[SOLVED] System bricked because I uninstalled a package, can't boot arch or update pacman.

[vestal marsh]

I was getting an error, looked up on google how to fix it, the person from some wiki told me to uninstall a package. Then, suddenly my entire system slowly stopped working. When I restarted my laptop, I would select "Arch Linux" from Grub, but then all I'd see is a blinking cursor.

I'm currently chrooted into my root partition, when I try running sudo pacman -Syu I get "error while loading shared libraries: libicuuc.so.74: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory."

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[copper oak]

We need more info:

• What package did you uninstall
• What error were you getting
• Can you provide a link to the wiki/forum you read?

This seems similar to when I deleted libc6 from one of my old linux boxes lmfao

[vestal marsh]

I wish I could tell you which package I uninstalled. I think it was libicu but it could've been something else. I'm going to go through my history and see if I can find the link to what I pasted

[copper oak]

Keep us posted 👍

[vestal marsh]

Yeah I can't find it, the firefox account i have on my laptop is different from the one on my desktop, and when I looked it up it was on my laptop (which is currently bricked by this issue)

This is what I'm seeing right now

[copper oak]

Hmm. You could try copying libicuuc.so from a live Linux, I'm away from my computer rn (and too tired), so someone else can walk you through that

[copper oak]

But iirc that's how I fixed this screwup

[royal kiln]

noice

wait a sec

[vestal marsh]

Yeah I read #1242036383309107200 and someone did something like that, but how would I even do that? If I can't access AUR or pacman how would I install something?

I've never ran into any issue like this so sorry if i sound stupid

[copper oak]

No no no, we all were noobs once :p

[vestal marsh]

This is the last time I ever copy a random command online without fully understanding it

[royal kiln]

#quick-questions message

[vestal marsh]

alright i'll try that

[copper oak]

Boot from a Linux USB and copy its files to your hard drive (again, idr exactly how to do this but I know for a fact it's possible)

[vestal marsh]

"pacstrap: command not found"

[copper oak]

I think literally all of us have fucked up a Linux system this way lol

[royal kiln]

are you in the installation medium?

[vestal marsh]

yeah, and i mounted my root partition

should i unmount and reset completely maybe i mounted wrong or something

[royal kiln]

can you make sure the installation medium has

[vestal marsh]

i can access my files though, my .config and everything

[royal kiln]

arch-install-scripts installed

[vestal marsh]

how can i verify that

[royal kiln]

just try installing that

[vestal marsh]

with pacman?

or do i just run

arch-install-scripts

[royal kiln]

that's pretty strange if you are in the installation medium it should be there

[royal kiln]

pacman -S arch-install-scripts

[vestal marsh]

what os are you on?

[vestal marsh]

its just an archiso

[vestal marsh]

i can't do this because my pacman doesn't work

then it should work

[royal kiln]

wdym?

[royal kiln]

you have to run this in the archiso

[vestal marsh]

any pacman command i do i just get "error while loading shared libraries: libicuuc.so.74: cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory"

okay let me reset

let me reboot and re-enter the iso

[royal kiln]

ohh so you were running these commands in the chroot 😮‍💨

[vestal marsh]

yeah

ohhh

bro

Man

😭

alright hold on

so do i just go back and send the first command you linked me, the pacstrap one?

[royal kiln]

yup the one from the quick-questions

[vestal marsh]

yeah now when i run that i get "ERROR: root is not a directory"

[royal kiln]

ohh

like you have to mount the root

and it's the path of the root partition

[vestal marsh]

so what would i do

mount /nvme0n1p2 /mnt?

[royal kiln]

it would be /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt

[vestal marsh]

alright

[royal kiln]

if that's the root partition

[vestal marsh]

i mount it and then what, chroot?

or do i cd into that directory?

[royal kiln]

no

pacstrap -D /mnt icu

[vestal marsh]

this worked

and now what? unmount and reboot?

