I did re-generate the mirrorlist using rankmirrors, as shown on the arch wiki "mirrors" page:

Back up the existing /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist:

# cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup

Edit /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup and uncomment mirrors for testing with rankmirrors.

Optionally run the following sed line to uncomment every mirror:

# sed -i 's/^#Server/Server/' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup

Finally, rank the mirrors. Operand -n 6 means only output the 6 fastest mirrors:

# rankmirrors -n 6 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

The error mysteriously went away.

But I do not seen to have rtmpdump installed. After reading about it, I am still not sure what it is, or why it would be needed for rankmirrors. Do the update mirrors use something called RTMP streams?

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 5:47 AM, Aaron Caffrey wifiextender@bitmessage.ch wrote:

On 16/04/15 at 05:26pm, Francis Gerund wrote:

...

Just recently did:

sudo pacmatic -Syuv

and got:

:: Synchronizing package databases... error: failed retrieving file 'core.db' from arch.localmsp.org : Connection timed out after 10000 milliseconds core is up to date error: failed retrieving file 'extra.db' from arch.localmsp.org : Connection timed out after 10001 milliseconds extra is up to date error: failed retrieving file 'community.db' from arch.localmsp.org : Connection timed out after 10000 milliseconds community is up to date :: Starting full system upgrade... resolving dependencies... looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (3) gdm-3.16.1.1-1 libgdm-3.16.1.1-1 llvm-libs-3.6.0-5

Total Download Size: 8.77 MiB Total Installed Size: 38.01 MiB Net Upgrade Size: 0.23 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] n

So, I chose NO, then per the wiki I updated the mirrorlist, and once the mirrorlist wsa updated, I did:

sudo pacmatic -Syyuv

and got:

Root : / Conf File : /etc/pacman.conf DB Path : /var/lib/pacman/ Cache Dirs: /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ Lock File : /var/lib/pacman/db.lck Log File : /var/log/pacman.log GPG Dir : /etc/pacman.d/gnupg/ Targets : None :: Synchronizing package databases... core 121.4 KiB 1167K/s 00:00 [##################################] 100% extra 1800.4 KiB 4.00M/s 00:00 [##################################] 100% community 2.6 MiB 4.41M/s 00:01 [##################################] 100% :: Starting full system upgrade... warning: gdm: local (3.16.1.1-1) is newer than extra (3.16.1-3) warning: libgdm: local (3.16.1.1-1) is newer than extra (3.16.1-3) there is nothing to do

Huh? why:

warning: gdm: local (3.16.1.1-1) is newer than extra (3.16.1-3) warning: libgdm: local (3.16.1.1-1) is newer than extra (3.16.1-3)

I again did: sudo pacmatic -Syyuv

and got the same exact result.

Note that at the time this is posted, archlinux.org does not seem to show gdm 3.16.1-3 or libgdm 3.16.1-3, just gdm 3.16.1.1-1 and libgdm 3.16.1.1-1

So, what to do?

Hello Francais,

Generate new ranked mirrors via **rankmirrors -n 30 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist**

Make sure that you have "rtmpdump" installed. For more information please visit https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mirrors#List_by_speed

Best regards, Aaron Caffrey

On Sunday, April 19, 2015 01:58:52 PM Eli Schwartz wrote:

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 8:45 PM, Francis Gerund ranrund@gmail.com wrote:

...

I did re-generate the mirrorlist using rankmirrors, as shown on the arch wiki "mirrors" page:

Back up the existing /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist:

# cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup

Edit /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup and uncomment mirrors for testing with rankmirrors.

Optionally run the following sed line to uncomment every mirror:

# sed -i 's/^#Server/Server/' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup

Finally, rank the mirrors. Operand -n 6 means only output the 6 fastest mirrors:

# rankmirrors -n 6 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

The error mysteriously went away.

But I do not seen to have rtmpdump installed. After reading about it, I am still not sure what it is, or why it would be needed for rankmirrors. Do the update mirrors use something called RTMP streams?

I shouldn't've thought ranking the mirrors by speed would inherently fix the problem -- although changing mirrors means there is a chance you will end up with newer ones. Or possibly the mirrors you ended up with had already caught up to the packages you were getting errors about.

I would've used reflector, to generate a list of the most up-to-date mirrors, and then ranked those by download speed just to make things faster.

[eschwartz@arch ~]$ cat ~/bin/mirrorgen reflector -c "United States" --age 2 --sort age --protocol http --save /tmp/mirrorgen && rankmirrors -v -n 5 /tmp/mirrorgen | sudo tee /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

-- Eli Schwartz

This is a known issue regarding the way Arch syncs mirrors. There's even a bug report for a particular mirror https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/44374?project=1&cat%5B0%5D=31&string=pacman-mirrorlist

On Sun, Apr 19, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Francis Gerund ranrund@gmail.com wrote:

Just using reflector only, as per the wiki mirror page, wouldn't this be simpler:

sudo reflector --verbose --country 'United States' -l 200 -p http --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

It *seems* to work okay from here, and does not explicitly require use of rankmirrors or a mirrorgen file.

