[SOLVED] Pacman Performance Issue

mrmylanman · 2011-06-02 20:26:50

Hey everybody:

I have a weird performance problem with pacman. When I tell it to download something, it works fine when it is finding the package, figuring out dependencies, and processing the command.

Then, when it gets to downloading, it'll take a few to several minutes to start downloading a package, download it at a normal/acceptable speed, then take a few to several minutes to start downloading the next package.

I'm not sure what's causing this problem but I could see this beeing a nuissance for upgrades and things like that. Or right now, because it's a fresh install and I'm trying to install Gnome, lol. This behavior is also experienced when I'm updating the mirrors (pacman -Syy).

I'm going to let it run overnight where it'll probably be done by the time I get back to work in the morning, but this seems like there's something wrong because I just tried on my laptop (on the same LAN) and it works as fast as I'd ever seen it. In the past, I've never done any optimization or mirror ranking and I haven't experienced this issue before.

Thanks!

Last edited by mrmylanman (2011-06-03 12:41:45)

karol · 2011-06-02 20:34:01

Does that happen for all mirrors (pacman uses the first mirror from the list)? Both ftp and http, different locations?
Any differences between you laptop and the other computer? Are you using the same mirrorlist?

eldragon · 2011-06-02 20:36:45

check your dns servers.

Koven · 2011-06-02 22:06:16

I've a similiar issue with the performance in pacman. I checked my dns servers and they give me a really fast answer to any query I do. I guess it might be a network problem, but I don't know where....

BR

mrmylanman · 2011-06-02 22:32:37

Well, the install on the desktop was brand new, but they were both working from the same (default) mirror list. I commented out the first few entries, as well as archlinux.org and a few others that seemed far away from their names, and tried it again. Same issue.

I thought it might be an issue with the DNS servers, so I tried pinging google, yahoo, and like xmission and a few others that it may not have cached and they all got resolved pretty quick.

Seems very strange. I remember yum being extremely slow, now that I think about it, but I used Fedora last about 3 years ago now (this was a different building and different internet plan at the time). Apt seemed quick enough (since Fedora I have been dual-booting Windows and Debian).

We have a fiber optic connection at work, not particularly fast at download but has good upload (more important for us), and we have a local DNS caching server. It has caused some problems before, but it seems to have been behaving today (and for several months now).

Thanks again, love the forums and I'm glad to be getting Debian off my work PC (strange as it is, I'm more comfortable with Arch now than I am with Debian).

Last edited by mrmylanman (2011-06-02 22:37:02)

kofrad · 2011-06-03 04:30:35

I'd look at your local dns cache as the problem. I'm currently using pdns with no issues, pacman resolves as quick as it should. However, I tried out another dns cache server at some point, rescached, while using that server I experienced the lag you describe, only on pacman. I never found the root issue to the problem, I only got around it by going back to pdnsd.

mrmylanman · 2011-06-03 11:06:29

I'll look into setting that up on my work PC and see if it improves the situation. Thanks for the heads up, I haven't heard of that software before, only bind and dnsmasq

mrmylanman · 2011-06-03 12:04:10

So I got to work just now, and I found that Gnome hasn't finished downloading yet, and so I set up pdnsd. DNS queries are quick and responsive (not 1ms for subsequent queries, but around 15, so I'm not sure). The issue with pacman is still ocurring.

mrmylanman · 2011-06-03 12:41:31

Since I am not sure how to get logging information out of pacman aside from "installing xxxxxx", I decided to try out wget as the xfer command, and found out that I am indeed a bonehead. I chose kernel.org as the mirror during installation, and I did not realize it left that in the pacman mirrorlist (I don't think it's there on my laptop so maybe I did delete that additional line at some point). Anyhow, now it's pulling from Georgia Tech and it's going perfectly fine now.

Problem solved!

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-02 20:26:50

[SOLVED] Pacman Performance Issue

#2 2011-06-02 20:34:01

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman Performance Issue

#3 2011-06-02 20:36:45

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman Performance Issue

#4 2011-06-02 22:06:16

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman Performance Issue

#5 2011-06-02 22:32:37

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman Performance Issue

#6 2011-06-03 04:30:35

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman Performance Issue

#7 2011-06-03 11:06:29

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman Performance Issue

#8 2011-06-03 12:04:10

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman Performance Issue

#9 2011-06-03 12:41:31

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman Performance Issue

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