Arch Linux

stefan

Member

Registered: 2013-03-22

Posts: 131

[solved] pacman says: ldconfig: XXX is not a symbolic link

Hello,

today I’ve observed the messages (empty lines deleted)

ldconfig: /usr/lib/libicudata.so.75 is not a symbolic link
ldconfig: /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.75 is not a symbolic link
ldconfig: /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2 is not a symbolic link

being printed by pacman -Syu (if it actually installs something, not if there’s nothing to do). Just before Running post-transaction hooks...,

I can trigger the same messages by running ldconfig with no arguments.

I have found a similar post from August 2024, but other than there the files seem to be owned by installed packages:

# pacman -F /usr/lib/libicudata.so.75 /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.75 /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2
usr/lib/libicudata.so.75 is owned by core/icu 75.1-2
usr/lib/libicuuc.so.75 is owned by core/icu 75.1-2
usr/lib/libxml2.so.2 is owned by core/libxml2 2.13.5-2

What should I do?

Kind regards
Stefan

Last edited by stefan (2025-05-10 14:23:54)

stefan

Member

Registered: 2013-03-22

Posts: 131

Re: [solved] pacman says: ldconfig: XXX is not a symbolic link

Sorry, just one of them belongs to an installed package:

# pacman -Q libicudata libicuuc libxml2
error: package 'libicudata' was not found
error: package 'libicuuc' was not found
libxml2 2.14.2-2

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,725

Re: [solved] pacman says: ldconfig: XXX is not a symbolic link

reinstall those packages. Ignore your second post, as that's not what -Q does.

stefan

Member

Registered: 2013-03-22

Posts: 131

Re: [solved] pacman says: ldconfig: XXX is not a symbolic link

Hello Scimmia, thanks for your response! I’ve tried

# pacman -S icu libxml2
warning: icu-76.1-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
warning: libxml2-2.14.2-2 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (2) icu-76.1-1  libxml2-2.14.2-2

Total Installed Size:  44.90 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:       0.00 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n]
(2/2) checking keys in keyring                     [######################] 100%
(2/2) checking package integrity                   [######################] 100%
(2/2) loading package files                        [######################] 100%
(2/2) checking for file conflicts                  [######################] 100%
(2/2) checking available disk space                [######################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/2) reinstalling icu                             [######################] 100%
(2/2) reinstalling libxml2                         [######################] 100%
ldconfig: /usr/lib/libicudata.so.75 is not a symbolic link

ldconfig: /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.75 is not a symbolic link

ldconfig: /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2 is not a symbolic link

:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/1) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...

but the problem persists. I did not dare to remove icu and libxml2 before reinstalling, they both seem to be pretty required (“HoldPkg was found in target list. Do you want to continue?”).

The message seems to imply that being a symlink is the problem.

# ls -l /usr/lib/libicudata.so.75 /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.75 /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  31M May  2 15:16 /usr/lib/libicudata.so.75
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2.1M May  2 15:14 /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.75
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.4M May  2 15:11 /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2

Should I try to remove these files before reinstalling the packages? Or do jou know where the symlinks should point to? I would fix this manually if I knew.

Cheers Stefan

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,725

Re: [solved] pacman says: ldconfig: XXX is not a symbolic link

Ah! Notice the versions you have, they are not the same as the versions shown by -F because your files database is out of date. Those files are no longer in the repos. This sounds like you had some problem and copied those from a different system to try to fix it, which was the wrong way to fix it. pacman -Qo is the command you were looking for to see what package those files come from, I'd bet they're unowned. Make sure the entire system is up to date, then delete those files. Don't copy files into /usr/lib/.

stefan

Member

Registered: 2013-03-22

Posts: 131

Re: [solved] pacman says: ldconfig: XXX is not a symbolic link

Indeed:

# pacman -Qo /usr/lib/libicudata.so.75 /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.75 /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2
error: No package owns /usr/lib/libicudata.so.75
error: No package owns /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.75
error: No package owns /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2

# rm /usr/lib/libicudata.so.75 /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.75 /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2

That solved the problem:

# ldconfig         # no output =)

# pacman -Syu
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra                   7.8 MiB  13.5 MiB/s 00:01 [######################] 100%
:: Starting full system upgrade...
 there is nothing to do

Thank you very much Scimmia!

This sounds like you had some problem and copied those from a different system to try to fix it

Ah, now I see where it may have come from. On May 2 (date of the incriminating files) I did a

Running 'pacman -U file:///var/cache/pacman/pkg/libxml2-2.13.5-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst'

because the (quite outdated, now replaced FPM2 stopped working). And obviously I’ve forgotten to remove that then.

Thank you!

Last edited by stefan (2025-05-10 14:25:40)