[royal kiln]

you can try that

not sure if that will work or what 🙂

let's hope for the best

[vestal marsh]

so umount /dev/nvme0n1p2?

sorry bro i'm really unfamiliar with mounting, and also rusty since i haven't had to do it in months

[royal kiln]

yup

[vestal marsh]

alright gonna reboot and see if i can use my laptop now

[royal kiln]

NP

[vestal marsh]

yeah same issue, i just get this blinking cursor

and it just keeps blinking

[royal kiln]

like the system boots or what?

when does the cursor appear?

[vestal marsh]

yeah i just let it select "Arch Linux" in grub, and then it does that

basically when i should be seeing my login manager

instead it just does that

[royal kiln]

can you change to a different tty?

[vestal marsh]

no, already tried before i even booted into the iso

can't switch tty's or anything. it's like my entire system is broken

And before this happened, everything was slowly dying, kinda like when u run a forkbomb

[royal kiln]

nope, it's just a library issue

[vestal marsh]

like my firefox would open new tabs and keep telling me it crashed, then i closed firefox, and i couldn't open anything through rofi

then i restarted and now we're here

[royal kiln]

can you try chrooting and see if pacman works or not?

[vestal marsh]

yeah one sec

@royal kiln same exact problem

maybe when i ran the pacstrap command it installed it but in the wrong directory?

So maybe if we just grep, find it, and then move it?

Idk im just coping at this point

[royal kiln]

nope

[royal kiln]

wait

https://discord.com/channels/399812551963049995/1242036383309107200

let's try following this

[vestal marsh]

yeah i was reading that but the command alexgravitos sent i dont understand it

i don't know what directory it's in

if we could somehow find the directory i think it'd work

[royal kiln]

not sure if that would work or not

they fixed it by installing the orderversion from the archarchive

[vestal marsh]

Oh

[royal kiln]

it's located under /usr/lib

[vestal marsh]

Is this GG then

[royal kiln]

like you can chroot and try symlinking

[vestal marsh]

how would i do that

[royal kiln]

have you chrooted?

[vestal marsh]

yes

[royal kiln]

what' the output of
ls /usr/lib/ | grep libicuu

[vestal marsh]

libicuuc.so
libicuuc.so.75
libicuuc.so.75.1

so the actual files are there, i don't understand why there's an issue

what if I delete 75.1, maybe it defaults to the previous one or something?

Boom problem fixed?

or wait

[royal kiln]

some packages depend on version 74 🙂

[vestal marsh]

the error i'm geting is with libicuuc.so.74

yeah

I get it now

so essentially if I can get that libicuuc.so.74 file, i'm good

[royal kiln]

we can try symlinking

[vestal marsh]

could I just find it online, copy it to a hard drive, then connect that hard-drive to my laptop WHILE i'm chrooted with the archiso?

Is that possible?

[royal kiln]

can you run this command with ls -la

[vestal marsh]

so,

ls -la /usr/lib/ | grep libicuu

[royal kiln]

I don't think you should be just doing that

[royal kiln]

yup

[royal kiln]

if you want to do so, just installed the older package and install it

[royal kiln]

you shouldn't be messing with a file

[royal kiln]

ohh great

try

[vestal marsh]

im ready

[royal kiln]

ln -sf /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.75-1 /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.74

[vestal marsh]

Done

Now what, umount and reboot?

[royal kiln]

you can check it that's working in the chroot itself

like can you pacman?

[vestal marsh]

No I can't

😦

[royal kiln]

what's the error now?

