[arch-general] Pacman problem. "error writing to file" "bad address"

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Nigel Henry

29 Sep 2009 29 Sep '09

4:13 p.m.

I had problems with ocaml yesterday. After the machine locked up during the updates, I did a hard reset, and ran pacman -Su again. It continued downloading ocaml, but when all the updates were downloaded, it failed to install them, claiming that ocaml was corrupted. I removed the corrupted ocaml as requested, and as I'm on dialup and didn't want to download 38MB of ocaml again last night, I temporarily added an IgnorePkg line for it. Ran pacman -Su again, and all the updates apart from ocaml, and also gnupg2, which couldn't be found, were installed. Today I went to install the ocaml update, having removed it from the IgnorePkg line. It starts to download, but then throws an error as below. error: error writing to file '/var/cache/pacman/pkg/ocaml....' :Bad address Harddrive partition is redlining, and the partly downloaded ocaml file shows as 2GB size. Any ideas on a fix for this problem? As an aside, pacman was updated, but not before the other updates, in case that is what has caused the problem. Nigel.

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Xavier

29 Sep 29 Sep

5:26 p.m.

New subject: [arch-general] Pacman problem. "error writing to file" "bad address"

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Nigel Henry wrote:

...

I had problems with ocaml yesterday. After the machine locked up during the updates, I did a hard reset, and ran pacman -Su again. It continued downloading ocaml, but when all the updates were downloaded, it failed to install them, claiming that ocaml was corrupted. I removed the corrupted ocaml as requested, and as I'm on dialup and didn't want to download 38MB of ocaml again last night, I temporarily added an IgnorePkg line for it.

Ran pacman -Su again, and all the updates apart from ocaml, and also gnupg2, which couldn't be found, were installed.

Today I went to install the ocaml update, having removed it from the IgnorePkg line. It starts to download, but then throws an error as below.

error: error writing to file '/var/cache/pacman/pkg/ocaml....' :Bad address

Harddrive partition is redlining, and the partly downloaded ocaml file shows as 2GB size.

Any ideas on a fix for this problem?

As an aside, pacman was updated, but not before the other updates, in case that is what has caused the problem.

Nigel.

See http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16359

Nigel Henry

7:01 p.m.

New subject: [arch-general] Pacman problem. "error writing to file" "bad address"

On Tuesday 29 September 2009 19:26, Xavier wrote:

...

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Nigel Henry

wrote:

...
I had problems with ocaml yesterday. After the machine locked up during the updates, I did a hard reset, and ran pacman -Su again. It continued downloading ocaml, but when all the updates were downloaded, it failed to install them, claiming that ocaml was corrupted. I removed the corrupted ocaml as requested, and as I'm on dialup and didn't want to download 38MB of ocaml again last night, I temporarily added an IgnorePkg line for it.

Ran pacman -Su again, and all the updates apart from ocaml, and also gnupg2, which couldn't be found, were installed.

Today I went to install the ocaml update, having removed it from the IgnorePkg line. It starts to download, but then throws an error as below.

error: error writing to file '/var/cache/pacman/pkg/ocaml....' :Bad address

Harddrive partition is redlining, and the partly downloaded ocaml file shows as 2GB size.

Any ideas on a fix for this problem?

As an aside, pacman was updated, but not before the other updates, in case that is what has caused the problem.

Nigel.

See http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16359

Thanks for the link to the bug. Just after I posted the problem, I tried reverting to the earlier pacman package "pacman-3.3.0-3-i686.pkg.tar.gz" , which works with no problems. Then upgraded to pacman-3.3.1-1, where the problem returned. Currently I'm running the earlier version, and have temporarily added pacman to the IgnorePkg list. Thanks for your quick reply. Nigel.

Xavier

7:19 p.m.

New subject: [arch-general] Pacman problem. "error writing to file" "bad address"

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 9:01 PM, Nigel Henry wrote:

...

Thanks for the link to the bug.

Just after I posted the problem, I tried reverting to the earlier pacman package "pacman-3.3.0-3-i686.pkg.tar.gz" , which works with no problems. Then upgraded to pacman-3.3.1-1, where the problem returned.

Currently I'm running the earlier version, and have temporarily added pacman to the IgnorePkg list.

Thanks for your quick reply.

That is bad news. The bug I fixed should exist since pacman 3.3.0 (since we moved to libfetch). It is quite strange that you cannot reproduce the problem with that. Any chances you could try the patch I posted in the bug report ? You will have to get pacman 3.3.1 PKGBUILD though abs, and edit the PKGBUILD to apply that patch.

Nigel Henry

8:06 p.m.

New subject: [arch-general] Pacman problem. "error writing to file" "bad address"

On Tuesday 29 September 2009 21:19, Xavier wrote:

...

