Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

arnfred · 2009-09-01 11:53:07

I've reinstalled my system because of this problem, so I can no longer try out potential solutions. If anybody knows how to solve the problem, please write a reply so others after me might find it.

I made a general system update earlier today, but ended up shutting my system down manually because of a freeze, and now the startup process hangs when KDE starts up (I've set KDE to auto-login). I figured I'd fix the problem by accessing a virtual terminal and writing "pacman -Syu", but the moment I do this, pacman answers: "Segmentation Fault".

Segmentation fault turns out to be the only output I can get from pacman, no matter what I try to do with it. Yaourt still works for some stuff, but a '-Syu' also leads yaourt to complain about segmentation faults.

What can I do to make pacman work again, so I can get my system up and running?

Last edited by arnfred (2009-09-02 15:19:01)

toofishes · 2009-09-01 12:02:56

pacman -v --debug --Syu

baghera · 2009-09-01 12:04:59

Check if /var/lib/pacman/db.lck exists. If so delete it, it should be there only when pacman is running.

Pox · 2009-09-01 12:05:56

My suggestion: reinstall pacman manually.

As root:

$ cd /
$ wget ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/archlinux/core/os/i686/pacman-3.3.0-3-i686.pkg.tar.gz #Change i686 to x86_64 if you're running arch64
$ tar xvf pacman-3.3.0-3-i686.pkg.tar.gz
$ rm .PKGINFO

arnfred · 2009-09-01 15:16:35

toofishes: Thanks for your response. I can't even run "pacman" without any options without getting the answer "segmentation fault"
baghera: It's not a locking problem. At least the locking file doesn't exist.
Pox: I tried your solution, but it didn't work. I would have thought it would work, but for some reason I still get a Segmentation fault the moment I write "pacman" in the terminal.

I'm at my wits end. All suggestions are very welcome.

Pox · 2009-09-02 00:18:23

Huh - I'm not sure then.
I'm not exactly an expert on these things, so maybe someone else could help you out - it might be possible that the segfault is being caused by a library pacman links to.

shining · 2009-09-02 08:34:27

arnfred wrote:

toofishes: Thanks for your response. I can't even run "pacman" without any options without getting the answer "segmentation fault"

how does this answer toofishes request ???
He asked you to post the output of : pacman -v --debug --Syu
please copy/paste what's going on in your terminal ...

it also might be useful to have the log corresponding to your last general system update (should be all the last lines of your /var/log/pacman.log )

fukawi2 · 2009-09-02 09:34:30

shining wrote:

how does this answer toofishes request ???
He asked you to post the output of : pacman -v --debug --Syu
please copy/paste what's going on in your terminal ...

I'm guessing the output is along the lines of:

# pacman -v --debug --Syu
segmentation fault
#

What is the output of"

file /usr/bin/pacman

arnfred · 2009-09-02 15:16:46

Shining: The console output was (as fukawi predicts) "segmentation fault".

Fukawi2: Since I've reinstalled pacman I would think it's not the file but a library issue. However I decided to reinstall my system yesterday evening after too many hours spent on this problem, so I guess I can say that the problem is no longer relevant to myself, albeit still unsolved. Thank you for taking the time to post a reply though.

DoDoENT · 2010-06-10 15:58:30

I have the very same problem, and I still haven't reinstalled my system, so all suggestions for the problem are welcome.

I've also noticed that after pacman started to segfault, the same happened to pacman-color, yaourt, wget and curl. The problem has to be in some library that is common to all of these programs. How can I find out which library is the problematic one?

mutlu_inek · 2010-06-10 22:19:52

DoDoENT wrote:

How can I find out which library is the problematic one?

ldd /usr/bin/pacman

shows you which libraries pacman links against.

Also, you could attach pacman to gdb and see what it tells you.

DoDoENT · 2010-06-11 15:07:22

All right, I've found out which libraries are common to pacman, wget and curl:

linux-gate.so.1
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6
libssl.so.1.0.0 => /usr/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0
libcrypto.so.1.0.0 => /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0
libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0

I believe the problem might be in libssl.so and libcrypto.so, since those are from the openssl package which was updated in the last update before pacman broke. Any ideas how to fix that package?

Any other ideas where the problem might reside?

EDIT: I'm aware that using gdb could ease things up, but I still haven't installed it (it's a relatively new system).

Last edited by DoDoENT (2010-06-11 15:08:23)

rrodrigues · 2010-07-16 10:43:47

hi

i had the same problem with pacman with some specific packages.

i think that was because some packages was corrupt and pacman didnt understood that way.
i remove mpd (because it didnt start) and when i was trying to install it again pacman stops with segmentation fault error. After trying some different things i change the mirrors from my mirrorlist file. i select these mirrors

Server = ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

and it run all well.

I dont know if this is the solution for your case

lmbrjck · 2010-11-04 01:29:12

I was having this same problem so I added the mirrors and then I noticed that no mirrors were uncommented. I don't know how that would have happened but after enabling some, pacman no longer segfaults.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-09-01 11:53:07

Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#2 2009-09-01 12:02:56

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#3 2009-09-01 12:04:59

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#4 2009-09-01 12:05:56

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#5 2009-09-01 15:16:35

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#6 2009-09-02 00:18:23

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#7 2009-09-02 08:34:27

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#8 2009-09-02 09:34:30

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#9 2009-09-02 15:16:46

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#10 2010-06-10 15:58:30

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#11 2010-06-10 22:19:52

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#12 2010-06-11 15:07:22

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#13 2010-07-16 10:43:47

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

#14 2010-11-04 01:29:12

Re: Pacman quits with "segmentation fault"

Board footer