Arch Linux

rabarrett

Member

Registered: 2012-07-05

Posts: 99

Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

Chromium crashed on me yesterday.  I decided to update with pacman -Syu in case the chromium issue had be repaired, and then I rebooted.

When I tried to reboot, neither slim nor dwm would load (I'm running arch, slim, dwm, no DE), it went straight to command line login.  I couldn't access anything (e.g. x windows, ping 8.8.8.8).

It doesn't appear to load the linux module--at least that what I gather from this in my dmesg:

[    1.164712] systemd[1]: Starting Load Kernel Modules...
[    1.167346] systemd[1]: Mounting Temporary Directory...
[    1.167627] systemd[1]: Starting Remount Root and Kernel File Systems...
[    1.172729] systemd[1]: Mounting Debug File System...
[    1.172996] systemd[1]: Starting Journal Service...
[    1.173228] systemd[1]: Mounting POSIX Message Queue File System...
[    1.173489] systemd[1]: Starting Setup Virtual Console...
[    1.173727] systemd[1]: Mounting Huge Pages File System...
[    1.173983] systemd[1]: Starting Create list of required static device nodes for the current kernel...
[    1.174711] systemd[1]: systemd-modules-load.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
[    1.174791] systemd[1]: Failed to start Load Kernel Modules.
[    1.174891] systemd[1]: systemd-modules-load.service: Unit entered failed state.
[    1.174894] systemd[1]: systemd-modules-load.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
[    1.175144] systemd[1]: Starting Apply Kernel Variables...
[    1.175444] systemd[1]: Mounting Configuration File System...
[    1.183667] systemd[1]: Started Create list of required static device nodes for the current kernel.
[    1.187522] systemd[1]: Started Setup Virtual Console.
[    1.200637] systemd[1]: Mounted Configuration File System.
[    1.202589] EXT4-fs (sda2): re-mounted. Opts: data=ordered,discard
[    1.202738] systemd[1]: Mounted Temporary Directory.
[    1.202993] systemd[1]: Mounted Debug File System.
[    1.203046] systemd[1]: Mounted POSIX Message Queue File System.
[    1.203093] systemd[1]: Mounted Huge Pages File System.
[    1.203274] systemd[1]: Started Remount Root and Kernel File Systems.
[    1.213500] systemd[1]: Starting udev Coldplug all Devices...
[    1.213849] systemd[1]: Starting Create Static Device Nodes in /dev...
[    1.214182] systemd[1]: Starting Load/Save Random Seed...
[    1.214556] systemd[1]: systemd-sysctl.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
[    1.214634] systemd[1]: Failed to start Apply Kernel Variables.
[    1.214712] systemd[1]: systemd-sysctl.service: Unit entered failed state.
[    1.214715] systemd[1]: systemd-sysctl.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
[    1.227989] systemd[1]: Started Load/Save Random Seed.
[    1.242675] systemd[1]: Started udev Coldplug all Devices.

Since I couldn't access internet, I used a USB drive to live boot to arch.

And then:

# mount /dev/sdxY /mnt         # my root partition.
# mount /dev/sdxZ /mnt/boot    # Skipped because I don't use a separate /boot partition.
# arch-chroot /mnt
# pacman -Syu mkinitcpio systemd linux

When I use this to update my system, it doesn't seem to solve the problem.  Here is the response:

:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
 infinality-bundle is up to date
 infinality-bundle-multilib is up to date
 infinality-bundle-fonts is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (3) linux-4.2.5-1  mkinitcpio-18-2  systemd-228-3

Total Installed Size:  101.06 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:        0.00 MiB

checking keyring...
checking package integrity...
loading package files...
checking for file conflicts...
checking available disk space...
reinstalling systemd...
reinstalling mkinitcpio...
reinstalling linux...
>>> Updating module dependencies. Please wait ...
>>> Generating initial ramdisk, using mkinitcpio. Please wait...
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset: 'default'
  -> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux.img
==> Starting build: 4.2.5-1-ARCH
  -> Running build hook: [base]
  -> Running build hook: [udev]
  -> Running build hook: [autodetect]
  -> Running build hook: [modconf]
  -> Running build hook: [block]
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
  -> Running build hook: [filesystems]
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
  -> Running build hook: [keyboard]
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
  -> Running build hook: [fsck]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating gzip-compressed initcpio image: /boot/initramfs-linux.img
==> Image generation successful
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset: 'fallback'
  -> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img -S autodetect
==> Starting build: 4.2.5-1-ARCH
  -> Running build hook: [base]
  -> Running build hook: [udev]
  -> Running build hook: [modconf]
  -> Running build hook: [block]
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
  -> Running build hook: [filesystems]
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
  -> Running build hook: [keyboard]
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
grep: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1: file too short
  -> Running build hook: [fsck]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating gzip-compressed initcpio image: /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
==> Image generation successful
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/libcroco-0.6.so.3 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/librsvg-2.so.2 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/librsvg-2.so.2.40.12 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/libcroco-0.6.so.3.0.1 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/libcroco-0.6.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/librsvg-2.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libbluray.so.1 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcrecpp.so.0 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcre16.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcre32.so.0 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcreposix.so.0.0.3 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcre16.so.0 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libtdb.so.1 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcre32.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcre32.so.0.0.6 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libbluray.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcrecpp.so.0.0.1 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcrecpp.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libspiro.so.0 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libspiro.so.0.0.5 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcre16.so.0.2.6 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcreposix.so.0 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcreposix.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libtdb.so.1.3.8 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libbluray.so.1.9.2 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcre.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1.2.6 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libspiro.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libtdb.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1 is empty, not checked.

