If you manage to download a bad database (e.g. an html file when behind a proxy or with a badly configured webserver), pacman makes sure you know about it. Here is some example output: error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format I don't know how many times that gets printed because it goes beyond my scrollback buffer. Flag a database that we can "open" and "fstat" but not read from as invalid to avoid this. Signed-off-by: Allan McRae <allan@archlinux.org> --- v3: fix setting the database as invalid. Not entirely sure how the last one worked, but it did! lib/libalpm/be_sync.c | 2 ++ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) diff --git a/lib/libalpm/be_sync.c b/lib/libalpm/be_sync.c index 1b7c8b6f..429ca4ce 100644 --- a/lib/libalpm/be_sync.c +++ b/lib/libalpm/be_sync.c @@ -486,6 +486,8 @@ static int sync_db_populate(alpm_db_t *db) fd = _alpm_open_archive(db->handle, dbpath, &buf, &archive, ALPM_ERR_DB_OPEN); if(fd < 0) { + db->status &= ~DB_STATUS_VALID; + db->status |= DB_STATUS_INVALID; return -1; } est_count = estimate_package_count(&buf, archive); -- 2.15.1