Pacman unable to update system

[sharp ether]

i cant update my system and pacman keeps giving me this error

i did sudo pacman -Syu btw

it always ends up giving out error: failed to commit transaction (could not find or read package)

i already read the arch wiki on troubleshooting pacman but it didnt have this specific error fix

google didnt help much at all either

[gusty haven]

I cant remember how i fixed this when it happened to me. I almost feel like just rebooting worked.

That said. Could just be that one of the packages is no longer in the repo. So it is aborting. But since you have that many it might take a minute to figure out which.

I think i might have just not updated the one that couldnt be found.

Maybe you could take all the packages copy paste then i with a sudo pacman -S. See if it tells you which it cant find. Then opt not to update that one.

[lucid vector]

Try just doing -S on archlinux-keyring and see what happens

[sharp ether]

package not found

[lucid vector]

Show me a picture

[sharp ether]

i rebooted multiple times and the issue persists

[sharp ether]

oops sorry i mistyped keyring

its updating to new one

[lucid vector]

Thought so (:

[sharp ether]

done

[lucid vector]

That’s good, will stop another issue of this goes on too long

Try -Syu again but, probably same issue

[sharp ether]

yes the same issue

[lucid vector]

Remove orphan packages

[sharp ether]

uh you mean?

[gusty haven]

Im assuming its the other thing i mentioned. But idk as much as other here about things like this

[sharp ether]

hm ill try this too

[lucid vector]

What do you mean what do I mean, remove the orphan packages from your system

[sharp ether]

im asking whats an orphan package

[lucid vector]

Package that was installed as a dependency but is no longer needed either due to dependencies changing or the packages that needed it being uninstalled but or the deps.

[sharp ether]

ah alright

[lucid vector]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks#Removing_unused_packages_(orphans)

[sharp ether]

also i had tried out kde a while ago and but switched to i3 and removed kde. but looks like i still have some of the kde packages?

[sharp ether]

am i supposed to remove all of these? ```sudo pacman -Qdtq | sudo pacman -Rns -

[gusty haven]

Be careful

You csn accidentally remove stuff that isnt an orphaned package.

And screw yourself over

Make sure they are actually orphaned.

[spare agate]

thats a lot of orphans lol

[sharp ether]

im pretty sure im using jetbrains mono as my terminal font

why is it detected as an orphan

[gusty haven]

Dont just remove all those.

Almost certainly those are a lot of false positives.

[sharp ether]

wasnt planning to after reading it

[spare agate]

does running with verbose allow you to see which package/file is failing?

the output you showed is strangely vague

[sharp ether]

gimme a min to google what 'running with verbose' means

[spare agate]

is that really the whole output...?

[sharp ether]

yes

for sudo pacman -Syu

[lucid vector]

Huh??

[sharp ether]

you mean --verbose flag?

[spare agate]

yeah

it probably won't help

[sharp ether]

no its doesnt

[spare agate]

eh

[sharp ether]

yeah

it didnt help i mean

[spare agate]

yeah

thats annoying as fuck

[sharp ether]

hm

[gusty haven]

This is what i mean

[lucid vector]

I would

[spare agate]

me too

[sharp ether]

what? but my terminal is using jetbrains mono font which is listed as an orphan

[spare agate]

you can reinstall it later

it is literally just a font

it won't break your terminal, your terminal will just use a different font

[gusty haven]

Still. Check to make sure there isnt anything in there that your system actually needs.

Especially if you dont recognize it.

Besides the font obv.

[sharp ether]

ok but it removes stuff like cmake and zip,usbutils

[spare agate]

well then you must not need it

[hybrid sluice]

reinstall them, they arent needed packages so they get uninstalled

[gusty haven]

I really think blindly removing things listed as orphans is a bad idea.

[sharp ether]

[hybrid sluice]

i mean yeah

the -Rns is whats probably causing so many packages to appear

since its counting the dependencies of the orphans as well

[sharp ether]

fr but whatever

ill rm it

hopefully shit doesnt start breaking apart

ok done removing

should i -Syu

[spare agate]

try it

[sharp ether]

** SAME ISSUE**

[spare agate]

https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1dgbv50/a_quick_helpful_post_on_pacman_error_could_not/

lol

seems like same issue

day old post btw

you could try updating your mirrorlists with reflector, that's kind of a shot in the dark

you could also update your mirrorlist by hand

sudo cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.bak

sudo reflector --latest 20 --protocol https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
(assuming you have reflector installed)

[hybrid sluice]

yeah this could be a mirror issue

[gusty haven]

Have fun reinstalling everything you needed

[hybrid sluice]

no this is not a missing package issue

its a mirror issue

[spare agate]

its a good thing all of those are in this thread

you're such a hater

[sharp ether]

[lucid vector]

If they should be explicitly installed and they’re only implicitly installed then when they’re reinstalled later explicitly that’ll be fine, or the user can chose to change their flag to explicitly installed

[sharp ether]

yk you said "explicitly" 3 times in that sentence right?

