Arch Linux

yeray

Member

Registered: 2007-01-10

Posts: 3

problemas with permissions/ pacman -Syu

Hello, im using arch for a few days and i like it a lot, since today i have this odd error when i try to use pacman

[root@archlinux yeray]# pacman -Sy
:: Synchronizing package databases...
:: current is up to date
:: extra is up to date
error: /var/lib/pacman/extra/devhelp-0.12-2/desc: Permission denied

'ls -al' give me this:

[root@archlinux yeray]# ls -al /var/lib/pacman/extra/devhelp-0.12-2/
ls: no se puede acceder a /var/lib/pacman/extra/devhelp-0.12-2/desc
total 71
drwxr-xr-x    2 root root    72 ene 10 16:31 .
drwxr-xr-x 1968 root root 73112 ene 10 13:23 ..
??????????    ? ?    ?        ?            ? desc

i try to put a LiveCD distro to mount arch partition and change owner or permission to this file, but i get the same 'Permission denied'

im currently using Voodoo 0.8 Archlinux.
Thank you.

T-Dawg

Forum Fellow

From: Charlotte, NC

Registered: 2005-01-29

Posts: 2,736

Re: problemas with permissions/ pacman -Syu

You can safely remove /var/lib/pacman/extra and run pacman -Sy to restore the database. You're problems should be solved then.

yeray

Member

Registered: 2007-01-10

Posts: 3

Re: problemas with permissions/ pacman -Syu

Thank you for your reply

i do 'rm -rf /var/lib/pacman/extra' and everything is deleted but /var/lib/pacman/extra/devhelp-0.12-2/desc Permission denied.

[root@archlinux devhelp-0.12-2]# rm -rf /var/lib/pacman/extra/devhelp-0.12-2
rm: no se puede borrar «/var/lib/pacman/extra/devhelp-0.12-2/desc»: Permiso denegado

NOTE1: 'no se puede borrar' = can't be deleted'
NOTE2: 'Pemiso denegado' = 'Permission denied'

i don't know what happen

[root@archlinux devhelp-0.12-2]# ls -al /var/lib/pacman/extra/devhelp-0.12-2/
ls: no se puede acceder a /var/lib/pacman/extra/devhelp-0.12-2/desc: Permiso denegado
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 72 ene 10 16:31 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 80 ene 10 21:42 ..
?????????? ? ?    ?     ?            ? desc

if you see, the permissions are ???? and the owner too, so i can't do enything, but i can do all the task with pacman, i can install/remove package, and upgrade, everything ok, but i get that error enyway.

[root@archlinux devhelp-0.12-2]# pacman -Sy
:: Synchronizing package databases...
current                  [################] 100%      71K    27.9K/s  00:00:02
extra                    [################] 100%     272K    65.3K/s  00:00:04
could not extract devhelp-0.12-2/desc: Permission denied
error: /var/lib/pacman/extra/devhelp-0.12-2/desc: Permission denied

NOTE3: 'no se puede acceder a' = 'can't access to'
NOTE4: excuse my english, it's not my native lenguage.

Thank You.

T-Dawg

Forum Fellow

From: Charlotte, NC

Registered: 2005-01-29

Posts: 2,736

Re: problemas with permissions/ pacman -Syu

try doing a filesystem check. You can boot into a live cd or drop down into single user mode:

telinit s
mount -o remount,ro /
<your filesystem's check command here>

You may also want to see if you can delete it in a live cd environment...

yeray

Member

Registered: 2007-01-10

Posts: 3

Re: problemas with permissions/ pacman -Syu

Thank you so much.

i have reiserfs partition so the tool was reiserfsck but i couldn't run under single user mode, so i run the livecd and i check the partition and problem resolved.

resiserfsck /dev/<device> --fix-fixable

Thank you both for the help.

Bye.