I've spent much of the last two days trying to find an answer online (primarily in these forums, but also in other forums).  From what I can tell, I have corrupted files and also my pacman database is corrupted too.

When I look at the end of my pacman log, I find this:

[2015-12-04 16:40] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -Syu'
[2015-12-04 16:40] [PACMAN] synchronizing package lists
[2015-12-04 16:40] [PACMAN] starting full system upgrade
[2015-12-04 16:42] [ALPM] transaction started
[2015-12-04 16:42] [ALPM] upgraded cmake (3.4.0-2 -> 3.4.1-1)
[2015-12-04 16:42] [ALPM] upgraded lib32-glib2 (2.46.1-1 -> 2.46.2-1)
[2015-12-04 16:42] [ALPM] upgraded lib32-gmp (6.0.0-1 -> 6.1.0-1)
[2015-12-04 16:42] [ALPM] upgraded lib32-gnutls (3.4.6-1 -> 3.4.7-1)
[2015-12-04 16:42] [ALPM] upgraded lib32-harfbuzz (1.0.6-2 -> 1.1.2-1)
[2015-12-04 16:42] [ALPM] upgraded lib32-libcups (2.1.0-1 -> 2.1.2-1)
[2015-12-04 16:42] [ALPM] transaction completed
[2015-12-04 16:49] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -Syu'
[2015-12-04 16:49] [PACMAN] synchronizing package lists
[2015-12-04 16:49] [PACMAN] starting full system upgrade
[2015-12-04 17:11] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -Syu'
[2015-12-04 17:11] [PACMAN] synchronizing package lists
[2015-12-04 17:11] [PACMAN] starting full system upgrade
[2015-12-06 10:23] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -Syu'
[2015-12-06 10:23] [PACMAN] synchronizing package lists
[2015-12-06 10:23] [PACMAN] starting full system upgrade
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] transaction started
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded flex (2.5.39-1 -> 2.6.0-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded openssl (1.0.2.d-1 -> 1.0.2.e-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded freetype2-infinality-ultimate (2.6.2-3 -> 2.6.2-4)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET]   If you are using [multilib], please install/upgrade
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET]   lib32-freetype2-infinality-ultimate, too.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded lib32-freetype2-infinality-ultimate (2.6.2-2 -> 2.6.2-3)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded lib32-util-linux (2.27-1 -> 2.27.1-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded libbsd (0.7.0-1 -> 0.8.0-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded libjpeg-turbo (1.4.2-1 -> 1.4.2-2)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded scons (2.4.0-1 -> 2.4.1-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded ttf-lohit-assamese-ib (2.5.3-5 -> 2.91.2-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Updating font cache...
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Done.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded ttf-lohit-bengali-ib (2.5.3-6 -> 2.91.2-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Updating font cache...
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Done.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded ttf-lohit-devanagari-ib (2.94.0-5 -> 2.95.1-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Updating font cache...
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Done.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded ttf-lohit-odia-ib (2.5.5-5 -> 2.91.0-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Updating font cache...
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Done.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded ttf-lohit-tamil-ib (2.5.3-5 -> 2.91.1+2.5.3clss-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Updating font cache...
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Done.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded ttf-lohit-telugu-ib (2.5.3-5 -> 2.5.4-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Updating font cache...
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Done.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded ttf-merriweather-ib (1.003-8 -> 1.570-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Updating font cache...
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Done.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded ttf-opensans-ib (1.2-17 -> 1.10-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Updating font cache...
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Done.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded ttf-symbola-ib (7.21-1 -> 8.00-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Updating font cache...
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Done.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded ttf-ubuntu-font-family-ib (0.80-11 -> 0.83-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Updating font cache...
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Done.
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] upgraded wine (1.8rc2-1 -> 1.8rc3-1)
[2015-12-06 10:26] [ALPM] transaction completed


[HERE ARE CHARACTERS THAT DON'T PASTE FROM AND JUST LOOK LIKE SQUARES; I'M GUESSING THIS IS A CORRUPTED PORTION OF THE FILE THAT DOESN'T RENDER IN MY TEXT EDITOR]
[Note that in VIM it just looks like ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@ over and over for about a full screen, but it is all on one line of the text file.]

