Fixing pacman in live boot

Support
1

I’m not writing this to find a solution for myself. This is not a support request.

There is a problem that’s been there for quite a while. I verified today that it’s still there and it’s kind of frustrating because I like to use the Manjaro live ISO.

For some reason, pacman is broken on the KDE live iso and it’s been broken for quite a while (at least a year). I’ve tried it again today, I downloaded the latest ISO file through this link:

https://download.manjaro.org/kde/24.2.1/manjaro-kde-24.2.1-241216-linux612.iso

And pacman is still broken.

What I do:

I start the ISO from a USB stick.
I open a terminal

pacman -Syy
pacman -S chntpw

That fails. I have a working internet connection but that’s not working.

error: chntpw: signature from “name is unknown trust”
:: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/chntpw-140201-5-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature))

(i left out the name and mail address on purpose)

It’s not related to the package. It’s not related to the hardware as I’ve tried computers from different manufacturers. I’ve encountered this both at work and at home using different internet connections. I can’t install vim (I dont’ know why that’s not already in the iso) or any other package so it’s not related to the packages. They all give the same result no matter what signature is needed.

To clarify, I’m not trying to install the OS. I’m trying to use the live iso file.

It would be great if this was fixed so I can use Manjaro as a live distro instead of a different distro.

2

That is not broken. Search results for '(invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)' - Manjaro Linux Forum)

It happens for reasons. Problem can also be on your end, check the content of the file /var/cache/pacman/pkg/chntpw-140201-5-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst with a text editor, maybe you actually do not download the proper file because “reasons on your end”.

Update mirrors first on the live USB.
Then do a full sync.
Then try to install packages… but the ISO is not meant to be run as a live system for daily use so I don’t know what is your goal.

1 Like
3

You should
always
be running:
pacman -Syu

or just rely on things not having changed too much since the ISO was created
and use:

pacman -S program_name

… as I always do when installing mc to help me find my way around …

2 Likes
4

This happens because ISO pacman has no keys - this is a security measure - an anti tamper measure if you like

  1. need a valid mirror - up-to-date
  2. need to ensure correct keys

So to ensure the above is valid on the ISO

Use pacman-mirrors to set a valid mirror of your choosing

sudo pacman-mirrors --api --url https://valid.mirror.tld/manjaro

Or you can use any other action for pacman-mirrors

Then pull only database

sudo pacman -Sy

Install the latest keys

sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring manjaro-keyring

Then install the package you are missing

sudo pacman -S chntpw
2 Likes
5

Run

sudo pacman-mirrors -f
sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys
sudo pacman -Syu {your package}

Pacman has his own keyring by default.

1 Like