error setting up base repository

[CLOSE Dave]

The subject message sometimes appears on the installation source entry
from anaconda. But I have never been able to find a good way to learn
just what the error is. Sure, sometimes it's obvious: the URL is wrong.
But other times everything seems to be correct but still the error
persists. I'm looking for a checklist of possible causes or a log entry
that corresponds to the problem.

In my present effort, I'm attempting to use a local mirror of the
fedora-updates repository (in addition to local mirrors of the fedora
and other repositories). I believe the mirror is correct and complete.
The machine being installed has no trouble accessing the repo from an F2
shell while anaconda is running. Looking through the anaconda logs, I
find lots of references to the updates repository but no errors.

What can cause this error message? And how do I find out what caused it
in this instance?

[Brian C. Lane]

Post by CLOSE Dave
The subject message sometimes appears on the installation source entry
from anaconda. But I have never been able to find a good way to learn
just what the error is. Sure, sometimes it's obvious: the URL is wrong.
But other times everything seems to be correct but still the error
persists. I'm looking for a checklist of possible causes or a log entry
that corresponds to the problem.
In my present effort, I'm attempting to use a local mirror of the
fedora-updates repository (in addition to local mirrors of the fedora
and other repositories). I believe the mirror is correct and complete.
The machine being installed has no trouble accessing the repo from an F2
shell while anaconda is running. Looking through the anaconda logs, I
find lots of references to the updates repository but no errors.
What can cause this error message? And how do I find out what caused it
in this instance?

The first place to start is with the packaging.log in /tmp/, but it can
be hard to track down since there are so many different things that
could cause connection problems.

You're serving your own repo in this case, how are you doing that?
dnf/rpm need the repository server to support partial file requests in
order for it to work. Apache, lighttpd, nginx all work fine for this but
simpler servers (eg. the python SimpleHTTPServer) don't and would result
in cmdline use of wget working but actual installation failing.

[CLOSE Dave]

Post by CLOSE Dave
The subject message sometimes appears on the installation source
entry from anaconda. But I have never been able to find a good way to
learn just what the error is. Sure, sometimes it's obvious: the URL
is wrong. But other times everything seems to be correct but still
the error persists. I'm looking for a checklist of possible causes or
a log entry that corresponds to the problem.
In my present effort, I'm attempting to use a local mirror of the
fedora-updates repository (in addition to local mirrors of the
fedora and other repositories). I believe the mirror is correct and
complete. The machine being installed has no trouble accessing the
repo from an F2 shell while anaconda is running. Looking through the
anaconda logs, I find lots of references to the updates repository
but no errors.
What can cause this error message? And how do I find out what caused
it in this instance?
The first place to start is with the packaging.log in /tmp/, but it
can be hard to track down since there are so many different things
that could cause connection problems.
You're serving your own repo in this case, how are you doing that?
dnf/rpm need the repository server to support partial file requests
in order for it to work. Apache, lighttpd, nginx all work fine for
this but simpler servers (eg. the python SimpleHTTPServer) don't and
would result in cmdline use of wget working but actual installation
failing.

Thanks for the response. I'm using Apache and all the mirrors are
handled by the same server. So I don't think that's a problem. In fact,
the Apache log shows six successful transfers (and no failures) during
the PXE attempt:

"GET /pub/fedora/linux/updates/23/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml HTTP/1.1"
200 4848 "-" "dnf/1.1.3"
"GET
/pub/fedora/linux/updates/23/x86_64/repodata/c0de9c1524f11455bed4c76d5b77db37350fe7f93bf286c2252f9dba3660242f-comps-f23.xml.xz
HTTP/1.1" 200 234204 "-" "dnf/1.1.3"
"GET
/pub/fedora/linux/updates/23/x86_64/repodata/bd84db91cc49415693acdf4182f664da85c5cd0f735853b07c6d24d463f2d8cf-prestodelta.xml.xz
HTTP/1.1" 200 1692180 "-" "dnf/1.1.3"
"GET
/pub/fedora/linux/updates/23/x86_64/repodata/32ae5d89a8b0f4f6138c6e29982d6530ce1f5b15c2683c32c73ac4872dc70d81-updateinfo.xml.xz
HTTP/1.1" 200 805392 "-" "dnf/1.1.3"
"GET
/pub/fedora/linux/updates/23/x86_64/repodata/2670a5a0fd8a2f4e9c77b37724e713d5708db63b570c1d7f2cf415946a4c8204-primary.xml.gz
HTTP/1.1" 200 4079104 "-" "dnf/1.1.3"
"GET
/pub/fedora/linux/updates/23/x86_64/repodata/28a6521b42f24e15a2550df8ab8dcd60390329411a393eb1294f341a7c9b22a8-filelists.xml.gz
HTTP/1.1" 200 11782234 "-" "dnf/1.1.3"

I've tried several more things since, adjusting the URLs etc, and failed
to save the packaging.log last time, so I can't check right now. But my
recollection was that there was nothing in that log that appeared to
represent an error. Certainly nothing clearly labeled as an error
leading to this message.

Note to developers. I certainly would be nice if the cause of the error
could be explicitly stated somewhere.