[vestal marsh]

same thing

This error is Thanos

maybe chmod it

Idk lol 😭

[royal kiln]

what's the output of this

[royal kiln]

it's there, can you try rebooting

if that still does't work

[vestal marsh]

yeah

[royal kiln]

get ready to do #1242036383309107200 message

[vestal marsh]

will do

okay I selected "Arch Linux" in grub

same thing, blinking cursor

nothing moving/happening

[royal kiln]

probably just remove the symlink we just created the 74 one

and just grab the older version of icu

[vestal marsh]

lets try that and then the thread

[royal kiln]

and install that manually

[vestal marsh]

alright let me chroot and try pacman one more time

yeah pacman dont work

[vestal marsh]

alright how can i do this

[royal kiln]

like mount the root partition

and you can simply remove that using rm /mnt/usr/lib/that_file

[vestal marsh]

oh okay gotcha

so i'm deleting the 74 file?

I thought that's the one i needed

[royal kiln]

yup that's what you need but not the way we created that

[royal kiln]

yup

[vestal marsh]

alright

Really hoping I did this right.

[royal kiln]

what

[vestal marsh]

How exactly did we get that file then? We created a symlink from an older one? I'm kinda confused

[vestal marsh]

I did it wrong?

[royal kiln]

why does it seems like you did all the operation in the archiso itself 😢

[vestal marsh]

what do you mean

i mounted the root partition and then chrooted into /mnt

and i'm doing it from there

should i not be doing that?

[royal kiln]

ohh

[vestal marsh]

i did

[royal kiln]

I got confused as I saw the archiso#

[vestal marsh]

mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
chroot /mnt

[royal kiln]

ohh cool

now exit the chroot

[vestal marsh]

dude you scared me

alright

i exited

[royal kiln]

install the older version of icu from the arch archive

[vestal marsh]

how can i do that you gotta walk me through like im 5

i've never had to do anything remotely close to this

Would I just do ln -s /wherever/the/hell/libicu-75/is/located/libicuuc.so.75 /wherever/libicu-74-should/be/libicuuc.su.74

[royal kiln]

nope

[vestal marsh]

how would i install from the arch archive if my pacman doesnt work

and yay doesnt work either

[royal kiln]

you have exited chroot right?

run this command from the archiso not the chroot

curl -O https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/i/icu/icu-74.2-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

[vestal marsh]

alright

wtf lol

[manic plume]

try curl -fsSL

[vestal marsh]

with the url he gave?

so curl -0 -fsSL <link> ?

[manic plume]

yes, but redirect the output to icu.pkg.tar.zst

302 on that output meant you got redirected

[vestal marsh]

so this?

[manic plume]

just missing the > before icu.pkg.tar.zst

[royal kiln]

ohh strange, I tried it on my machine and it worked

[manic plume]

wget ${url} could have potentially worked just fine as well

[royal kiln]

the -O would take care or that

and ig we would need an package name with it's version info too

[manic plume]

fair enough, that also works

[vestal marsh]

no output

i think we are good

[manic plume]

I don't believe so, the package info is kept inside the compressed file as shown here:

[vestal marsh]

now what, i just build the pkg?

[royal kiln]

can you see that file after ls?

[vestal marsh]

yeah it's there

keep in mind i'm not chrooted

how would this affect my actual system?

[manic plume]

right now - it doesn't do anything, you'll have to "install it to the system"

[royal kiln]

ohhh interesting

[royal kiln]

you will be pacstraping that to your actual system

[vestal marsh]

okay i understand nwo

let's do it

[royal kiln]

I am not sure about the command

let me check

[manic plume]

pacstrap -U icu.pkg.tar.zst /mnt - isn't it?

as long as /mnt is your disk's root mountpoint

[vestal marsh]

i get "icu.pkg.tar.zst is not a directory"

[manic plume]

oh, sorry

try /mnt first, and then the package name

[royal kiln]

what's the package name you installed

[manic plume]

pacstrap -U /mnt icu.pkg.tar.zst

[vestal marsh]

this worked

do i chroot and try updating now

[vestal marsh]

nah the command he sent fixed it

[royal kiln]

nope

[royal kiln]

ohh cool

[manic plume]

I think you should be safe to just unmount and reboot, I'd reckon

IF

that was the only package that was broken

I didn't read the full thread

[vestal marsh]

let me see

[royal kiln]

probably you shouldn't be updating your system for some time

[vestal marsh]

this might be it

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

[manic plume]

also, I would recommend taking a look into pacman-static - so if your system breaks pacman somehow, you'll still have a statically compiled version somewhere to fix it

[royal kiln]

seems like it

[vestal marsh]

is this just to future-proof my system?

