Mageia forum

I am being prompted to install an update from Mageia 3. When I click on the Install button I get a dialog box with the installation information in it, to wit:

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The following package is going to be installed:

- libtiff5-4.0.3-4.3.mga3.i586

0B of additional disk space will be used.

151KB of packages will be retrieved.

Is it ok to continue??



OK fine, that looks like the other updates I have accepted, but when I click on Update it comes back immediately with an error dialog with the following in it.

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Installation failed, some files are missing:
    rsync://distro.ibiblio.org/mageia/distrib/3/i586/media/core/updates/libtiff5-4.0.3-4.3.mga3.i586.rpm
You may need to update your urpmi database.

Try to continue anyway?


I click on No because there isn't much point if the file is missing.

I type the following rpm command to check for what is on the computer and get:

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[brian@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep libtiff
libtiff5-4.0.3-4.2.mga3
[brian@localhost ~]$


So the old version is on the machine OK.

I have not changed the repositories since I installed Mageia 3 last Summer. Is there something missing in the repositories. Do I need to point to sources elsewhere from the one I am using? All of the other Mageia updates have gone through without a hitch.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Banjo
(_)=='=~

That is probably just the mirror being not in sync. Try again later, or remove your repos and use a different mirror from http://mirrors.mageia.org/

OK then. It is fixed, but I am not sure what I did.

I went back to the Configure Media page and looked around. I could not find anywhere that would display which mirror I have assigned, although I assume that it is distro.ibiblio.org since that is what showed up in the error message. I tried File=>Add Specific Media Mirror, which listed a bunch of mirrors. I wasn't sure what to do with that, so I bailed out.

Still poking around trying to figure out how this works, I clicked on the Add button, and that is when it got strange. It started to download what looked like mirror databases, but they went by too fast to grab any names. That took a few minutes, and after that got done, the media sources listed in the Configure Media page were duplicated beneath the original ones, but with tags such as "Mirror list Core Release (distrib1)", "Mirror List Core Release Debug (distrib2)" and so on down to "Mirror list Tainted Backports Testing Debug (distrib30)". The same set of media is checked in that list that is checked above.

Where is this "Mirror list"?

So it looks like I just added a bunch of repositories, but not sure which. All of them? How to I see what is actually set up?

On a lark, I attempted to install the update once more, and it slipped right in no problem. So it found the missing file on a different repository. Or the original repository is now in synch. Or it really is magic.

I am still not sure what I have set up now. There must be a command line way to dig down into what is really going on, but I am too tired tonight to look into it.

Thanks for the help in solving this. Mageia is a great distro.

Banjo
(_)=='=~

banjo wrote:Where is this "Mirror list"?

So it looks like I just added a bunch of repositories, but not sure which. All of them? How to I see what is actually set up?

To see what is currently set up, either have a look into /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg or

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urpmq --list-media active

to show all currently enabled media or

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urpmq --list-media

to show all currently defined media or

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urpmq --list-url

to show all currently defined media including the URLs which they point to.

EDIT: Seems since some time this command also shows URLs for Mirrorlist media if they are enabled...

Mirrorlist is a mechanism to use a placeholder instead of an absolute URL, which is being replaced at runtime with a mirrors
address near you by using geolocation and known mirrors you've used before, and looking in the mirror list, as mentioned before http://mirrors.mageia.org.
No easy way to show which is being used, you can have a look in the cache file via e.g.

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[doktor5000@localhost ~]$ grep chosen /var/cache/urpmi/mirrors.cache                                                                                                   
                             'chosen' => 'http://mirror.tuxinator.org/mageia/distrib/3/x86_64',

And when you add media sources/repos, by default this is used. I don't like it as it's error prone, that's why i prefer to
specify which mirror it should use, as those are known good, sync often and didn't gave much problems over the last few years.

It's faster to do this via urpmi, so first that way:

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sudo urpmi.removemedia -a
sudo urpmi.addmedia --distrib --wget 'ftp://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/Mageia/distrib/$VERSION/$ARCH'

This adds all standard media sources from the mirror ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/Mageia, automatically expands which Mageia version and arch (i586 or x86_64) you're using at runtime and uses wget as downloader.

Same can be done via MCC:
drakrpm-edit-media -> File -> Add Specific Media Mirror -> Yes (superfluous question IMHO) -> select the mirror including protocol you want

Remember you need to enable Nonfree and Tainted when adding default, media sources, can either be done via clicking, or

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urpmi.update --no-ignore "Tainted Release" && urpmi.update --no-ignore "Tainted Updates" && urpmi.update --no-ignore "Nonfree Release" && urpmi.update --no-ignore "Nonfree Updates" && urpmi.update -av

FWIW, you can add multiple complete sets of media sources from different mirrors for redundancy, but I prefer to only have one
set, using a high-bandwith, fast-repsonding and up-to-date mirror. Gives the least problems.

You may want to have a look at some of the notes at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installing_a ... g_software and https://wiki.mageia.org/en/URPMI
Just shout if you have any further questions.

Thanks for all the great information. I executed some of the commands you provided and found that the second set of media sources are using the same URL as the first set, rsync://distro.ibiblio.org. I suppose that is because both are using MIRRORLIST. The addition of the second set seems pretty meaningless.

Also, that means that the successful update was from rsync://distro.ibiblio.org and not a different server. So I guess it had simply caught up, and the timing of the update to the change I made was coincidental.

Since I am not familiar with the details of the speed and reliability of the different mirrors, I am unable to figure out which one would be best to use. I think I will leave the system like it is while I study the issues and then come back to it again later. Up until this one update the system has been working fine.

Thanks again for the info.
Banjo
(_)=='=~

banjo wrote:Since I am not familiar with the details of the speed and reliability of the different mirrors, I am unable to figure out which one would be best to use.

That's an easy one, as you encountered problems, and as I've seen ibiblio to be one of the probelmatic ones,
just remove all your media and add a complete set from another mirror in your area, or one from the faster european ones.
If you encounter problems again, rinse and repeat until you find a mirror that gives you no problems.
Remember that one.

FWIW, i'm using ftp://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de and previously used ftp://ftp.nluug.nl

You can also just switch to a different downloader globally via drakrpm-edit-media -> Options -> Global Options -> downloader