Arch Linux

subatomic

Member

From: Berlin

Registered: 2005-06-26

Posts: 180

from bad to worse - pacman doesn't respond

last night I installed wine and now arts (artsd) crashes at every start. I already had a problem with kwin crashing occasionally and now strangely ktip keeps popping up and although I tell it not to it's giving me great tips at every start.

allright, one thing at time: obviously I want to get rid of wine first but now pacman isn't responding to any commands and I have to kill it. OK, --version and --help respond but --refresh, --sync and obviously --remove don't.

It is a fresh install of arch 0.7 and pacman is 2.95. I've also tried running pacman before starting x.

any thoughts?

cactus

Taco Eater

From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰

Registered: 2004-05-25

Posts: 4,622

Website

Re: from bad to worse - pacman doesn't respond

is it not responding, or just sitting there processing.
You might try the pacman optimization flag..cant remember what it is offhand..

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Moo-Crumpus

Member

From: Hessen / Germany

Registered: 2003-12-01

Posts: 1,487

Re: from bad to worse - pacman doesn't respond

it is a command - "optimize-pacman" - afaik

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colnago

Member

From: Victoria, BC

Registered: 2004-03-25

Posts: 438

Re: from bad to worse - pacman doesn't respond

kiafa:

optimize-pacman

subatomic

Member

From: Berlin

Registered: 2005-06-26

Posts: 180

Re: from bad to worse - pacman doesn't respond

can't try it now because I'm not at home, but I looked into your suggestions and read that the optimize-pacman script is new to version 2.9.6 - and I've got 2.9.5!

Meshuggin

Member

From: /home/meshuggin

Registered: 2005-03-23

Posts: 137

Re: from bad to worse - pacman doesn't respond

can't try it now because I'm not at home, but I looked into your suggestions and read that the optimize-pacman script is new to version 2.9.6 - and I've got 2.9.5!

Also it's a rule to upgrade pacman first than anything else after a clean installation.

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Arch GNU/Linux 0.7.1 (Noodle)
Linux 2.6.14-archck1

T-Dawg

Forum Fellow

From: Charlotte, NC

Registered: 2005-01-29

Posts: 2,736

Re: from bad to worse - pacman doesn't respond

Its called pacman-optimize. You could download the pacman 2.9.6 package, extract its contents into a folder, and get the script that way. Or you can look in user-contributions forum for pacman-defrag which does the same thing. I would try the extraction method first though.

Another thing you could try is

pacman.static -Sy pacman

to try an install the new pacman.
Also, take a look at your /etc/pacman.conf and check for any bad syntax. An accidental > or ' *could* cause a hang up unless pacman is smart enough to error out.

subatomic

Member

From: Berlin

Registered: 2005-06-26

Posts: 180

Re: from bad to worse - pacman doesn't respond

I really don't know what happened, it looks worse than before.
Here's all I can say:

pacman-static didn't help
got pacman 2.9.6 and put pacman-optimize in /usr/bin and ran it
it backed up the dir /var/lib/pacman to /pacman.bak
ran pacman (not sure what, probably --remove wine) said /var/lib/pacman doesn't exist - duh!
ran --refresh - said it couldn't create db
rebooted and saw lots of read-only errors
ran pacman --refresh - can't create db
tried to rename /var/lib/pacman.bak to /pacman - write error

I mentioned in the orig post that after I installed wine, artsd crashes. Now I notice that when I open Konqueror, instead of the menu on the left (dir tree, favs, network, etc) I get an amarok menu! Is this because of arts?

what are the chances of solving this without a new install?

FUBAR

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2004-12-08

Posts: 1,029

Website

Re: from bad to worse - pacman doesn't respond

Read only-errors are usually caused because of an erronous /etc/fstab.

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subatomic

Member

From: Berlin

Registered: 2005-06-26

Posts: 180

Re: from bad to worse - pacman doesn't respond

the readonly error comes only after I run pacman-optimize.

After a few starts it seems to be back up, that is, no read-write errors. I renamed pacman.bak to pacman but I still couldn't run it with any options other than --version, so I tried -optimize again: backing up to pacman.bak and after that I've again got a fully readonly system!

I know I've got amarok in the sidebar, I meant that the entire sidebar was taken up by amarok: no other navigation tabs.

I'm going for a new install...