[2015-12-08 11:21] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -Syu'
[2015-12-08 11:21] [PACMAN] synchronizing package lists

I also tried reinstalling a number of programs, like grep (since any attempt to use grep by me or another program failed), and I used pacman "--force" to do the same install of mkinitcpio systemd linux I tried above.  No help.

I noticed that archlinux-keyring was trying to update when I last ran pacman -Syu before my problems started.  When I was first using my arch USB to boot, I was getting lots of "unknown" key issues and such, so based on what I read online, I tried to refresh the keys, then reinstall the whole thing, and I also tried updating my pacman mirrors with reflector, but none of that seemed to help either.  I was getting lots of "unknown key" errors, so to isolate away that problem, I changed pacman.conf to this:

SigLevel = Never 

for everything in pacman, but that just seems to stop the complaints without solving any problems.

That seems to be as far as I can get.  Any suggestions?

(This seemed to be the closest recent article I found:  https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=167926 
but the --force solution didn't help me, I still get the error I show above as pacman tries to do it.

I also tried the suggested solutions here, with no luck:  https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=203517)

Last edited by rabarrett (2015-12-10 02:43:05)

ooo

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 1,638

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

Mount from usb stick, and (without chrooting to your existing system) use pacstrap to reinstall the 'base' group.
After that you should have pacman working again, and you can find any remaining broken libraries with 'pacman -Qkk' and reinstall those packages.

Arhat

Member

Registered: 2010-07-02

Posts: 49

Website

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

...

When I tried to reboot, neither slim nor dwm would load (I'm running arch, slim, dwm, no DE), it went straight to command line login.  I couldn't access anything (e.g. x windows, ping 8.8.8.8).

It doesn't appear to load the linux module--at least that what I gather from this in my dmesg:

This sounds pretty much like what happened to me yesterday.
I was dropped to a command line after upgrading, none of the drivers were loaded and as a result nothing much was working.

Can you check your fstab? In my case it was empty.

Empty fstab after upgrade

rabarrett

Member

Registered: 2012-07-05

Posts: 99

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

ooo:

I tried that, but it gets to this:

[...]
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
gcc-libs and gcc-libs-multilib are in conflict.  Remove gcc-libs-multilib? [y/N] y
error:  unresolvable package conflicts detected
error:  failed to prepare transaction (conflicting dependencies)
:: gcc-lib and gcc-libs-multilib are in conflict
==> ERROR: Failed to install packages to new root

So it doesn't seem to work.

Arhat:
I checked my fstab.  It is still intact and appears to be how it has been for at least a year or so.

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 11,560

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

run pacman with the --debug option, see what's going on.

rabarrett

Member

Registered: 2012-07-05

Posts: 99

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

Ok.

First I ran pacman -Syu mkinitcpio systemd linux --debug:
http://pastebin.com/5iYpqbaJ

Then I ran pacman -Syu --debug
http://pastebin.com/nBdAGEgD

Should I gather any other info?

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 11,560

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

That's different than what your last post was saying. For the "exists in filesystem" errors, you're going to have to force a couple of packages.

rabarrett

Member

Registered: 2012-07-05

Posts: 99

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

I previously tried running pacman -Syu mkinitcpio systemd linux with --force, but that didn't help.

I can try running it with some individual packages and --force, but I'm not sure to find out which ones.  Presumably there are just a few I need to install and the rest come as dependencies, but from those debug files, I don't know which ones to choose for the

pacman -S --force [add here]

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 11,560

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

Looking at the list, pcre is the main one you have to force.

rabarrett

Member

Registered: 2012-07-05

Posts: 99

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

I tried.  It still gives me the same error, complaining:

Idconfig:  File /usr/lib/libcroco-0.6.so.3 is empty, not checked.
[...]

You can see an example from my original post.  Forcing reinstall of certain files doesn't appear to be the solution.

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 11,560

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

Anything that says it's empty will simply need reinstalled. Use pacman -Qo or pkgfile to figure out what packages those are.

Or really, once you get the system working again, you can just tell pacman to reinstall every package. Now that pcre is fine, you can probably get the system up. After that, I would use lostfiles in the AUR to check what files aren't owned by a package (because of database corruption) so you can reinstall them as well

Last edited by Scimmia (2015-12-11 05:26:35)

rabarrett

Member

Registered: 2012-07-05

Posts: 99

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

I'm not sure if you or I misunderstood.

