I don’t see any mention of that site in the etc/pacman.conf file either. I just see references to the mirror list file.
Thanks for that link to current USA sites. Can you explain what this means?
“ Filtered by mirror score from mirror status page”
Given my lack of knowledge and experience, as well as not knowing how my Salkstream is specifically set up, I’m hesitant to try updating via a different site. I posted the error message on the Salk section of the Audio Circle Forum and am waiting for Salk to respond. I think I’ll hold off doing anything until he responds.
If pacman.conf only references the mirrorlist file, and in that file all mirrors are commented out, I’d assume that the unavailable French mirror was being used as a default. This really comes down to uncomment one or more mirrors in the mirrorlist file, or include a few of the mirrors from the generated list… pacman should then be able to download a current package list.
I feel like I’m getting completely over my head here. For example, I don’t know what this means, “…pacman should then be able to download a current package list…”. What’s a package list?
I’ve never performed a linux update before, so I have no idea how the process works. Is it like updating Windows or my iPhone/iPad where I just click to update and everything happens automagically?
I was hoping it would be as easy as entering a single command and it would update automatically. Clearly in this case, it’s not that simple.
I greatly appreciate the feedback and help here from everyone!
I think the next step for me is to wait and see what Salk says. Maybe this is why he initially said if I get an error running pacman -Syu I would need to send the hard drive to him to update. If possible, I’d like to avoid that. Heaven forbid the drive gets damaged or lost in shipping! When the drive was replaced last time, it took quite a bit of back and forth for Salk to remotely get the Salkstream running again. He mentioned it would have been much easier for him if I had shipped the entire Salkstream back to him. I’m hoping to avoid all that this time.
In modern Linux distros, software is maintained, distributed and installed in form of packages. pacman is a package manager for Arch Linux, which can manage the packages installed on your system… update new versions, install packages you want or need to have on your system, delete packages you no longer want or need, etc.
The package manager needs to have up to date info about available packages and their current versions. And these lists of available packages with their version info is what pacman needs to download first, prior to be able to compare the current versions vs installed versions and so to be able to determine which packages need updates…
The archlinuxfr.db is just such a list of available packages on the now obsolete mirror configured to be used on your Salkstream system.
Really, once a Linux system is up to date and set up right, updating is very very simple. In your case, with a system that seemingly hasn´t been updated for a long time, things may not be so smooth. But… in the end it’s just a computer, and all you want to achieve is to bring the OS up to date. The first approach is to try and update the system… and now you’ve run into the problem that the configured mirror is no longer active… that can be resolved by configuring other mirrors as described before.
If all this fails, there’s always the option to simply wipe out the installed Arch Linux and install a fresh current copy of the OS. I can only assume you have backups of your Roon database on a drive outside of your Salk Stream…
Updating or reinstalling a Linux OS isn’t really that hard. But if you have never done it before and feel intimidated by all the commands and syntax to do so, it may be easier to have Jim Salk do it for you, or maybe you can find a friendly kid in the neighborhood with some fluency in Linux… that may be another option…
Looking back to my original motivation for starting this thread, here’s my current thoughts;
I was concerned about two things; first being security risk running an older OS on the Salkstream, and continued compatibility with Roon.
Between comments here and from Salk, it seems as long as I keep my router (firewall) up to date (I verified it is current), the risk of a security issue with my Salkstream is low (please correct me if I’ve misunderstood).
Regarding Roon compatibility, it’s currently working fine. Perhaps for now I should just stick with the old advice, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?
I am no expert to be able to give a well-argued risk assessment… but I’d think that the real risk of your current system vs an up to date Linux system is indeed rather low…
That’s probably a wise way to proceed… If the hassle to update the OS on the Salk Stream is too big and Roon works just fine… just keep going, and when some day Roon might not be compatible anymore with your outdated OS, you then could still have someone help you to update the OS, or replace the Salk Stream altogether…
“ Yes, edit the mirror list to include just a few US sites and you should have better results. You can delete a lot of foreign servers or comment them out with #.”
So it seems it is just a matter of adding current sites to the mirror list.
When generating the list I checked the ‘Use mirror status’ box, so the list is generated weighted as to completeness (all packages available) and if a mirror is current (recently updated)… the mirror status might take into account other variables, such as online status and speed of the mirror…
So… I’d take the first few from the top of the list…
"Warning: In most cases if you force refresh the pacman database, you will want to force downgrade any potentially too-new packages to correspond to the versions offered by the new mirror. This prevents issues where packages are inconsistently upgraded, leading to a partial update.
pacman -Syyuu
This is not necessary when using successfully syncing mirrors or checking timestamp of mirror’s lastsync file to ensure package lists are up to date."
So if I use a site from that list of successfully syncining mirrors, I can skip the # pacman -Syyu step?
I just realized I confused the command # pacman -Syyu with # pacman -Syyuu in my reply to you. Oops! I see the second one isn’t needed if using a successfully syncing mirror. I see the first three mirror sites on the list you linked are on the successfully syncing mirror list.
I copied and pasted the first three sites on the list you linked into the mirrorlist file, then ran # pacman -Syyu, then tried pacman -Syu again. It comes back with the exact same error message. It’s still trying to pull the file from the old non existent site.
BTW, when I ran #pacman -Syyu, it didn’t seem to do anything. The cursor just instantly reappeared waiting for another command, so I don’t know if that actually did anything?
And you did uncomment the posted mirrors like this??
Server = https://mirror.hackingand.coffee/arch/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://ridgewireless.mm.fcix.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://ord.mirror.rackspace.com/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Other than this, I am out of ideas why Arch Linux would not honor your configured mirrors…
Edit: Please have another look at the file /etc/pacman.conf and look for a block like this:
[archlinuxfr]
SigLevel = Never
Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch
If it is there, just block it out:
# [archlinuxfr]
# SigLevel = Never
# Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch
I just looked up some more info on this site repo.archlinux.fr and learned that this site was not really a mirror, but rather a repository of packages contributed by the French Arch Linux user community. This repo was mirrored in the past, but is now obsolete. No mirror is carrying this repo anymore. The file where you must have this repo configured is /etc/pacman.conf. It’s in that file you have to look for it an delete it or comment it out…
Ah! So I think this why it is defaulting to the repo.archlinux.fr site.
I have a question though. Is this saying that my Salkstream is running a custom version of archlinux, and that updates can only come from that site? Or am I missunderstanding what this means and it’s OK to update to “regular” archlinux over the current archlinuxfr on my Salkstream?
This French site just offered in the past some additional user-contributed packages which are now (apparently since 2018) obsolete. You can comment this out without problem…
If possible, I’d like to avoid that. Heaven forbid the drive gets damaged or lost in shipping! 
When the drive was replaced last time, it took quite a bit of back and forth for Salk to remotely get the Salkstream running again. He mentioned it would have been much easier for him if I had shipped the entire Salkstream back to him. I’m hoping to avoid all that this time.
