Manjaro-system 20201231-5 reports file not found

I did a full system upgrade after 6 weeks of mobile roaming network only (hence disabled upgrades and everything else using network that was not strictly necessary).
Now I did a full system upgrade and rebooted. Then I started add/remove software just to see if there was some more updates - and it was: manjaro-system 20201231-5 was waiting. (20201231-2 was installed.) So I ran this update and it failed with error
/var/lib/pacman/local/lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1/desc not found

After this manjaro-system 20201231-5 is listed as installed

Which package should the missing file come from? “pacman -F desc” does not return an answer.

So far the system seems to be working. What would be the expected problem caused by missing this file?

Looking at the system backup from before the upgrade, the missing file was not there even before the full system upgrade.

Simply reinstall lib32-libunistring.

sudo pacman-mirrors -f && sudo pacman -Syyu
sudo pacman -S lib32-libunistring

Thanks.
Attempting to reinstall lib32-libunistring returns: “invalid or corrupted package”

Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
warning: lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
:: Starting full system upgrade...
warning: opera: ignoring package upgrade (12.16.1860-1 => 73.0.3856.284-1)
warning: virtualbox: ignoring package upgrade (6.1.16-1 => 6.1.16-3)
warning: virtualbox-ext-vnc: ignoring package upgrade (6.1.16-1 => 6.1.16-3)
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1/desc: No such file or directory
warning: could not fully load metadata for package lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1
error: failed to prepare transaction (invalid or corrupted package)

So this appears you are in a partial-upgrade state
(thats a no-no)
and/or you have corrupted/partial package downloads.

The easiest way to fix this before attempting upgrade/install again is probably to clean your cache.
If it really is that one package, you can remove just its cached download…

paccache -rv lib32-libunistring

But you might want to obliterate everything if some others are also messed up, ex:

paccache -rvk0

…or if that does not help

sudo pacman -Scc

paccache -rv lib32-libunistring
returned:
==> no candidate packages found for pruning

paccache -rvk0
listed a bunch of packages, ending with
==> finished: 1186 packages removed (disk space saved: 3.41 GiB)

So I ran
pacman-mirrors -f
which worked

Then
pacman -Syyu

:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core                                                           167,6 KiB  1783 KiB/s 00:00 [######################################################] 100%
 extra                                                         1994,4 KiB  3,67 MiB/s 00:01 [######################################################] 100%
 community                                                        6,3 MiB  8,12 MiB/s 00:01 [######################################################] 100%
 multilib                                                       182,0 KiB  25,4 MiB/s 00:00 [######################################################] 100%
:: Some packages should be upgraded first...
resolving dependencies...
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1/desc: No such file or directory
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) manjaro-system-20201231-6

Total Download Size:   0,02 MiB
Total Installed Size:  0,00 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:      0,00 MiB

As the file still is reported as missing, I aborted.

Then
pacman -S lib32-libunistring

:: Some packages should be upgraded first...
resolving dependencies...
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1/desc: No such file or directory
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) manjaro-system-20201231-6

Total Download Size:   0,02 MiB
Total Installed Size:  0,00 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:      0,00 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] ^C
Interrupt signal received

I then tried
pacman -Scc

Cache directory: /var/cache/pacman/pkg/
:: Do you want to remove ALL files from cache? [y/N] y
removing all files from cache...

Database directory: /var/lib/pacman/
:: Do you want to remove unused repositories? [Y/n] y
removing unused sync repositories...

Now I’d expect
ls -l /var/lib/pacman/local/lib32-libusb-1.0.23-2/
to return folder not exist or at least be empty, but it’s not.

pacman -S lib32-libunistring
still reports the file as missing.

I suspect the cause of this is back in September when the combination of luks and ext4 caused a bunch of disk errors every time there was a large (>10GB) set of files written to the disk. I jumped to ZFS for all non-system partition. Then that problem was gone. I guess the missing files were lost back then, and I didn’t notice before now.

How come the /var/lib/pacman/local folder is not emptied after the clean up commands?

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/pacman/local/lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1
sudo touch /var/lib/pacman/local/lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1/desc
sudo pacman -S lib32-libunistring

… might help.

Because the database cleaning is only for unused repositories of the packages.
You have a problem with one that is half-installed apparently.
I would maybe touch the file and possibly overwrite to continue … or the other way around and manually rm -r the directory … theres probably multiple ways to [finish] skinning this cat.

Thanks. That was a simple solution

touch /var/lib/pacman/local/lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1/desc
pacman -S lib32-libunistring
Kept complaining:

:: Some packages should be upgraded first...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) manjaro-system-20201231-6

Total Download Size:   0,02 MiB
Total Installed Size:  0,00 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:      0,00 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
:: Retrieving packages...
error: failed retrieving file 'manjaro-system-20201231-6-any.pkg.tar.zst' from manjaro.moson.eu : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'manjaro-system-20201231-6-any.pkg.tar.zst' from mirror.alpix.eu : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'manjaro-system-20201231-6-any.pkg.tar.zst' from www.uex.dk : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'manjaro-system-20201231-6-any.pkg.tar.zst' from us.mirrors.fossho.st : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'manjaro-system-20201231-6-any.pkg.tar.zst' from repo.ialab.dsu.edu : The requested URL returned error: 404
warning: failed to retrieve some files
error: failed to commit transaction (failed to retrieve some files)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

warning: lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1/files: No such file or directory
warning: could not fully load metadata for package lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1
error: failed to prepare transaction (invalid or corrupted package)

touch /var/lib/pacman/local/lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1/files
pacman -S lib32-libunistring

:: Some packages should be upgraded first...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) manjaro-system-20201231-6

Total Download Size:   0,02 MiB
Total Installed Size:  0,00 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:      0,00 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
:: Retrieving packages...
error: failed retrieving file 'manjaro-system-20201231-6-any.pkg.tar.zst' from manjaro.moson.eu : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'manjaro-system-20201231-6-any.pkg.tar.zst' from mirror.alpix.eu : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'manjaro-system-20201231-6-any.pkg.tar.zst' from www.uex.dk : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'manjaro-system-20201231-6-any.pkg.tar.zst' from us.mirrors.fossho.st : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed retrieving file 'manjaro-system-20201231-6-any.pkg.tar.zst' from repo.ialab.dsu.edu : The requested URL returned error: 404
warning: failed to retrieve some files
error: failed to commit transaction (failed to retrieve some files)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

warning: lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1

Total Download Size:   0,36 MiB
Total Installed Size:  1,51 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
:: Retrieving packages...
 lib32-libunistring-0.9.10-1-x86_64                             365,7 KiB  2,38 MiB/s 00:00 [######################################################] 100%
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                                                              [######################################################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                                                            [######################################################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                                                                 [######################################################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                                                           [######################################################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space                                                         [######################################################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/1) reinstalling lib32-libunistring                                                       [######################################################] 100%
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/1) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...

Now the files “desc” and “files” have content. Hence something has worked.

Now, why does the install of manjaro-system 20201231-6 run into 404 error? Possible something went wrong with the mirror update? Which file holds the mirrors? I could restore that file from backup

Turns out that was a problem with manjaro-system 20201231-6. Now -7 is out, and it installed without issues.

Lesson learned: If a pacman complains about a missing file - just create it, let it be empty.

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