[solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

perbh · 2011-03-29 23:16:02

Just so I dont hijack other threads ... but this is p... me off royally.

I religiously do a 'pacman -Syu' just about every 2nd day - from a local repo that is updated (using lftp 'mirror' each night).
I didn't update from Thursday until Monday - and that's when it all happened.
New 'pacman' - ok - do that first (pacman -Sy pacman), run the pacman-db-upgrade and check out the new pacman.conf - no biggie.
Then a 'pacman -Syy' just incase and finally a 'pacman -Su' - and that's when the proverbial sh.. hit the fan.

For the vast majority of my packages - 'local' is newer than 'extra' (same for 'core' and 'community') - eg. xfce which I updated to 4.8 eons ago - now is claimed to be 4.6!! (checking the actual files in the repo tells me its still 4.8 but pacman doesn't seem to get that!) And of course - refusal to update because it wants util-linux to be replaced by util-linux-ng and some obscure reference kde-editbookmarks or whatever ...

What's going on?
Does anybody have reasonable explanation?

Oh - and just incase - I have checked out two mirrors incase my usual one was somewhat belated ... no difference (or should I say 'same difference')

Last edited by perbh (2011-03-31 01:59:29)

tomk · 2011-03-29 23:22:59

perbh wrote:

I have checked out two mirrors incase my usual one was somewhat belated

A random two mirrors? Or mirrors that you know are good?

bernarcher · 2011-03-29 23:44:37

You may also try the Pacman Mirrorlist Generator.

perbh · 2011-03-29 23:56:04

tomk wrote:

perbh wrote:
I have checked out two mirrors incase my usual one was somewhat belated
A random two mirrors? Or mirrors that you know are good?

Two that I have every confidence in ... one is 'locke.suu.edu' and the other 'mirrors.kernel.org' ...

Inxsible · 2011-03-30 02:21:18

try rit.edu. I use it all the time and seems to be updated.

perbh · 2011-03-30 02:47:35

Just tried - same sad story :-(
Most of the packages (newer local than repo) are from extra, but quite some few from core as well)
This is driving me absolutely batty - both machines I have tried it on were fine on Thursday, didn't really tocuh them over the weekend and yesterday I brought home the updated repos from the weekend - and *boom*

What I cant understand is how pacman can claim the packages are 'old' (like xfce-4.6) when the tar.xz files most decidedly are 4.8.
I guess it reads the db.tar.gz - but if that's the case, there should be more than me having this problem ...

the sad clown · 2011-03-30 03:15:54

Can you post your mirrorlist?

perbh · 2011-03-30 04:15:45

Well now - as I said, I use a local repo at home which is lifted from my work (where is being updated by lftp-mirror each night). Then at work - I do a 'rsync' to my usb-drive and when I get home I do a 'rsync' from the usb-drive to my local repo.
Thus - my mirrorlist is just a single entry (and has been like that for eons).
However, what I did to tonight was logging onto my works computer and change the script which does the downloading. Infact - I use 3 different entries for archlinux, and change between them as their capabilities changes. My 'default' used to be 'locke', then I changed to 'rit' and of lately have been using mirror.kernel.org. Well, tonight I ran the script first from 'locke' and did a network rsync to my home repo - obviously there were some changes because of more than 12 hours since the normal work mirror. It didn't change anything. Then I did the same for 'rit' - still more updates though not as many - and same problem again. In each case - at least the extra.db was changed each time, but no difference ...

so I'm well and truly snookered here - I just dont understand what's happenening!

Is it some way the database can be recreated? It is almost like the 'pacman-db-upgrade' has screwed things up ...

Last edited by perbh (2011-03-30 04:22:45)

the sad clown · 2011-03-30 11:53:18

Perhaps there issue is with your mirror and not your database then? Is it possible for you to do an sync with an official mirror from the computer in question? I don't know what the problem would be, but it might at least help you narrow down where the problem is if you can get it to work with a more orthodox mirrorlist/sync process.

I ran into a similar problem with a recent netinstall. I recall switching to ftp.archlinux.org (throttling be damned) and liberal doses of -Syy.

perbh · 2011-03-30 13:39:47

Yeah - I'll try with one of my rigs at work - my home network has got quite a small cap (which is why I use a local repo).
My work repo has been working so flawlessly these past 3-4 years that even my work rigs use the local repo ... saves bandwidth when you have enough computers to upgrade :-)

perbh · 2011-03-30 15:50:27

ok - funnily enough - it worked (using the 'standard' mirrors). Now - why is that when I mirror it to a local repo? I have mirrored it about 6 times in the last 24 hours and the last twice there has been no change ... and I'm using the same mirror in both cases ...

I guess the big question is: What exactly happens when you do a 'pacman -Sy'?
And the same question goes for 'pacman-db-upgrade' ...

the sad clown · 2011-03-30 16:04:41

Did you do the db-upgrade on your home computer or the one you use to download with?

perbh · 2011-03-30 16:40:48

This gets more and more strange ...
I have just checked /var/lib/pacman/sync/*.db against my local repo - they are exactly identical! (using 'cmp')
So why oh why can I do an update from a mirror when a local mirror from the same mirror fails?

perbh · 2011-03-30 16:55:35

the sad clown wrote:

Did you do the db-upgrade on your home computer or the one you use to download with?

Not on the same computer (the one at home) but one at my work.
First I updated using my local mirror (which is the one I have a copy of at home) - and that failed exactly the same way as my rig at home.
Then I removed my local mirror/repo and used an 'official' one instead - and then it worked!

