Arch Linux

cmays90

Member

Registered: 2009-12-18

Posts: 31

pacman cannot execute binary file?

I am new to Arch (but been with gentoo for a brief bit and ubuntu before that).

I successfully got the x86_64 version installed on my laptop, and I went to update pacman (pacman -Sy and pacman --sync --refresh) and both returned the same error:
/usr/bin/pacman: cannot execute binary file

I ran file on pacman just to see what was going on and it returned
/usr/bin/pacman: data

And I have tried both under my user account and root.  I am out of ideas...  Anyone help?

ataraxia

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2007-05-06

Posts: 1,553

Re: pacman cannot execute binary file?

That looks suspiciously like a corrupt file. You should get another copy of pacman and replace this one.

Since it's pacman itself we're talking about, you'll have to install it "by hand" - extract the pacman package with tar and copy the binary, and maybe libalpm (in the same package) as well. Once you get it working, reinstall pacman once more the "right way" so everything's orderly.

mikesd

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-01

Posts: 788

Website

Re: pacman cannot execute binary file?

Weird. Maybe check the output of uname and the contents of mirrorlist to make sure they are both showing x86_64 as a first step.

You could do xxd /usr/bin/pacman | head and have a look at that file. Not sure why it is showing as data and not ELF. Not 100% sure here as to wether pacman is a binary executable or shellscript. Fairly sure it is a binary executable. (I'm away from all my Arch machines.)

You could try booting a live cd, chrooting into the install and reinstalling pacman. The Kernel Panics page on the wiki has a good example of how this is done.

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