Arch Linux

Wizdroid

Member

Registered: 2024-12-28

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] System crashed during update, will no longer boot

I tried to run an update with

sudo pacman -Syu

and in the middle of the update, the whole system froze up and restarted after a minute. Now it goes to a black screen and various errors that read

Failed to start D-Bus System Message Bus

and will not boot to the GUI. Looking through related threads for a solution, I've booted into a Live USB and can chroot into the system. Attempting to finish the update there yields the following errors:

Public keyring not found; have you run 'pacman-key --init'?
GPGME error: Invalid crypto engine
<package name> missing required signature
<package location> is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature))

Running pacman-key --init yields the following errors:

gpg: error while loading shared libraries: usr/lib/libsqlite3.so.0: file too short
chmod: cannot access '/etc/pacman.d/gnupg//trustdb.gpg' : No such file or directory
Trust database could not be updated

Following the advice from those threads, I ran the code

LC_ALL=C pacman -root /mnt -Qkk | grep -v ', 0 altered files'

and uploaded the results to the link: https://paste.c-net.org/FoolingConnect

My biggest stumbling block is being unable to resolve the keyring error. Once I can get that fixed, I should be able to re-install the corrupt packages that have missing mtrees with "--dbonly" and get out of this bind. Any help on this is most appreciated.

Last edited by Wizdroid (2026-04-18 19:58:42)

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 2,049

Re: [SOLVED] System crashed during update, will no longer boot

out of fun: how much free disk space does

df -h

show for your root? sounds like you ran out of space (although pacman should have cought this)

Wizdroid

Member

Registered: 2024-12-28

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] System crashed during update, will no longer boot

out of fun: how much free disk space does

df -h

show for your root? sounds like you ran out of space (although pacman should have cought this)

Running that, it shows my root is:
Size: 49G
Used: 30G

The boot partition is 1G with only 90MB used. The rest is a separate partition that's almost 4TB with about 2.5TB used. In any case, space shouldn't be the issue. The total download size of the full system update is 1439MB with an install size of 4855MB and a net upgrade size of 23MB.

xerxes_

Member

Registered: 2018-04-29

Posts: 1,052

Re: [SOLVED] System crashed during update, will no longer boot

What if you run from Arch iso in arch-chroot this command:

pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring && pacman -Syu

Or even better: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman … ed_upgrade

Wizdroid

Member

Registered: 2024-12-28

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] System crashed during update, will no longer boot

What if you run from Arch iso in arch-chroot this command:

pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring && pacman -Syu

Or even better: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman … ed_upgrade

The thing that's stopping all of that is that it wants me to run

pacman-key --init

first, but that step fails due to a missing trustdb.gpg file. I cannot reinstall any packages until that step is resolved and I don't know how to recover that.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 74,654

Re: [SOLVED] System crashed during update, will no longer boot

You're likely not gonna be able to use the installed system, but will have to use the pacman instance from the iso to fix it offline, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman … an_upgrade
You can

pacman --root /mnt | -Qkk | grep -v ', 0 altered files' | grep -v backup

to check for corrupted packages. Everything that shows up w/ a broken mtree needs to be re-installed "--dbonly" first (to sanitize the database), then properly without that flag.

---

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Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,712

Re: [SOLVED] System crashed during update, will no longer boot

Even after fixing those with broken files, it's strongly advised to reinstall everything that was part of the failed update. Many of those package were to trigger post install hooks, which wouldn't have gotten run.

Wizdroid

Member

Registered: 2024-12-28

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] System crashed during update, will no longer boot

You're likely not gonna be able to use the installed system, but will have to use the pacman instance from the iso to fix it offline, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman … an_upgrade
You can

pacman --root /mnt | -Qkk | grep -v ', 0 altered files' | grep -v backup

to check for corrupted packages. Everything that shows up w/ a broken mtree needs to be re-installed "--dbonly" first (to sanitize the database), then properly without that flag.

I see what you mean by using pacman from the ISO (i.e. not chroot into the broken system). That's certainly a step in the right direction. The only problem I'm running into now is that trying to run the code you provided gave me the following error:

zsh: command not found: -Qkk
error: no operation specified (use -h for help)

So I don't know which packages are missing the mtrees.

EDIT: Applying previous logic, I was able to run the code and output it to this link: https://paste.c-net.org/ClaimBerry

I will comb through that and take care of the missing mtrees using the provided --dbonly method and reinstall them with -S afterwards. Will update with progress.

Last edited by Wizdroid (2026-04-18 19:32:11)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,712

Re: [SOLVED] System crashed during update, will no longer boot

That '|' before -Qkk was a typo, remove it.

Wizdroid

Member

Registered: 2024-12-28

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] System crashed during update, will no longer boot

That did it! I'm replying to this from my familiar desktop environment. I've marked this as solved.

Thank you all so much for the help!