When doing ftp install method the selected mirror URL is badly parsed to the generated /tmp/pacman.conf. So fetching the core db from mirror fails. Example: [gerhard@ws01 ~]$ serverurl='ftp://ftp.he.de/mirror/$repo/os/i686' [gerhard@ws01 ~]$ echo $serverurl ftp://ftp.he.de/mirror/$repo/os/i686 [gerhard@ws01 ~]$ repo=core old code: --------- [gerhard@ws01 ~]$ echo "Server = ${serverurl/\/\$repo\//\/$repo\/}" Server = ftp://ftp.he.de/mirror\/core\/os/i686 patched: [gerhard@ws01 ~]$ echo "Server = ${serverurl/\$repo/$repo}" Server = ftp://ftp.he.de/mirror/core/os/i686 Cause this code section is commented already as a "hack" maybe it's better to have a solution where we split the $serverurl to get only the absolute mirror URL path (ex: ftp://ftp.he.de/mirror) and build from that our download line for the core repo (ex: "$url/core/os/$ARCH), so we avoid regexe's. Only the core repo needs a "extra" handling, all other repos (if there are any!) uses the pacman.d/mirrorlist method. Regards Gerhard