Always synchronizing package database

orschiro · 2010-05-24 07:49:52

Hello guys,

whenever I update my system via pacman -Syu I have exactly one repo that is always retrieving new information even if the last update was just one minute ago. It's the adslgr64 repo and the output is looking somehow like this:

[orschiro@thinkpad ~]$ pacman -Syu 
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 archlinuxfr is up to date
adslgr64                  27,3K   91,3K/s 00:00:00 [#####################################################################################################################################################] 100%

I remember to have read somewhere that this is a quite normal behaviour with http-mirrors but I'm not quite sure. Does anyone know more about this?

In the following the mirror I'm talking about.

[adslgr64]
#The Hellenic (Greek) archlinux unofficial repository with many interesting packages.
Server = http://adslgr64.tiven.org/archlinux/x86_64

Regards

Ogion · 2010-05-24 08:00:40

Maybe have a look at rebase by Xyne. It might help with only downloading changes..

Ogion

xduugu · 2010-05-24 09:20:07

That's because their server does not send a Last-Modified header. And no, rebase will not help because it downloads the full database, but only extracts new entries, and it also uses the Last-Mmodified header.

$ curl -I http://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/cor … .db.tar.gz
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 24 May 2010 09:18:22 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.15 (Fedora)
Last-Modified: Mon, 24 May 2010 03:32:14 GMT
ETag: "4006f55c-908a-4874eafd4cb80"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 37002
Content-Type: application/x-gzip

curl -I http://adslgr64.tiven.org/archlinux/x86 … .db.tar.gz
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 27921
Date: Mon, 24 May 2010 09:18:55 GMT
Server: lighttpd/1.4.26

orschiro · 2010-05-24 09:22:32

Thanks for that explanation xduugu. So this is not a general problem of http-mirrors but only of those that doesn't send the modified header?

xduugu · 2010-05-24 09:42:38

Right, they should fix their server configuration (adjust the Content-Type)

flamelab · 2010-05-24 16:51:25

I'm contacting the server's owner so that this issue is fixed

Except for that, we have changed the urls, due to server changes:

[adslgr32]
#The Hellenic (Greek) archlinux unofficial repository with many interesting packages.
Server = http://archlinuxgr.tiven.org/archlinux/i686/

[adslgr64]
#The Hellenic (Greek) archlinux unofficial repository with many interesting packages.
Server = http://archlinuxgr.tiven.org/archlinux/x86_64/

as you can see on our gitorious page http://gitorious.org/arch-linux-greece and the wiki http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uno … positories

We are making changes (yet slowly) since we have moved to a new server.

If you have any questions, please, don't hesitate to ask me.

Last edited by flamelab (2010-05-24 16:57:21)

Ogion · 2010-05-24 19:15:21

Ah ok xduugu.

Ogion

Xyne · 2010-05-24 21:01:33

Ogion wrote:

Maybe have a look at rebase by Xyne. It might help with only downloading changes..
Ogion

xduugu wrote:

That's because their server does not send a Last-Modified header. And no, rebase will not help because it downloads the full database, but only extracts new entries, and it also uses the Last-Mmodified header.

Just for clarification, "rebase --by-lastupdate" checks the headers and only downloads the archive if it's newer while "rebase" always downloads the archive. There's no way to avoid downloading the archive itself when updating the database, but the archive is trivially small. In either case it selectively extracts and removes files instead of overwriting the entire database. It wouldn't save any bandwidth in the case of missing headers, but it would save disk IO.

@orschiro
Instead of running "pacman -Syu", you can update the database in an hourly cronjob and then just run "pacman -Su" when you want to update. My current setup runs rebase once an hour and displays available upgrades via conky (using a script that I posted in the paconky thread). I only upgrade when I see that there are packages in the queue.

Last edited by Xyne (2010-05-24 21:02:02)

flamelab · 2010-05-25 16:14:15

Τhe issue at the archlinuxgr server has been fixed

orschiro · 2010-05-25 23:24:27

I can confirm that it works now. Thanks for the quick fix.

Regards

orschiro · 2010-06-02 16:45:49

Hello guys,

I have to ask you once again for help. On another machine I encounter the same phenomenon now but not for this adsgr repo but for all the official.

What could that be?

Regards

Arch Linux

#1 2010-05-24 07:49:52

Always synchronizing package database

#2 2010-05-24 08:00:40

Re: Always synchronizing package database

#3 2010-05-24 09:20:07

Re: Always synchronizing package database

#4 2010-05-24 09:22:32

Re: Always synchronizing package database

#5 2010-05-24 09:42:38

Re: Always synchronizing package database

#6 2010-05-24 16:51:25

Re: Always synchronizing package database

#7 2010-05-24 19:15:21

Re: Always synchronizing package database

#8 2010-05-24 21:01:33

Re: Always synchronizing package database

#9 2010-05-25 16:14:15

Re: Always synchronizing package database

#10 2010-05-25 23:24:27

Re: Always synchronizing package database

#11 2010-06-02 16:45:49

Re: Always synchronizing package database

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