PKGFILED(1) pkgfiled Manual PKGFILED(1)

pkgfiled - automatically syncs pacman .files DBs to the pkgfile cache

Usage: pkgfiled [options] pacman_dbpath pkgfile_cache

pkgfiled is a tiny daemon which watches for changes to pacman(8)'s .files databases and repackages these for consumption by pkgfile. This allows data to remain in sync between pacman and pkgfile.

Invoking pkgfiled requires two arguments -- a source directory to read pacman database files from (typically under /var/lib/pacman/sync), and a destination directory which pkgfile will read from (typically /var/cache/pkgfile). A systemd unit facilitates management of the daemon.

Upon starting, pkgfiled will compare the contents of the pacman database with the pkgfile cache and catch up with anything out of sync. After this, it will only wake up when changes occur to the pacman database.

On the initial sync, ignore timestamp comparisons and rewrite all found databases.
Exit after pkgfiled's initial sync, rather than continuing to listen for changes.
Repack repos with the optionally supplied compression method, which may be one of none, gzip, bzip2, lzop, lz4, lzma, xz, or zstd. If this flag is passed without a compression method, this defaults to gzip. If this flag is not passed at all, no compression will be applied. Applying any form of compression will decrease performance, but may be desirable for disk space concerns.
Print help and exit.
Print the version and exit.

When run interactively, pkgfiled will gracefully shutdown on receipt of SIGINT. Otherwise, SIGTERM is used to indicate a graceful shutdown.
Upon receipt of these signals, pkgfiled will rescan the pacman database directory for changes and update as needed. Unlike SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2 will ignore timestamps checks and rewrite all found database.

pkgfile(8)

Dave Reisner <d@falconindy.com<gt>

2026-02-15 pkgfiled 25