43

Sorry for no response(I got no notification email).
Search is back http://arm.kh.nu/search/ and http://arm.kh.nu/search/raw.php (same as normal search but outputs urls only, in plain-text),
all old packages have been removed (over 200GiB ) as of yesterday.
Browsing is possible e.g http://arm.kh.nu/extra/os/$arch/ and http://arm.kh.nu/extra/os/any/ to see all packages available in extra.
If you wish to browse based on a date, remember ARM is just a collection of mirrors, it syncs approx 1-2am California time(dunno what that is), approx 10-11am GMT(IIRC).
The dated repos are essentially branches of the main repo http://arm.kh.nu/2009/11/08/extra/os/i686/
just change your mirror to one of the dated ones and execute

pacman -Syy # to force re-sync of the possibly older mirror .. then
pacman -Suu # to downgrade any newer packages - may have issues with version mismatches

brisbin33's downgrade script should be available again soon to assist in downgrading single packages

Last edited by kumyco (2009-11-08 12:15:41)

DonVla · 2009-11-08 12:22:47

kumyco wrote:

Sorry for no response(I got no notification email).
Search is back http://arm.kh.nu/search/ and http://arm.kh.nu/search/raw.php (same as normal search but outputs urls only, in plain-text),

Thanks for the raw search. That's pretty cool.

kumyco wrote:

all old packages have been removed (over 200GiB ) as of yesterday.

Hmm, isn't the sense of ARM to keep old packages?

BTW: I haven's mentioned it here. pkgman (see sig) also supports ARM for downloading and adding old packages to a local repo.

kumyco · 2009-11-08 12:38:31

Yes, I can't keep them forever - ARM1 was ill-designed and in the end it was just easier to blow it all away.
I haven't decided the purgin policy yet, maybe 2 months globally with *testing repos cut at one months.
The important thing, with ARM2 I simply delete a directory(e.g 2009/11/08) and the system decides what packages are removed.
--
P.S: If script writers want a custom interface to raw.php just let me know and I'll add it.

DonVla · 2009-11-08 12:48:44

kumyco wrote:

Yes, I can't keep them forever - ARM1 was ill-designed and in the end it was just easier to blow it all away.
I haven't decided the purgin policy yet, maybe 2 months globally with *testing repos cut at one months.

I think 2 months is too short. I would say 6 months is a reasonable time, but it's your server.

kumyco wrote:

P.S: If script writers want a custom interface to raw.php just let me know and I'll add it.

The raw interface is very useful. Until now pkgman parsed the html page only to get the dl-link. Until now... I'll change it this week.

Once again, thank you for your effort.

Vlad

kumyco · 2009-11-08 13:32:48

np, 6 months should be ok. The problems before were mostly down to duplication, but the repos now use -any and that's where the largest packages appear.

DonVla · 2009-11-08 16:48:13

Thanks kumyco!

The six months were only a suggestion. But it's ok for me.

brisbin33 · 2009-11-08 18:37:40

kumyco wrote:

brisbin33's downgrade script should be available again soon to assist in downgrading single packages

my downgrade is back up and running. i didn't really do anything regarding arch=any packages, so i dunno how that'll work out; but /raw.php did make the script a whole lot easier/simpler/faster, thanks very much for that kumyco.

if anyone's not using it, it's pretty sweet (if i do say so):

//blue/0/~/ downgrade xorg-server

 The following packages are available in your cache:
    1    local    xorg-server-1.7.1.901-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz [installed]
    2    local    xorg-server-1.7.1.901-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    3    local    xorg-server-1.7.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    4    local    xorg-server-1.7.0.902-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    5    local    xorg-server-1.7.0.901-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    6    local    xorg-server-1.6.3.901-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    7    local    xorg-server-1.6.3-4-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    8    local    xorg-server-1.6.3-3-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    9    local    xorg-server-1.6.3-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    10    local    xorg-server-1.6.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    11    local    xorg-server-1.6.1.901-3-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    12    local    xorg-server-1.6.1.901-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz

    please choose a version, type s to [s]earch A.R.M.: s

 The following packages are available from the A.R.M.:
    1    extra    xorg-server-1.7.1.901-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
    2    extra    xorg-server-1.7.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz

    please choose a version, type q to [q]uit: q

thanks again for hosting all these packages kumyco, been a great help in times of need .

note: the misalignment of items 10-12 is google-chrome pasting tabs, it's aligned in the term .

Last edited by brisbin33 (2009-11-08 18:41:13)

DonVla · 2009-11-08 18:37:58

Hi kumyco.

Is this a sync failure?
Some packages are not in the ARM repos. eg alltray http://arm.kh.nu/search/index.php?a=64& … -testing=1
The i686 is there though.

kumyco · 2009-11-08 19:45:44

@brisbin33, no need to worry about -any, raw.php searches it as well.
@DonVla, fixed: it was an indexing issue - i forgot that not all packages have proper names (1.2 for pkgrel, some still without an arch).

