A package mirror needs a host-arch index, even for a phone port
scope: generic · severity: trap · confidence: proven · subsystem: packaging
Symptom — a custom binary repository that publishes only the device arch
(aarch64) resolves fine at first, then a build dies with
ERROR: getting APKINDEX from binary package mirror failed! and
NOTE: check the [mirrors] section in 'pmbootstrap config'. The URL named in
the log above it is the x86_64 index, an arch nobody ever meant to publish.
It appears only once something needs the native chroot, so it looks
intermittent: a build whose packages all come from the mirror can pass, and the
next one that has to compile anything fails.
Cause — pmb/helpers/repo.py update(arch) downloads the index of every
configured mirror for each arch it prepares, and a native chroot is always the
host arch. Any 404 is fatal, including for a mirror nothing will be installed
from in that chroot. The escape hatch PMB_APK_FORCE_MISSING_REPOSITORIES=1
ignores all missing indexes, so it would also hide a missing aarch64 one.
What to do — publish a signed index for the host arch in every tree
(main/x86_64, systemd/main/x86_64), even an empty one: apk index with no
packages, signed with the same key. porthole doctor --all fetches the device
and host indexes anonymously and reports host-arch-missing when only this one
is absent. porthole sandbox up leaves the mirror out of the workspace config
until the probe passes, so builds keep working meanwhile.
A private GitHub repository fails in the same place with a 404 on every index,
because GitHub answers anonymous release downloads of a private repo with 404,
and neither pmbootstrap nor apk can send a token. doctor reports that case as
private. See docs/CONFIG.md#package-repository and
apk3-reads-only-etc-apk-keys.