While installing an ATLAS Software release from Boston University’s mirror, I discovered a broken archive file. It was the fault of a bad network card. The mirror had to be rebuilt from scratch.

I started a pacman installation of a local ATLAS Software release, using Boston University’s mirror, because I needed the files in Chicago:

$ pacman -pretend-platform SLC-4 -allow trust-all-caches -get am-BU:15.1.0+KV

I got this error, over and over again:

Error executing [tar -z -t -f /opt/atlas/15.1.0/ROOT_5_22_00a_i686_slc4_gcc34_opt.tar.gz] returns status code [<truncated by pacman>
[...]
sw/lcg/app/releases/ROOT/5.22.00a/slc4_ia32_gcc34/root/lib/libPostscript.so
tar: Skipping to next header
gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--crc error
gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--length error
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors].

Using the mirror of Indiana University (am-IU), everything worked. After opening this savannah bug ticket, it turned out that a bad network card caused corrupted data arriving at Boston University. This explains why I alway got the same corrupted file when receiving data from Boston University. They took am-BU offline and rebuilt it.

Update: am-BU is up again!