Possible brick after update

legacy.nl · 2024-03-04 22:31:49

I tried updating after not using arch for some time, and I encountered some problems.

First I encountered the problem with outdated pgp keys, which I was able to fix by running

pacman -Sy --needed archlinux-keyring

During

pacman -Syu

my xserver crashed.
I assumed it was just it restarting after updating drivers or something, but ultimately it didn't come back up.

I opened another terminal, and checked with htop and systemctl status if the update was still running but I couldn't see any processeses that indicated that it was still running.

So I tried to run pacman again from the text-terminal but It failed with some error.

Because there is a post on the arch front page about mkinitcpio, systemd, lvm2, mdadm and cryptsetup,
I tried to update those separately with

pacman -S mkinitcpio systemd etc

That gives an error that mkinitcpio and mdadm are incompatible, and that /usr/lib/mkinitcpio/systemd (and something like that) already exists in file system.

I tried to do a reboot, but now it doesn't boot anymore, saying it cant find a initramfs (i might be wrong on the used term).

I've seen pacman running mkinitcpio after an update before, so I think pacman might have crashed between deleting my old ramdisk, and generating a new one?

In Grub I have multiple entries for my install with supposedly fallback images but they give the same error.

I think i have to boot into a arch liveimage and change root into my actual install, and then run mkinitcpio ?

mpan · 2024-03-05 00:49:27

When xorg terminates, the X clients almost universally bail out. Since pacman depended on a virtual terminal provided by a GUI application, it failed upon losing the terminal. That did happen in the middle of a transaction, so you have some packages updated, some not, one possibly missing or with files damaged.

Usually it’s adviced to fix, not reinstall. However, dealing with a considerably outdated Arch is a lot of effort and in your case actual package system breakage complicates the thing. So I suggest backing up your files and starting from scratch.

If you wish to make a rescue attempt, on an otherwise relatively updated system(!) there would be to things to consider:

The local database is damaged: fixing local pacman database is described in Arch Wiki.
Packages’ files are not properly installed: reinstalling all pacman packages is the answer.

However, I don’t know how well these procedures are going to work with a system split between some very outdated and current version.

seth · 2024-03-05 08:45:51

PSA: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/77789

sudo touch /etc/systemd/do-not-udevadm-trigger-on-update

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/tmux/ (see your shell survive an X11 crash)

Last edited by seth (2024-04-02 15:49:59)

seth · 2024-04-05 21:41:58

Hi, do you still recall the nature of the update crash?
Did the system suddenly reboot or did it stall and you then rebooted it with the power button?

---
This is a mass-inquiry, so please excuse if your thread actually detailed that.
We're trying to get some data on the situation, so it would be very helpful if you can just briefly respond.
Thanks a lot.

Arch Linux

#1 2024-03-04 22:31:49

Possible brick after update

#2 2024-03-05 00:49:27

Re: Possible brick after update

#3 2024-03-05 08:45:51

Re: Possible brick after update

#4 2024-04-05 21:41:58

Re: Possible brick after update

Board footer