Arch Linux

oneraynyday

Member

Registered: 2022-10-16

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] Stale keyring & bricked pacman - how do I fix this?

Pt 1: How I shot myself in my left foot
============================

Yeah, I screwed up here. It's been a while since I booted up arch so pacman -Syu was complaining about:

```
:: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/mpfr-4.1.0.p13-3-x86\_64.pkg.tar.zst is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)).

Do you want to delete it? [Y/n]

error: autoconf-archive: signature from "Jonas Witschel <[diabonas@gmx.de](mailto:diabonas@gmx.de)>" is unknown trust

:: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/autoconf-archive-1:2022.09.03-1-any.pkg.tar.zst is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature))....
```

Pt 2: How I shot myself in my right foot too
================================

I did a really dumb move of `pacman -S pacman` thinking it was because I needed to upgrade pacman itself, but that led to me bricking the installation(years ago I remembered to never do partial installations, but this had faded away from my memories when I did this). Now it would error with a glibc version mismatch:

```
❯ sudo pacman --help

pacman: /usr/lib/libc.so.6: version \`GLIBC\_2.34' not found (required by pacman)
```

Pt 3: Scrambling around and trying to find solutions
=======================================

Thankfully `pacman-static` exists and I downloaded the binary from earlier this year here: https://pkgbuild.com/~morganamilo/pacma … 86_64/bin/. I used it to run:

```
❯ sudo ./pacman-static -Sy archlinux-keyring

:: Synchronizing package databases...

core is up to date

extra is up to date

community is up to date

warning: archlinux-keyring-20220927-1 is up to date -- reinstalling

resolving dependencies...

looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) archlinux-keyring-20220927-1

Total Installed Size:  1.57 MiB

Net Upgrade Size:      0.00 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
```

(I also ran a `pacman-static -Su` after) But this didn't help my case as later on when I tried to `pacman-static -Syu` it still has the same gpg signature errors. What should I do here?

Minor observations
==============

Seems like whenever people update their `archlinux-keyring` pkg it shows some verbose logging like:

```
==> Appending keys from archlinux.gpg...
==> Locally signing trusted keys in keyring...
  -> Locally signing key D8AFDDA07A5B6EDFA7D8CCDAD6D055F927843F1C...
  -> Locally signing key DDB867B92AA789C165EEFA799B729B06A680C281...
```

But mine didn't seem to say this.

I figured the gpg keyring problems still persisted because I need to `pacman-key --init` and `--populate archlinux`, so I tried that:

```
❯ sudo pacman-key --init
pacman-conf: /usr/lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.34' not found (required by pacman-conf)
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘’: No such file or directory
gpg: marginals needed: 3  completes needed: 1  trust model: pgp
gpg: depth: 0  valid:   1  signed:   0  trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 1u
chmod: cannot access '/trustdb.gpg': No such file or directory
vercmp: /usr/lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.34' not found (required by vercmp)
/usr/bin/pacman-key: line 243: ((: >= 0 : syntax error: operand expected (error token is ">= 0 ")
```

I'm aware of this https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman … an_upgrade which requires me to have a bootable arch installation media. I don't currently have a USB with me and I think with `pacman-static` this may circumvent that problem (please correct me if I'm wrong). Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

TL;DR: Started off with stale keyring so I can't install anything using pacman. I then broke my pacman with a partial upgrade. I installed a static pacman binary to try to fix my gpg keyring issues, but that doesn't seem to be working.

Last edited by oneraynyday (2022-10-16 06:01:30)

oneraynyday

Member

Registered: 2022-10-16

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] Stale keyring & bricked pacman - how do I fix this?

I fixed this by `pacman -U <mirror of pacman pkg>` on various different versions (since there has been a couple versions beforehand. This is an extremely risky move but I figured since `pacman` was already so bricked already this would be fine. I guess I got lucky that it didn't screw up my system any further. Using `pacman-static` to install keyring didn't actually do anything. Running it on the real pacman installation (I suspect it requires the installation to be in system path) allowed me to upgrade keyring and then re-upgrade everything (including pacman itself, to 6.0.1) and bring my system back to normal.

yannickhk

Member

Registered: 2023-12-12

Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] Stale keyring & bricked pacman - how do I fix this?

I have exactly the same problem. Could you post what you did to fix it? I've been banging my head to the wall for a few days now. Nothing seems to work ...

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,232

Re: [SOLVED] Stale keyring & bricked pacman - how do I fix this?

Please don't necrobump a year old solved topic. You most likely don't have the same issue, so you need to post the exact output you get from YOUR system.

Assuming it is a corrupted keyring, check whether https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman … l_the_keys helps. If you literally have a glibc error because of a partial update. Use the live disk and pacman's --sysroot option to update the system.

Closing.

Last edited by V1del (2023-12-12 14:23:49)