If pacman 3.5.4-4 can't connect to a repo that's listed in pacman.conf, it will throw a bunch of errors error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db: Failed to open '/var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db' error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db: Failed to open '/var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db' error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db: Failed to open '/var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db' error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db: Failed to open '/var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db' error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db: Failed to open '/var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db' error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db: Failed to open '/var/lib/pacman/sync/allanbrokeit.db' ... but will let you update and install packages from other repos. pacman 4.0.1-X errors out: [karol@black ~]$ pacman -Syu warning: database file for 'allanbrokeit' does not exist :: Synchronizing package databases... testing is up to date community-testing is up to date core is up to date extra is up to date community is up to date error: failed retrieving file 'allanbrokeit.db' from allanmcrae.com : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed to update allanbrokeit (download library error) :: Starting full system upgrade... error: failed to prepare transaction (could not find database) [karol@black ~]$ pacman -S hdparm warning: database file for 'allanbrokeit' does not exist error: failed to prepare transaction (could not find database) hdparm is in [core]. allanbrokeit repo is already back online, so you have to test it with some nonexistent repo & db. The error messages are clear enough and you only have to comment out the repo that e.g. went offline to "fix" pacman. This behavior may be a feature [1] but I wanted to make sure this is how it's meant to be. [1] See Allan's post https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1034943#p1034943