Is it like a snapshot

[royal kiln]

well this seems interesting

[manic plume]

not really, it's a fallback for pacman

[vestal marsh]

my system launched am i 100% good now? If I run sudo pacman -Syu nothing will break right?

[manic plume]

if pacman breaks and can't load its own libraries, the statically compiled version would still work

[manic plume]

as long as it doesn't uninstall that same package, it should be fine, but I would still wait about a week or so

[royal kiln]

ohh like if something doesn't work it will fallback to the old stuff without any manual interaction? right?

[manic plume]

no, pacman will be broken, however, you can use pacman-static to run the same pacman operations

say, for example

I uninstalled openssl

[vestal marsh]

so wait a week and then try updating?

[manic plume]

sure

[royal kiln]

yup, ig you would also need the --overwrite flag for that as mentioned in the other thread

[manic plume]

pacman would no longer be able to verify package keys, however pacman static would still be able to do it when running with the same arguments, since the openssl package would be baked into the binary

[royal kiln]

ohh so it's like a fallback copy for pacman as we have fallback initramfs?

[vestal marsh]

so if I were to try updating right now what would happen, it would try to update my icuuc file and the same thing would just happen again?

[manic plume]

so if pacman fails to run a command due to some missing library, you can use pacman-static with the same arguments

[manic plume]

more or less so, yes

[royal kiln]

ohh got it

[vestal marsh]

i'm not planning on updating right now i'm just trying to understand how this happened so i can troubleshoot it if it ever happens again

[royal kiln]

might be

[manic plume]

possibly, I didn't check which version is the latest, the one you currently have is the one I have installed

[vestal marsh]

so how would this work then? isn't it just a ticking timebomb? and next time i update pacman the same thing will happen?

or will it get fixed once the icuuc repo or whatever gets updated/patched?

[manic plume]

well, this is the "sucky" part about arch linux, you'll have to keep up with the package to see if it got fixed or not

either via the source, or by trying it and fixing if it breaks

[royal kiln]

the other packages would be fix by that time

which depends on the older version

[manic plume]

↑ not a guarantee, but it should

[vestal marsh]

ohh i get what you mean

and i mean if the error happens again we know how to fix it quickly now

[manic plume]

and at worst case, this discord is open 24/7

[mellow kindle]

make symlink libicuuc.so.74 that targets the version of libicuuc.so you have

[vestal marsh]

we just fixed it lol

[mellow kindle]

this is a temporary fix

oh

[manic plume]

not a good idea, might break some dependencies

[royal kiln]

we tried symlinking the v75 to v74

[mellow kindle]

oh rip

[manic plume]

but hey, it's "fixed" now

[royal kiln]

... solved

[burnt matrix]

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Thank you

[mellow kindle]

thank you package bootstrapper

[manic plume]

11/10 best bootstrapper

[mellow kindle]

this is why arch repos have dnf in their repos :v

cause dnf bootstrapping is```
dnf --install-root=/path

no apt cause boostrapping debian/ubuntu is covered by deboostrap which is also in arch repos

[manic plume]

arch can recover pretty much any distro

[vestal marsh]

Alright I'm gonna mark this as solved

@manic plume @crimson rain @royal kiln thank you guys 1000000x

[near patrol]

kenielf.py, curicadev, and shashwat20 received a thank you cookie!

[vestal marsh]

You guys are goated

[SOLVED] System bricked because I uninstalled a package, can't boot arch or update pacman.