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

[Xavier]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Nigel Henry
<cave.dnb2m97pp at aliceadsl.fr> 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.