Arch Linux

Zoomer88

Member

Registered: 2025-05-25

Posts: 7

[SOLVED]Crash during system upgrade, recovered but can't update any...

During system upgrade (pacman -Suy) I've got system crash. Screens went black so I instinctively pressed ctrl+alt+del which brought up the console only for the PC to shut it down. On the next reboot bootloader entries were missing (seems mkinitcpio was doing the work when the system has 'crashed').

I know, user error.

So I started the bootable media, remounted boot and root. Chrooted and ran pacman -Suy. It finished its work and all the hooks ran. I don't remember if there were any errors. I rebooted the system, got my KDE back, did what I needed and everything seemed to be fine.

Until I ran pacman -Suy today again. It complained about metadata for glibc-2.42+r2+g3ec4dd77f648-1 package.

I looked around the forums here and found the solution is to touch the missing file. In my case it was /var/lib/pacman/local/glibc-2.42+r2+g3ec4dd77f648-1/desc

And also to check the local package database with pacman -Qkk. The results seem to be fine except the glibc package. Other modifications I can recognize (I'm attaching the resulting output).

I touched the missing file ran pacman. This time I got error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files) and multiple files list pointing to glibc package contents (attaching this one too).

So according to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman … )%22_error the best solution is to overwrite the package with pacman -S --overwrite glob glibc.

However, this one brings up error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: installing glibc (2.42+r3+gbc13db739377-1) breaks dependency 'glibc=2.42+r2+g3ec4dd77f648' required by lib32-glibc

Can someone please point me to the proper recovery procedure with that?

pacman -Qkk

pacman -Suy after touch /var/lib/pacman/local/glibc-2.42+r2+g3ec4dd77f648-1/desc

Last edited by Zoomer88 (2025-08-02 19:40:55)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,724

Re: [SOLVED]Crash during system upgrade, recovered but can't update any...

That error usually means you've disabled multilib in pacman.conf while still having packages installed from that repo.

Zoomer88

Member

Registered: 2025-05-25

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED]Crash during system upgrade, recovered but can't update any...

Thanks for such a prompt answer. Just checked, multilib is still enabled in pacman.conf:

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,724

Re: [SOLVED]Crash during system upgrade, recovered but can't update any...

Oh, I see, you're trying to do a partial update when reinstalling glibc. -Syu, not -S. Also 'glob' isn't correct, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glob_(programming)

-S -overwrite is fine when reinstalling the same package, but here you're updating. Better would be to reinstall the exact version of glibc you have with -U instead of -S, giving it the package file in your cache.

Last edited by Scimmia (2025-08-02 17:45:49)

Zoomer88

Member

Registered: 2025-05-25

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED]Crash during system upgrade, recovered but can't update any...

Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction!

Pacman -U "*" --overwrite package-name-from-cache did it! After that I ran -Suy and upgraded properly.

Sorry for sounding so ignorant about glob. I thought it's a some fancy command name /facepalm

Last edited by Zoomer88 (2025-08-02 19:10:31)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,179

Re: [SOLVED]Crash during system upgrade, recovered but can't update any...

\o/
Please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

I ran -Suy

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 5#p2082235

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

Zoomer88

Member

Registered: 2025-05-25

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED]Crash during system upgrade, recovered but can't update any...

Thanks for the tip, seth! Just did it And for the link... Oh well,  I guess it's back to the manuals reading, haha. Well, that's the first crash/brainfart in a half a year, so I still consider this start a success

Last edited by Zoomer88 (2025-08-03 07:31:18)