When I tried to force pcre to reinstall, it gave me an error and failed (I believe).  Here was the output:

resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) pcre-8.38-2

Total Installed Size:  3.34 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:      0.00 MiB

checking keyring...
checking package integrity...
loading package files...
checking for file conflicts...
checking available disk space...
reinstalling pcre...
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/libcroco-0.6.so.3 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/librsvg-2.so.2 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/librsvg-2.so.2.40.12 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/libcroco-0.6.so.3.0.1 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/libcroco-0.6.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib32/librsvg-2.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libbluray.so.1 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libtdb.so.1 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libbluray.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libspiro.so.0 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libspiro.so.0.0.5 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libtdb.so.1.3.8 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libbluray.so.1.9.2 is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libspiro.so is empty, not checked.
ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libtdb.so is empty, not checked.

I tried to reboot the system anyway, but it goes to the emergency mode still.

So, based on the old thread referenced above, I tried this.

First I used this command to locate potentially corrupted files:

pacman -Qkk 2>&1 | grep "^.*: no mtree file$"

(In the other thread, that was preceded with "LANG= " but that didn't seem to work, so I just started the command with "pacman"... and it seemed to work.)

That listed about 6 files.  I did a force reinstall of those with pacman, but there were two that it wouldn't work with (that I believe I probably originally installed with pacman).

I removed one of those with

pacman -Rdd libbluray

And then I was able to reinstall it with pacman (I'm guessing from cache??)

I tried to reboot, but no luck.  I ran pacman -Syu.  It completed without problems, but still I couldn't reboot (I would just end in emergency mode with an error about it not being able to find one of my disks or something.)

So I typed

journalctl -b
-- No entries --

Last edited by rabarrett (2015-12-11 09:17:00)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 11,560

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

that force reinstall of pcre seems to have worked just fine. Now that you've done that, make sure all of your partitions are mounted and reinstall the kernel.

rabarrett

Member

Registered: 2012-07-05

Posts: 99

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

Eventually, I used

pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel

That seemed to (mostly) do the trick.

Now the system boots like it used to, however...
there were several issues I had to clear up by forcing reinstall.  For most programs that worked fine with

pacman -S --force

but there are some programs from the AUR that aren't working and I can't seem to figure out an option for

packer -S --force

(which doesn't work since --force isn't a valid option, nor is -f, nor does --help supply one

If I just try to install the original package against with packer, I get:

error:  failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)

followed by a long list of files and then ultimately:

Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

So while I can reboot and use most of the system now, I can no longer use several programs I rely on.

I suspect there is something about packer (and pkgbuild) I don't fully understand yet, that would allow me to override and do something that amounts to force install with pacman, but I've read both archwikis and have googled for possible answers, and don't seem to be turning up anything on it.

Last edited by rabarrett (2015-12-11 21:55:40)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 11,560

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

When something doesn't work with an AUR helper, skip the helper and just use makepkg and pacman.

rabarrett

Member

Registered: 2012-07-05

Posts: 99

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

Yes, that's precisely what I don't fully understand how to do.

I only started using linux because I hated MS Windows and didn't care much more for Apple OS.  I only run my own desktop and laptop, but mostly do word processing and web browsing on them.

I've tried to understand makepkg and read through the wik several times, but I don't really get how to make the PKGBUILD file (I don't really understand how to write script files either, which seems indirectly related).

Is the basic idea that I need to:

1) get the tarball for myself (which packer normally does for me)
-get it with something like wget  ?
2) Write some kind of script file to handle the install (which others usually do for me and deposit it in the AUR)
-this will be the hardest for me because I don't know where the process begins of knowing how to write a PKGBUILD file and the wiki is over my head
3) use pacman -U to install the tarball with the PKGBUILD file

Are those the steps?  Any recommendations of how to get to the point where I could write my own PKGBUILD for step 2?  The PKGBUILD wiki isn't enough for me at present, but maybe if I had several examples of actual tarballs and the PKGBUILD someone else wrote--going from very simple, to moderate, to more complex--I could look at them and try to understand just what is going on.  But it also seems possible that my lack of knowledge of how to write shell scripts would still prevent me from doing it.  I think I would also need at least several good paragraphs explaining the theory of PKGBUILD files designed for someone who doesn't already understand scripting or more of linux than I do.  It seems like I never make progress on this front because all the materials I find assume I know more than I do.

Any suggestions?  I'm up for reading, but it is hard to find something pitched to the right level for me.

ooo

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 1,638

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

Why should you write your own PKGBUILDs?

Just download snapshots for packages that you have installed with packer from AUR website.
After that it's a three two step process: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ar … g_packages

EDIT: reduced steps since downloading the snapshot is step one

Last edited by ooo (2015-12-11 23:37:32)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 11,560

Re: Corrupted files and Corrupted pacman database?

If you're using an AUR helper bacause you don't know how to use the AUR otherwise, you're doing it wrong. Read the AUR wiki page, then read it again.