I guess my setup needs a bit more explanation:
1) my local repo is on a slackware machine which each night connects to an official mirror and make a copy of that mirror (I have to use the 'mirror'-option in 'lftp' because I am not allowed to use 'rsync' from work)
2) at work I have 2 archlinux-rigs which uses the slackware machine as its repo:
mirrorlist:

Server = ftp://xx.xx.xx.xx/pub/linux/archlinux/packages/$repo/os/i686

(or x86_64 - I use both)
3) I always carry a usb-disk between home and work - and each day at work I 'rsync' from the slackware-machine to my usb-disk
4) When I get home, I rsync my usb-disk to another slackware server
5) I have 4 archlinux rigs at home and they use the same one-liner mirrorlist as above - only difference is the ip-address
(as you can see - with my download cap there is no way I can maintain 4 rigs at home without a local repo)

This setup has served me well for nearly 3-4 years now, never really needed to do anything to change it.

Last edited by perbh (2011-03-30 16:57:56)

the sad clown · 2011-03-30 17:07:05

I'm not familiar with how to set up a local mirror. You might want to look through
these wiki's and see if there isn't something there that might correct your situation:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lo … ory_HOW-TO
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cu … repository

perbh · 2011-03-30 17:49:04

Oh I wasn't familiar with how to do it either - so I just decided to make a complete mirror.
Thus,

wget ftp://mirror.kernel.org/archlinux/os
wget ftp://192.168.1.11/pub/archlinux/os

should do exactly the same if the two are a mirror of each other, but in my case the latter is local and hence more easily accessible

Remember, this setup has worked for long enough - it was the last pacman that borked something.

Last edited by perbh (2011-03-30 17:52:53)

perbh · 2011-03-31 02:05:01

OK, I figured it out in the end.
My 'mirroring' was not a perfect mirror (as such), I only picked files ending in '.tar.?z' (the reason being that at some point there were a couple of subdirectories in the repo that I didn't want/need).
After the new pacman, the db's are now called $repo.db and $repo.files rather than $repo.db.tar.gz and $repo.files.tar.gz

ie. for my local repo I now fetch all files, not only those ending with '.tar.?z' ... *sigh*
One lives and learn though I wish that li'l fact had been made public ... (which it may well have been done but I haven't seen it).

the sad clown · 2011-03-31 02:11:49

Ah, I knew that, but didn't know that was your search parameter for downloading. I'm glad it's been fixed.

toofishes · 2011-03-31 13:16:22

perbh wrote:

OK, I figured it out in the end.
My 'mirroring' was not a perfect mirror (as such), I only picked files ending in '.tar.?z' (the reason being that at some point there were a couple of subdirectories in the repo that I didn't want/need).
After the new pacman, the db's are now called $repo.db and $repo.files rather than $repo.db.tar.gz and $repo.files.tar.gz
ie. for my local repo I now fetch all files, not only those ending with '.tar.?z' ... *sigh*
One lives and learn though I wish that li'l fact had been made public ... (which it may well have been done but I haven't seen it).

Funny you should say that: http://projects.archlinux.org/pacman.gi … 75d7321#n8

Perhaps next time you should not ask for help if you are going to lead people on a wild goose chase like this and blame everyone and everything else before doing a little look at your own tools? You were a tad aggressive in this thread for anyone that works on the software in question to actually want to help you.

perbh · 2011-03-31 15:01:06

Well now - other than a question on if I trust my alternate mirrors, I have not seen any developers trying to do any help.
'the sad clown' is the only one to show any interest.

perbh · 2011-03-31 15:51:10

@toofishes
... and actually, my download script was not wrong - _I_ was reading it wrong. I did have $repo.db and $repo.files.
And the problem still persists but I can get around it by doing a pacman -Syy from one of the mirrors and then do a pacman -Su on my local mirror even though a cmp between my local repo and the official mirror yields no difference.
I guess my question still is the same - exactly _what_ is the action of pacman -Sy(y) ? At a rough guess I would say it copies the db's to /var/lib/pacman/sync and then do an untar to /var/lib/pacman/local
But, I guess I have to download the source-code to find that out ...

Allan · 2011-03-31 15:55:36

-Sy(y) copies <repo>.db to /var/lib/pacman/sync. That is all. It does not untar the database or touch /var/lib/pacman/local.

perbh · 2011-03-31 16:40:07

OK Allan, thanks!

Arch Linux

#1 2011-03-29 23:16:02

[solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#2 2011-03-29 23:22:59

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#3 2011-03-29 23:44:37

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#4 2011-03-29 23:56:04

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#5 2011-03-30 02:21:18

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#6 2011-03-30 02:47:35

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#7 2011-03-30 03:15:54

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#8 2011-03-30 04:15:45

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#9 2011-03-30 11:53:18

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#10 2011-03-30 13:39:47

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#11 2011-03-30 15:50:27

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#12 2011-03-30 16:04:41

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#13 2011-03-30 16:40:48

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#14 2011-03-30 16:55:35

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#15 2011-03-30 17:07:05

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#16 2011-03-30 17:49:04

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#17 2011-03-31 02:05:01

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#18 2011-03-31 02:11:49

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#19 2011-03-31 13:16:22

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#20 2011-03-31 15:01:06

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#21 2011-03-31 15:51:10

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#22 2011-03-31 15:55:36

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

#23 2011-03-31 16:40:07

Re: [solved] pacman-3.5.1-1 woes

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