Hello I need some help with Manjaro mirrors please. Running pacman -Syu or pacman -Syyu often gives this error about a missing community.db file:
$ sudo pacman -Syu
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core 142.4 KiB 220 KiB/s 00:01 [###############################################] 100%
extra 8.3 MiB 9.61 MiB/s 00:01 [###############################################] 100%
community.db failed to download
error: failed retrieving file 'community.db' from mirrors2.manjaro.org : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed to synchronize all databases (failed to retrieve some files)
Changing the mirror list with pacman-mirrors -i allows community.db to be downloaded but it is only 29 bytes, too small to be plausible as a list of software:
$ sudo pacman -Syyu
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core 142.4 KiB 225 KiB/s 00:01 [###############################################] 100%
extra 8.3 MiB 7.04 MiB/s 00:01 [###############################################] 100%
community 29.0 B 483 B/s 00:00 [###############################################] 100%
multilib 147.1 KiB 1337 KiB/s 00:00 [###############################################] 100%
:: Starting full system upgrade...
Question: Is there really a community.db file. If so, why do some mirrors give a 404 error? If not, why do some mirrors have a tiny 29-byte file? What do I need to do as a user so that updates do not give this error?
Thank you so much, @dmt and @megavolt. I searched the forum for “mirror” and “404” but didn’t think of searching for “community.db”. I have now removed the lines from /etc/pacman.conf.
If such a script was a consideration, asking the user to confirm (give permission for the edit) – twice – would probably address that (along with an explanation, of course).
Most who bother to read the Update Announcements should already have seen .pacnews/.pacsaves mentioned close to the top, in any case.
For that special breed who won’t even look there, as I suggested, a is better than nothing.
Our approach was always to maintain the system for the user as best as we could. Manjaro Summit will do that now again. Some liked it to have not thinking about what to be done manually. Over the time the forum team and developers team however switched more to an Arch-like style and tried to educate and point the normal users to become sys-admins. When you used Manjaro, it simply worked, if you want to dig deeper - switch to Arch.
When I removed the community repos from our servers we thought most users will figure it out. Several months later we still get the same questions about systems not able to update. Hence the readd. Simple - don’t force the user to maintain their systems when it works …
Btw. I never touched pacsave/new’s on my system myself. Simply - why needed?
It is simple: As soon as you have to use the terminal to fix some in Manjaro some is really off. Manjaro should be able to be run with UI tools only. Otherwise, why use it?
How is that a contradiction to applying sane defaults with when software advances or changes?
It seems simple.
It’s not, though.
I think I might need to get me a new hobby.
The UI tools need to be ready and capable of that …
meld, for instance, is a good tool
but people either don’t use it - or don’t grasp (know) how to use it - probably partly they don’t understand why these changes even can matter …
or because they don’t have a concept of what configuration files even are …
for the time being. Encouraging people to familiarise themselves with 
