Arch Linux

0x4e

Member

Registered: 2019-06-24

Posts: 2

[Solved] Package ca-certificates-mozilla gives error at update

Hello,

today I noticed an error message while upgrading normally with pacman -Syu.

The error seems to be related to the ca-certificates-mozilla package:

$sudo LANG=C pacman -S ca-certificates-mozilla
warning: ca-certificates-mozilla-3.44.1-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) ca-certificates-mozilla-3.44.1-1

Total Installed Size:  0.93 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:      0.00 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                                              [##########################################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                                            [##########################################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                                                 [##########################################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                                           [##########################################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space                                         [##########################################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/1) reinstalling ca-certificates-mozilla                                  [##########################################] 100%
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/2) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...
(2/2) Rebuilding certificate stores...
find: '/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts': Too many levels of symbolic links
error: command failed to execute correctly

I searched my pacman log and this has happened before.
Relevant log:

[2018-11-14 08:41] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] find: ‘/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts’: Zu viele Ebenen aus symbolischen Links
[2018-12-08 12:52] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] find: ‘/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts’: Zu viele Ebenen aus symbolischen Links
[2018-12-12 11:21] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] find: ‘/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts’: Zu viele Ebenen aus symbolischen Links
[2019-02-10 12:42] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] find: ‘/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts’: Zu viele Ebenen aus symbolischen Links
[2019-03-21 13:29] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] find: ‘/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts’: Zu viele Ebenen aus symbolischen Links
[2019-05-15 12:59] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] find: ‘/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts’: Zu viele Ebenen aus symbolischen Links
[2019-06-24 09:19] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] find: ‘/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts’: Zu viele Ebenen aus symbolischen Links
[2019-06-24 09:37] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S ca-certificates-mozilla'
[2019-06-24 09:37] [ALPM] transaction started
[2019-06-24 09:37] [ALPM] reinstalled ca-certificates-mozilla (3.44.1-1)
[2019-06-24 09:37] [ALPM] transaction completed
[2019-06-24 09:37] [ALPM] running 'systemd-update.hook'...
[2019-06-24 09:37] [ALPM] running 'update-ca-trust.hook'...
[2019-06-24 09:37] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] find: '/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts': Too many levels of symbolic links

So far I did not notice any issues but I still would like to fix this problem, if there is a problem.

A quick search did not turn up anything arch related but only few other applications where similar error messages occured.
I fail to see how these relate to my problem, especially as I do not remember doing something strange to my certs directory.

Maybe someone could give me a hint what is causing this error and how to fix it.

Last edited by 0x4e (2019-06-24 13:08:09)

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,196

Re: [Solved] Package ca-certificates-mozilla gives error at update

I don't have any file at /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts. What is that file?

pacman -Qo /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts
ls -ld /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts
file /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts
file -L /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts

---

| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' |

0x4e

Member

Registered: 2019-06-24

Posts: 2

Re: [Solved] Package ca-certificates-mozilla gives error at update

Thank you very much, that was the hint I needed.

#pacman -Qo /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts
error: No package owns /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts
#ls -ld /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Nov 13  2018 /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts -> cacerts
#file /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts
/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts: broken symbolic link to cacerts
#file -L /etc/ssl/certs/cacerts
/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts: cannot open `/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts' (Too many levels of symbolic links)

Turns out I did something strange to my certs direcotry, albeit unintentionally.

Some time ago I apparently tried to create a symlink to the cacerts directory elsewhere and managed to create a broken link to itself instead.
I obviously seem to have swapped TARGET and LINK_NAME accidentally.

$mkdir test
$ln -s test test/test
$file test/test
test/test: broken symbolic link to test

However, I just removed the broken link and the error message is gone.