DonVla · 2009-11-08 19:59:22

Hello Kumyco,

It seems that the "match only search" does not seem to work properly, eg
searching for "^alltray$" shows nothing http://arm.kh.nu/search/index.php?a=64& … 24&extra=1, though
searching for "alltray" returns a result http://arm.kh.nu/search/index.php?a=64& … ay&extra=1

kumyco · 2009-11-08 20:24:58

fixed. just gotta iron out some of the old community pkgnames

DonVla · 2009-11-08 20:35:53

Thank you!

Gen2ly · 2009-11-08 22:35:46

Thanks kumyco for the work you do on the ARM, like brisbin said, it is well appreciated.

@brisbin

Tested the new script and it works great. Thanks for the update!

Peasantoid · 2009-11-09 01:59:51

*grumbles*
Well, so much for 'rollback'...

cb474 · 2009-11-09 03:45:17

Kumyco, I want to thank you also for the work you do on ARM. It's saved me more than once.

I agree that at least 6 months I think is better than 2 months. I have more than once had the experience that some upgrade breaks my system and then when I go looking for the old package, it was last upgraded well over 2 months ago. Also, given that some major platforms, like desktop environments, are on 6 month upgrade policies, it seems easy to have a situation arise where an major upgrade happens, creates problems, and then the old packages are even over 6 months old.

I know you have space limitations and need to make the choices necessary to maintain your server. To the extent possible I think 1 year would be an amount of time that would cover just about every scenario. Or maybe 9 months. But again at least 6 months.

Thanks again.

piezoelectric · 2009-11-09 20:32:29

Where did /old go?

Now that it's not there I can't check to see how the previous setup was. But if you were keeping every release, it might be beneficial to only keep the latest release for each version. In that way, you can save a lot of space without losing the true benefits of archiving the packages. In fact, versioning schemes can be defined for particular packages; not only do we probably only need the latest Arch release for a particular package version, we probably only need the latest upstream release. Ex: the latest of firefox-3.5.x is only really necessary. I, personally, would never be concerned with 3.5.1 vs 3.5.2, etc. Furthermore, if you want to get REALLY aggressive, once a package like firefox goes to firefox-4.x.x, probably only the latest of firefox-3.x.x would be needed as well as 2.x.x (unless the 'versioning schema' somehow defined some intermediate (3.5.x) for example to be a major milestone.) Obviously this would require some additional compilation of meta-information for each package, but I think we can do it .

In addition, to all of this, it might be worthwhile to create some round-robin DNS entries that we the community may join as ARM mirrors to take the load off of your own bandwidth. With the introduction of multiple ARM mirrors, individual mirrors can define their level of archiving, for example 0 (or none) might mean the mirror has only the latest version. 1 (or partial) might mean the server acts as described above, and only archives version, 2 (or rolling) might mean that the mirror only keeps packages for a specified number of days/months/etc, 4 could mean only a specified number of versions (like the past 5 versions). And 8 could mean the mirror is a full-blown permanent archiver, hosting every release of every version of every package from its birth. Furthermore, some combinations of these mirror-levels would have significant meaning: 2+4=6 would mean only x number of previous versions, 1+2=3 would mean previous versions for the past X months....

In this way we can distribute the space AND bandwidth limitations as well as make it easy for mirrors to define just what they are able to provide, making it easier for people to jump on board and do what they can.

kokoko3k · 2009-11-25 14:55:45

I wonder where is the old directory too!

I've an nvidia geforce 4 440go and i'm unable to install newer xorg because tha last nvidia binary package is not compatible with it.
Latest xorg version which works was 1.6 (this was under gentoo), but as i installed arch i could never got it working (apart from vesa).

Last edited by kokoko3k (2009-11-25 15:02:28)

piezoelectric · 2009-11-25 15:54:27

kokoko3k wrote:

I've an nvidia geforce 4 440go and i'm unable to install newer xorg because tha last nvidia binary package is not compatible with it.
Latest xorg version which works was 1.6 (this was under gentoo), but as i installed arch i could never got it working (apart from vesa).

I guess you didn't get the memo...

The drivers were updated The nvidia-96xx and nvidia-173xx now work fine with the latest xorg

Last edited by piezoelectric (2009-11-25 16:07:37)

kokoko3k · 2009-11-26 08:41:27

Thank you very much, that's a great thing!

Arch Linux

#26 2009-11-06 12:18:54

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#27 2009-11-06 12:45:06

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#28 2009-11-07 01:02:22

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#29 2009-11-07 01:28:05

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#30 2009-11-07 03:27:07

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#31 2009-11-07 13:38:22

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#32 2009-11-08 12:13:43

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#33 2009-11-08 12:22:47

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#34 2009-11-08 12:38:31

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#35 2009-11-08 12:48:44

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#36 2009-11-08 13:32:48

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#37 2009-11-08 16:48:13

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#38 2009-11-08 18:37:40

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#39 2009-11-08 18:37:58

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#40 2009-11-08 19:45:44

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#41 2009-11-08 19:59:22

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#42 2009-11-08 20:24:58

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#43 2009-11-08 20:35:53

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#44 2009-11-08 22:35:46

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#45 2009-11-09 01:59:51

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#46 2009-11-09 03:45:17

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#47 2009-11-09 20:32:29

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#48 2009-11-25 14:55:45

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#49 2009-11-25 15:54:27

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#50 2009-11-26 08:41:27

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

Board footer