[lucid vector]

Yes, is that word causing you confusion?

[sharp ether]

not at all

[lucid vector]

If the issues persists then I’d recommend you run reflector if you can, if it won’t install you can update the mirror list another way

.aw reflector

[gilded plinth]

Reflector

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Reflector

[lucid vector]

If you don’t have reflector use this:

https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/

[lucid vector]

@sharp ether fixed?

[sharp ether]

im gonna try fixing it again as i was busy earlier

[sharp ether]

ill try reading this

[sharp ether]

@lucid vector i have a doubt. can i uninstall these extra/breeze-icons 6.3.0-1 73.71 MiB extra/karchive 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.00 MiB extra/kauth 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.00 MiB extra/kbookmarks 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.07 MiB extra/kcodecs 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.01 MiB extra/kcolorscheme 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.00 MiB extra/kcompletion 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.12 MiB extra/kconfig 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.37 MiB extra/kconfigwidgets 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.09 MiB extra/kcoreaddons 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.02 MiB extra/kcrash 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.01 MiB extra/kdbusaddons 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.01 MiB extra/kfilemetadata 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.01 MiB extra/kglobalaccel 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.00 MiB extra/kguiaddons 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.04 MiB extra/ki18n 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.00 MiB extra/kiconthemes 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.03 MiB extra/kio 6.2.0-2 6.3.0-1 -1.08 MiB extra/kitemviews 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.16 MiB extra/kjobwidgets 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.03 MiB extra/knotifications 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.01 MiB extra/kparts 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.09 MiB extra/kpty 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 -0.01 MiB extra/kservice 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.02 MiB extra/kwallet 6.2.1-1 6.3.0-1 0.00 MiB extra/kwidgetsaddons 6.2.2-1 6.3.0-1 -0.02 MiB extra/kwindowsystem 6.2.0-1 6.3.0-1 0.00 MiB extra/kxmlgui packages as i dont use kde anymore and i have already uninstalled the DE?

actually nvm as for some reason ark depends of most of these packages here so i just manually updated all of them

and found out these 2 are the ones that are failing to update

they both give out failed to commit transaction (could not find or read package) error when trying to update

[spare agate]

did you ever try updating your mirrorlists?

[lucid vector]

removing orphans and updating the mirror list seem like the 2 things that would be highly helpful, you can always reinstall any packages that you don't think should have been removed afterwards...

[lucid vector]

I mean do pacman -Qi on them and they'll say why they're installed and what packages use them

[sharp ether]

Yes I have updated it multiple times

[sharp ether]

Nvm i just updated them

Only nspr and libogg have trouble updating

[hybrid sluice]

did you try pacman -Syyu to force rebuild your repo database

[lucid vector]

huh?

partial updates are not supported

and if a database is out of date it gets updated in a -Syu

okay nice edit 😛 no longer a partial update command

but still, the need to do -Syyu instead of -Syu is very rare, I'm not sure this is one of those times

[hybrid sluice]

only updates get pulled during a -Syu, stuff already in the database (which i believe we have established is broken) is not updated

[lucid vector]

-Syu updates the db's if they're out of date, if they're not it doesn't

and it's more likely to be a mirror issue

[hybrid sluice]

yeah but the existing database is broken so we need to force all of it to update

worth a shot theres no harm in it
basically doing it this way will pull the package database from the new, non-broken mirror

[lucid vector]

doing -Syyu won't effect what mirror it tries to use?

[sharp ether]

I remembered alot of PPL saying i shouldn't use -Syyu as it is risky so I won't be using that

[lucid vector]

it's not risky, if it's a one off it's fine, but if it's every update you're forcing the mirrors to do extra work for no benefit

-Syy and -Sy are risky, as they're partial updates
-Syyu isn't risky, it just burdens the mirror more than -Syu
-Syu is the best option for doing pacman updates

[sharp ether]

I see

But should I still try -Syyu then

[lucid vector]

you can but don't do it as the regular method of updating, and also first update your mirror list

[lucid vector]

^

[sharp ether]

I'll do it later. Not home rn

[lucid vector]

but you can probably just install it if you don't have it

[sharp ether]

@lucid vector got home, tried -Syyu but still the same error. already updated mirrorlist

[lucid vector]

You’ve removed the orphans, updated the mirrors, and it’s still broken? And you don’t have any of the testing repos enabled?

[sharp ether]

i dont think i have any of the testing repos enabled

[lucid vector]

just check /etc/pacman.d/pacman.conf I think it is? or is it /etc/pacman.conf? one of them...