error: failed to commit transaction (failed to retrieve some files)

Pacman prints this when it knows the filename of a package but the server it asks does not have that file. On Omarchy the server is almost always one of the Omarchy mirrors, and the cause is almost always your local package databases being ahead of the mirror you are pointed at.

The fix

These steps were checked against v4.0.4. On v3.8.4 the same commands exist except omarchy channel current, omarchy channel set also resets the git branch there, and there is no update guard (step 4).

1. See which channel you are actually on:

   omarchy version channel
   omarchy channel current

   omarchy version channel reads /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist and /etc/pacman.conf separately and prints one word if they agree. If it prints something like edge / stable, your Arch mirror and your Omarchy package repo are on different channels, which is the classic 404 setup. Skip to step 3.

2. Force a full database re-download, then update:

   sudo pacman -Syy
   omarchy update

   The double y discards the cached databases instead of skipping ones that look current. This is the step dhh pointed people at in issue #3650, and sudo pacman -Syyu is what resolved issue #4258 for the reporter.

3. If the channels disagreed in step 1, reset both sides at once:

   omarchy channel set stable

   That runs omarchy refresh pacman, which copies pacman-stable.conf and mirrorlist-stable into place, runs pacman -Syyuu, makes sure the omarchy and omarchy-settings packages are installed, and finishes with a full update. dhh suggested exactly this in issue #3716. Use rc or edge in place of stable if that is the channel you meant to be on.

4. On 4.x, do not reach for sudo pacman -Syu yourself. 4.0 added an ALPM pre-transaction hook, omarchy-update-pacman-guard, that aborts direct system upgrades with a message starting “Woah partner…” and tells you to run omarchy update instead. Plain pacman -Syy and single-package installs are not blocked. On 3.8.4 there is no guard, which is why older comments tell people to run sudo pacman -Syu directly.

5. If the package you want simply has not reached stable yet, you have two honest choices: wait for the next mirror sync, or move to the edge channel with omarchy channel set edge. Edge moves your whole system to current Arch, not just the one package, and on 4.x it also swaps you onto the omarchy-dev packages, so treat it as a commitment rather than a workaround.

Verify it worked

Re-run whatever failed. Beyond that:

• omarchy version channel should print a single word, not a pair separated by a slash.

• omarchy version pkgs prints when your packages were last upgraded.

• Compare the mirror stamp to upstream:

  date -d @$(curl -s https://stable-mirror.omarchy.org/lastupdate)
  date -d @$(curl -s https://geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com/lastupdate)

  Arch mirrors serve /lastupdate and /lastsync as a unix timestamp, and the Omarchy hosts do too. If the mirror stamp is older than the package version pacman is asking for, waiting is the fix.

Why it happens

Omarchy moved off public Arch mirrors during 3.x; by v3.8.4 each default mirrorlist carries a single Omarchy host and nothing else. The stable channel points at stable-mirror.omarchy.org, which is deliberately behind upstream Arch so package breakage gets caught before it reaches everyone. The v3.2.0 release notes describe that lag as about a month. Measured on 2026-09-17 (UTC), stable-mirror.omarchy.org reported a lastupdate of 2026-09-07, roughly nine days behind the Arch geo mirror, while mirror.omarchy.org (edge) was within an hour of it.

That lag is fine until your local databases come from somewhere else. Pacman resolves a package to an exact filename from the database, then fetches that filename. If the database came from edge and the files come from stable, the name it wants does not exist and you get a 404 rather than a useful message. dhh said as much in issue #3559: databases from edge reference packages that do not exist on stable. alebahn described this well in issue #5085: the available version was cached from when a wider mirror set was configured, and pacman -Syy cleared it. ryanrhughes made the same point on issue #1645, adding that the error text is not a reliable guide to the real problem.

The Omarchy package repo lags in the same way. Measured on the same day, the stable repo carried 235 packages and edge carried 243; 39 packages differed in version between the two, 10 existed only on edge, and 2 only on stable. A database from one and files from the other will 404.

v3.2.2 shipped a fix for the worst version of this, where switching from edge to stable left the old databases in place. That helps when you switch channels through the supported command. It does not help if you edited /etc/pacman.conf or the mirrorlist by hand, and it does not remove the lag itself.

If that did not work

• Downloads stall or time out rather than 404. Issue #3357 collects a few things people tried: temporarily disabling IPv6 with sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1 (two people said it worked), simply retrying until the transfer completes (the reporter), and setting ParallelDownloads = 1 in /etc/pacman.conf (suggested, with no one confirming it). dhh called it a network issue. None of these is a confirmed root cause.
• Signature or keyring errors mixed in with the 404s. Those are a different problem, see signature is unknown trust.
• You are failing during a fresh install from the ISO, with from disk : Could not open file instead of a 404. The installer uses an offline mirror bind mounted into the target, and a run that stopped partway leaves an empty directory behind, so every later package fails to retrieve. That is issue #6985, not mirror lag. See install fails or stalls.
• You added an upstream Arch mirror by hand. Two people in issue #5085 got unblocked that way, and it does work. It is not durable, and the install script in that thread kept forcing the mirrorlist back: omarchy refresh pacman and omarchy channel set both overwrite /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. They do back up the previous file to mirrorlist.bak and pacman.conf.bak first.
• The error mentions a maximum allowed file size instead of a 404. Same family of causes. In issue #1645 the reporter cleared it by re-running with -Sy, ryanrhughes suggested sudo pacman -Syu or waiting for the mirror to settle, and cicku pointed at the Cloudflare setup in front of the mirror. Refreshing the databases is still the first thing to try.

Related

• The manual chapter on updates and channels
• Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded
• omarchy update fails or hangs
• Release channels and stable mirror lag and CVEs
• Before you update checklist