II-4 Repositories Preservation 

You will need this part only if you have created a separate partition for repositories and you want to keep a local copy of the repositories packages.

Open a new Console with root access and hit:

abs

 
When the whole procedure ends, open a Midnight Commander with root permissions, and go to the mount-point of the partition for the repositories we made. On our example to /mnt/repos.

Create the following directories:

arch

 
Inside the above directory create a new directory, depending on our architecture:

for amd64

amd64

 
for x86

x86

 
Finally create three more directories inside the directories you have just created:

etc-pacman-d
var-cache-pacman-pkg
var-lib-pacman-sync

 
From now on you will have to be very careful as long as everything will be ruined if something goes wrong.

Depending, once again, on our architecture:

for amd64

a. We make copies of these files to the next ones

/etc/pacman.d/ -> /mnt/repos/arch/amd64/etc-pacman-d/
/var/cache/pacman/pkg/ -> /mnt/repos/arch/amd64/var-cache-pacman-pkg/
/var/lib/pacman/sync/ -> /mnt/repos/arch/amd64/var-lib-pacman-sync/

b. Delete the following folders

/etc/pacman.d
/var/cache/pacman/pkg
/var/lib/pacman/sync

c. Create the following symlinks

/etc/pacman.d -> /mnt/repos/arch/amd64/etc-pacman-d
/var/cache/pacman/pkg -> /mnt/repos/arch/amd64/var-cache-pacman-pkg
/var/lib/pacman/sync -> /mnt/repos/arch/amd64/var-lib-pacman-sync

d. Copy abs.conf b pacman.conf from one file to the other

/etc/ -> /mnt/repos/arch/amd64/

e. Delete those files

/etc/abs.conf
/etc/pacman.conf

f. Create this symlink

/etc/abs.conf -> /mnt/repos/arch/amd64/abs.conf
/etc/pacman.conf -> /mnt/repos/arch/amd64/pacman.conf

for x86

a. We make copies of these files to the next ones

/etc/pacman.d/ -> /mnt/repos/arch/x86/etc-pacman-d/
/var/cache/pacman/pkg/ -> /mnt/repos/arch/x86/var-cache-pacman-pkg/
/var/lib/pacman/sync/ -> /mnt/repos/arch/x86/var-lib-pacman-sync/

b. Delete the following folders

/etc/pacman.d
/var/cache/pacman/pkg
/var/lib/pacman/sync

c. Create the following symlinks

/etc/pacman.d -> /mnt/repos/arch/x86/etc-pacman-d
/var/cache/pacman/pkg -> /mnt/repos/arch/x86/var-cache-pacman-pkg
/var/lib/pacman/sync -> /mnt/repos/arch/x86/var-lib-pacman-syncg

d. Copy abs.conf & pacman.conf from one file to the other

/etc/ -> /mnt/repos/arch/x86/

e. Delete those files

/etc/abs.conf
/etc/pacman.conf

f. Create these symlinks

/etc/abs.conf -> /mnt/repos/arch/x86/abs.conf
/etc/pacman.conf -> /mnt/repos/arch/x86/pacman.conf

Go to the root directory "/" in both Midnight Commander's windows and exit with F10.

If everything is right:

Giving:

pacman -Sy

 
The system should be ok !

It is obvious that this repository could be located on a network partition.