Arch Linux

avbxl

Member

Registered: 2025-08-14

Posts: 3

The install is kicking my ass

I honestly don't think I've ever been humbled this hard. I work in infrastructure and my entire job revolves around managing multiple 5node proxmox clusters with ceph filesystems, and the VM's they run (mostly ubuntu servers). I didn't consider myself a linux beginner, but I'm lost.
I've tried installing arch about 3 times now. Once in HyperV as a vm, didn't even boot up so i assumed it was a hyperV issue. Tried virtualbox and now it booted into the live shell, works, follow the wiki's installation guide (never seen an installation this long) everything goes well, chroot and use pacman to try and install vim: about a billion errors about how all the keyrings are corrupted and not trusted. reinstall keyrings, refresh keyrings. same problem. Tried it on a laptop directly, same problem...
I honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong, but if it's really as time consuming to just keep it working, I think maybe Arch isn't for me?

[root@archiso /]# packman -S vim
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (3) gpm-1.20.7.r38.ge82d1a6-6 vim-runtime-9.1.1623 vim-9.1.1623-1

Total Download Size:        9.82 MiB
Total Installed Size:        42.18 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
:: Retrieving packages...
...
(3/3) checking keys in keyring
(3/3) checking package integrity
error: vim-runtime: signature from "I.J. Townsend <blakkeheim@archlinux.org>" is unknown trust
:: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/vim-runtime9.1.1623-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst is corrupted (invalid or currupted package (PGP signature)).
Do you want to delete it? [Y/n]

This same error appears for about 200 times and each time i can say yes or no for the delete, no matter which option i use, the install fails.
So after 3 tries, I still haven't had a single successfull istall since this was still the live boot, since you need an editor to finalise it...

I don't know if this was more of a frustrated rant or me actually seeking help, if you know what causes this, you're welcome to give suggestions.

StarWolf3000

Member

Registered: 2025-06-23

Posts: 60

Re: The install is kicking my ass

# pacman -Sy

?

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Mainboard: GIGABYTE B550 AORUS ELITE V2 | CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X | RAM: 32 GB
GPU: GeForce RTX 4060 8 GB (580.119.02 proprietary) | Display: BenQ BL2405 1920x1080
Kernel: 6.18.8 stable | Boot Manager: GRUB2 | DE: KDE Plasma | Login Manager: SDDM | Compositor: KWin

avbxl

Member

Registered: 2025-08-14

Posts: 3

Re: The install is kicking my ass

I did both and -Syu, they all give the same errors

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,803

Re: The install is kicking my ass

How old is the installation iso you used ?

Try

pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

avbxl

Member

Registered: 2025-08-14

Posts: 3

Re: The install is kicking my ass

How old is the installation iso you used ?

just the last one, used the belgian server to download

Try

pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring

i did, as well as

sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux

issue persisted

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,417

Re: The install is kicking my ass

error: vim-runtime: signature from "I.J. Townsend <blakkeheim@archlinux.org>" is unknown trust

Is this *literal*??

pacman-key -l blakkheim
pacman-key -l blakkeheim # nb the extra "e"
pacman -Qikk archlinux-keyring # sanity check
date # more sanity check

Edit: x-ref, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=307575

Last edited by seth (2025-08-14 12:24:18)

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

Jim243

Member

Registered: 2022-05-10

Posts: 2

Re: The install is kicking my ass

When using Arch-Linux-x86_64-basic-20250815.404997.qcow2 from https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/arch-boxes with QEMU, pacman gave me similar error messages when I tried to install or update packages.

After reading https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=306659, I tried this, but it didn't seem to help:

sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring
sudo pacman -Su

I then tried repeating the steps mentioned by brianrobt in the same thread:

# Remove old keyrings
sudo rm -rf /etc/pacman.d/gnupg

# Reinitialize keyring
sudo pacman-key --init

# Populate with Arch Linux keys
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux

# Update the keyring package
sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring

sudo pacman -Syu

After this, the 'unknown trust' errors stopped.

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,803

Re: The install is kicking my ass

sudo rm -rf /etc/pacman.d/gnupg

That is a very dangerous command and should only be used as very last resort.

For clarity : Jim243 you did not try that on an install using the archlinux install iso ?

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

Jim243

Member

Registered: 2022-05-10

Posts: 2

Re: The install is kicking my ass

No, I only used this on a virtual machine image.