Arch Linux's Pacman 6.1 Released With Cache Server Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Arch Linux's Pacman 6.1 Released With Cache Server Support

It was two years since the release of Pacman 6.0 as Arch Linux's package manager software while overnight Pacman 6.1 was released with a tag line "it's been a while..." With Pacman 6.1 comes a few new features...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Arch-Linux-Pacman-6.1

[Chugworth]

Interesting. I've been using a NFS mount as a cache server for some time now (by just mounting it over /var/cache/pacman/pkg). How exactly does the new feature work? What protocol does it use to cache the packages to the server? And would it still cache packages locally if you use that?

[varikonniemi]

I wish they fixed the most common beginner problems.

Like having to manually clear a package from cache because it's corrupted. If pacman knows it's corrupted, and that's the reason it cannot continue with an update, why not ask if user wants to delete it?

[intelfx]

I wish they fixed the most common beginner problems.

Like having to manually clear a package from cache because it's corrupted. If pacman knows it's corrupted, and that's the reason it cannot continue with an update, why not ask if user wants to delete it?

That’s exactly what pacman does.

[fallingcats]

I wish they fixed the most common beginner problems.

Like having to manually clear a package from cache because it's corrupted. If pacman knows it's corrupted, and that's the reason it cannot continue with an update, why not ask if user wants to delete it?

Pacman asks you if whether you want to delete a "corrupt" packages with the default being yes, after verifying all signatures. Corrupt of course can also mean that you have missing signatures in you keyring.

That said, your problem has either been either fixed for a long time or is a weird edge case and not beginner at all

[jeisom]

Interesting. I've been using a NFS mount as a cache server for some time now (by just mounting it over /var/cache/pacman/pkg). How exactly does the new feature work? What protocol does it use to cache the packages to the server? And would it still cache packages locally if you use that?

I am curious as well. I was updating an external drive install recently and I created a symlink to the internal install and, yeah not a good idea. Pacman was one of the packages and it uninstalled pacman , deleting the symlink, then couldn't find the package and baled. So no pacman installed. I'll see if I can use a bind mount next time.

[Quackdoc]

its always a little bit weird to see arch make news since arch doesn't change much, but it sure is nice when it does

[varikonniemi]

Pacman asks you if whether you want to delete a "corrupt" packages with the default being yes, after verifying all signatures. Corrupt of course can also mean that you have missing signatures in you keyring.

That said, your problem has either been either fixed for a long time or is a weird edge case and not beginner at all

I'm only familiar with errors people find at manjaro forum after something like power loss/crash during update, and there it's a constant "tell us error message and we can tell you what pacman clean command will fix it" but at this point a bot cold be made that just replies: pacman -Scc fixes it.

And there certainly is not any question ever if user wants pacman to fix it for them? Otherwise they never would have posted a question about it at the forum!

edit: another common need in similar situation: a pacman option to "reinstall all packages" should exist. Piping list all packages into Sync is not something anyone could figure out on their own without google-fu skills. And even there nasty caveats exist like do you care if all packages become "explicitly installed"? It should not be so hard.

[fallingcats]

I'm only familiar with errors people find at manjaro forum after something like power loss/crash during update, and there it's a constant "tell us error message and we can tell you what pacman clean command will fix it" but at this point a bot cold be made that just replies: pacman -Scc fixes it.

And there certainly is not any question ever if user wants pacman to fix it for them? Otherwise they never would have posted a question about it at the forum!

edit: another common need in similar situation: a pacman option to "reinstall all packages" should exist. Piping list all packages into Sync is not something anyone could figure out on their own without google-fu skills. And even there nasty caveats exist like do you care if all packages become "explicitly installed"? It should not be so hard.

Well, I agree with you there, pacman should have a reinstall-everything option. Power loss during an upgrade otoh has a good chance of producing an unbootable system, it seems unlikely to me that just the cache would be corrupted (and in such a way that pacman wouldn't fix that itself)

The power loss problem could be mitigated by writing all files to disk and then just "mv"-ing then into place. That operation should be pretty much instant and minimize risk. I wonder why nobody's doing that.

[geearf]

edit: another common need in similar situation: a pacman option to "reinstall all packages" should exist. Piping list all packages into Sync is not something anyone could figure out on their own without google-fu skills. And even there nasty caveats exist like do you care if all packages become "explicitly installed"? It should not be so hard.

pacman won't change the install reason on reinstall.

Have you actually used pacman?

oh and pacman -S $(pacman -Qqn), no search engine needed the help is enough.

The power loss problem could be mitigated by writing all files to disk and then just "mv"-ing then into place. That operation should be pretty much instant and minimize risk. I wonder why nobody's doing that.

Isn't that what COW is?