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 9:01 PM, Nigel Henry

wrote:

...
Thanks for the link to the bug.

Just after I posted the problem, I tried reverting to the earlier pacman package "pacman-3.3.0-3-i686.pkg.tar.gz" , which works with no problems. Then upgraded to pacman-3.3.1-1, where the problem returned.

Currently I'm running the earlier version, and have temporarily added pacman to the IgnorePkg list.

Thanks for your quick reply.

That is bad news. The bug I fixed should exist since pacman 3.3.0 (since we moved to libfetch). It is quite strange that you cannot reproduce the problem with that.

Any chances you could try the patch I posted in the bug report ?

You will have to get pacman 3.3.1 PKGBUILD though abs, and edit the PKGBUILD to apply that patch.

I'll have a go at that tomorrow, as I'm currently downloading ocaml for the second time (on dialup), and don't want to mess with pacman until that's installed. Nigel.

Santhosh Joseph

30 Sep 30 Sep

3:10 a.m.

New subject: [arch-general] Pacman problem. "error writing to file" "bad address"

I had the same issue with another package (gnokii I think). I removed the partially downloaded file, changed mirrors and then the updates went through. See if that works for you. Thanks Santhosh Joseph On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 9:43 PM, Nigel Henry wrote:

...

I had problems with ocaml yesterday. After the machine locked up during the updates, I did a hard reset, and ran pacman -Su again. It continued downloading ocaml, but when all the updates were downloaded, it failed to install them, claiming that ocaml was corrupted. I removed the corrupted ocaml as requested, and as I'm on dialup and didn't want to download 38MB of ocaml again last night, I temporarily added an IgnorePkg line for it.

Nigel Henry

9:45 p.m.

New subject: [arch-general] Pacman problem. "error writing to file" "bad address"

Update below. On Tuesday 29 September 2009 22:06, Nigel Henry wrote:

...

On Tuesday 29 September 2009 21:19, Xavier wrote:

...
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 9:01 PM, Nigel Henry

wrote:

...
Thanks for the link to the bug.

Just after I posted the problem, I tried reverting to the earlier pacman package "pacman-3.3.0-3-i686.pkg.tar.gz" , which works with no problems. Then upgraded to pacman-3.3.1-1, where the problem returned.

Currently I'm running the earlier version, and have temporarily added pacman to the IgnorePkg list.

Thanks for your quick reply.

That is bad news. The bug I fixed should exist since pacman 3.3.0 (since we moved to libfetch). It is quite strange that you cannot reproduce the problem with that.

Any chances you could try the patch I posted in the bug report ?

You will have to get pacman 3.3.1 PKGBUILD though abs, and edit the PKGBUILD to apply that patch.

Ok. Tried the patched pacman, but there are still problems. I have pacman setup to use 3 mirrors. First I tried to get hydrogen (3.24MB). It downloaded for a bit with the first mirror, then complained that it couldn't retrieve file. It then switched ro the second mirror, and continued the download for a bit, then too complained that it couldn't retrieve file. Switched to 3rd mirror, and amazingly concluded the download. Now to try for another package (ardour, with 2 deps) (debug output attached). Again it got the 2 deps by having use all 3 mirrors, and downloaded only 112.5 KB having used up all 3 mirrors. Mind you it's not creating 2GB partial files now. I also have the wireshark output for ardour and deps, and have posted it to you offlist. Hope that's ok. Nigel.

Xavier

1 Oct 1 Oct

6:33 a.m.

New subject: [arch-general] Pacman problem. "error writing to file" "bad address"

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Nigel Henry wrote:

...

Ok. Tried the patched pacman, but there are still problems. I have pacman setup to use 3 mirrors. First I tried to get hydrogen (3.24MB). It downloaded for a bit with the first mirror, then complained that it couldn't retrieve file. It then switched ro the second mirror, and continued the download for a bit, then too complained that it couldn't retrieve file. Switched to 3rd mirror, and amazingly concluded the download.

Now to try for another package (ardour, with 2 deps) (debug output attached). Again it got the 2 deps by having use all 3 mirrors, and downloaded only 112.5 KB having used up all 3 mirrors. Mind you it's not creating 2GB partial files now.

I also have the wireshark output for ardour and deps, and have posted it to you offlist. Hope that's ok.

That's indeed what was expected. The bug in pacman was that we did not handle return error from libfetch correctly. This is also why not everyone was hit by the bug. If libfetch has no problem downloading, then everything was fine. Now the question is indeed why libfetch fails so often for you. The most obvious explanation would be some network failures / unstability. Do you have a stable connection ? Is there anything you could do to improve that ? Which network drivers are you using ? I guess it would also help if you now tried other downloaders to get the same files (wget, curl, web browser) and see what happens.

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Nigel Henry
Santhosh Joseph
Xavier