Well, for my use case specifically, which I quoted, I chose to use rankmirrors. ;)

Anyone else is free to use whatever is best for them.

-- Eli Schwartz

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 10:50 AM, Francis Gerund ranrund@gmail.com wrote:

Eli, I did not mean to imply that the way you showed is wrong.

I am totally new to Arch and pacman, so I really don't know how this all works.

I am just trying to learn.

Don't worry about it. I was just clarifying that the use of rankmirrors is nothing but a personal preference. :)

-- Eli Schwartz

On 17/04/15 at 08:45pm, Francis Gerund wrote:

The error mysteriously went away.

Hello Francis,

It is awesome to hear that your issue is solved.

As Sebastian Vettel noted, your mirrors was 'out-of-sync' that is why I suggested you a simple solution derived from the wiki.

Best regards, Aaron Caffrey

Okay . . .

Thank you for the input.

May I just state that I can (and do) use all of the information resources aforementioned. Oh, if you only knew the may hours I have spent reading, reading, reading. Yes, I have learned much from reading.

But reading is not always the most efficient or even the most effective learning modality. Often, just asking questions is the best way to promote knowledge transfer.

Having said that, in the interest of avoiding the potential of adverse sentiment, perhaps further discussion on this point might better be taken "off-list"?

Now regarding mailing lists, I believe this is the collection of official Arch (publically available) mailing lists:

*List* *Description* *arch-announce* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-announce Arch Linux Announcements *arch-commits* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-commits Arch Linux packaging commits *arch-dev-public* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-dev-public Public mailing list for Arch Linux development *arch-events* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-events Arch Linux Events *arch-general* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-general General Discussion about Arch Linux *arch-mirrors* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-mirrors Arch Linux Mirroring Discussion and Announcements *arch-multilib* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-multilib Arch Linux Multilib (32bit libs on 64bit OSes) *arch-ports* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-ports Discussion regarding the porting of Arch Linux to non-i686 architectures *arch-projects* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-projects Arch Linux projects development discussion *arch-releng* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-releng Arch Linux Release Engineering *arch-security* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-security Discussion about security issues in Arch Linux and its packages *arch-women* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/arch-women Mailing list for the Arch Women project *aur-dev* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/aur-dev Arch User Repository (AUR) Development *aur-general* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/aur-general Discussion about the Arch User Repository (AUR) *aur-requests* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/aur-requests Public mailing list for AUR package deletion/merge/orphan requests *pacman-dev* https://lists.archlinux.org/listinfo/pacman-dev Discussion list for pacman development ------------------------------

After carefully reviewing it, I have not yet found a list more suitable to my limited capabilities, such as:

arch-newbies@archlinux.org or arch-for-the-cognitively-challenged@archlinux.org

So, for now, all I can do is: - keep looking - keep reading - keep asking

Cheers!

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 3:43 PM, Aaron Caffrey wifiextender@bitmessage.ch wrote:

Hello Francis,

In archlinux you have to rely on the wiki, man pages and info documents more often than you do in the mail list, as a lot the wiki pages there are written by people that have dedicated a lot of their free time to write the provided information correctly and well explained, also they make sure that most of the pages are up to date.

A quick 5-10 minutes web research would nail almost all of your future quirks. And if you can't, feel free to submit a new message to the mail list as there are always nerds around that would help you out.

Best regards, Aaron Caffrey

Thanks, guys. I appreciate the support!

: )

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 7:35 AM, Aaron Caffrey wifiextender@bitmessage.ch wrote:

On 21/04/15 at 09:10am, Francis Gerund wrote:

...

But reading is not always the most efficient or even the most effective learning modality. Often, just asking questions is the best way to promote knowledge transfer.

Hello Francis,

I have never inteded to discourage you or hurt your feelings. I saw that you have posted couple questions in the mail list that can be 'copy and paste' answered by your favourite search engine.

Also I learnt that you have been using some other gnu/linux distribution that has taken the learning curve provided by the command line in favour of GUI applications.

If you asked yourself 'what is reponsible to start processes during a system startup' you would come down to the init system which in this case is systemd. And from here you can ask your favourite search engine the following 'how to start a service in systemd' and you'll get the answer. The emotional feeling that you have semi-solved similar issues is undescriable and awards you with knowledge.

Read magaznies, I can suggest only http://www.linuxvoice.com/creative-commons-issues/ as it is free to download and distribute.

Best regards, Aaron Caffrey