Installing an AUR package soft bricks system

Support AUR
1

During the process of running:

pamac install ungoogled-chromium

I see this log output:

Warning: filesystem: /bin already exists in filesystem
It has been backed up to /bin.old
Warning: filesystem: /etc/mtab already exists in filesystem
It has been backed up to /etc/mtab.old1
Warning: filesystem: /etc/profile.d/locale.sh already exists in filesystem
It has been backed up to /etc/profile.d/locale.sh.old1
Warning: filesystem: /lib already exists in filesystem
It has been backed up to /lib.old
Warning: filesystem: /lib64 already exists in filesystem
It has been backed up to /lib64.old

And then my system stops functioning. It’s easy enough to fix in a live boot, but I want to stop this from happening anymore.

I believe this is related to when I accidentally enabled unstable repos. I have since attempted to fix this by running: sudo pacman-mirrors --api --set-branch stable

I suspect there are remaining configuration problems related to this error on my part. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can completely revert back to stable and/or otherwise fix this recurring issue? I haven’t tried a non-AUR install to see how that would turn out, but I can if it would help debug (I only hesitate to do it in advance because of the trouble of booting into a live USB and fixing it manually.)

2

Switching branches needs more than setting the desired branch.

  • You need to select your branch
  • You need to download the “other” Packagelists
  • You need to update to the other branchs last state
    :footprints:
1 Like
3

More detail here:

5 Likes
4

From everything I know so far, this can’t be caused by changing branches.

These are obviously malicious commands. What software would come up with the idea of ​​replacing /bin or /lib or /lib64 or even /usr/bin?
Whoever wrote this has an exotic form of humor

Be careful what you do!

Rollback to your last “good” snappshot !

5

If this is all that has happened, you can manually revert that.
It should be quite easy.
But I suspect this is just part of a very long list - which makes reverting it … not so easy.

You could try to:

  • boot from usb
  • mount your / file system
  • assess the damage - is there still /bin or only /bin.old instead?
    Likewise for the other directories.

But even files are affected according to your output - doesn’t look good.

If you have a snapshot - roll back.

6

If you don’t, let this be a lesson and reinstall.

7

Thank you for your reply.

Yeah, fixing it is no problem from a live boot USB. The machine boots and works fine afterwards. The problem I’m having is when I try to do it again even after switching branches (I have other documentation posted in this thread to review now regarding this), it continues to do these changes which seem inappropriate given the actual task (installing ungoogled-chromium from AUR.)

I don’t have a snapshot, unfortunately. I’ll keep reinstalling as a last resort, but let’s see if I can learn from the documentation provided by some others in this thread.

1 Like
8

You’ll likely need:

Using pacman-static

pacman-staticAUR is a statically compiled version of pacman, so it will be able to run even when the libraries on the system are not working. This can also come in handy when a partial upgrade was performed and pacman can not run anymore.

The pinned comment and the PKGBUILD provides a way to directly download the binary, which can be used to reinstall pacman or to upgrade the entire system in case of partial upgrades.

…if you insist on repairing it and not just reinstalling.If so, use this as a learning experience.

Also see:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman#Pacman_crashes_during_an_upgrade

1 Like
9

Thanks for the documentation. I had actually been referencing that, though I hadn’t run all the steps. Instead of syncing with pacman, I updated with pamac I believe.

I was able to do a very minor installation without causing the problem again. --dry-run unfortunately doesn’t reveal what it’s going to do once it tries to install (such as this renaming operation) so I can’t see if trying ungoogled-chromium again will cause the issue again without just trying it.

10

It’s definitely not the PKGBUILD that commands any such renaming of core system directories. :man_shrugging:

… you are sure you want to build the browser yourself?
There is a .bin version too in the AUR

you should probably rather use pamac build over pamac install
but maybe it doesn’t make a difference - if I build stuff myself, I use either yay or makepkg directly

11

As far as I know, it’s

pamac build <packageName>

…if Software mode is not enabled, and

pamac install <packageName>

…if so.

https://i.imgur.com/dMxf4fF.png

12

Pamac can usually work around incorrect use of pamac install for building AUR packages

For OP issue it may be less problematic to build ungoogled-chromium-bin

pamac build ungoogled-chromium-bin
13

I strongly recommend installing ungoogle-chromium-bin rather than compiling the full browser locally.

14

That sounds like the filesystem package. Its purpose is to recreate all of the system directories required by the UNIX Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

If an attempt is made to install an earlier version of the package than what is already installed, then this sort of thing may happen.

15

This is really good to know, I didn’t realize.

In the end, I wasn’t able to prevent it from happening every time I tried a build. I’ll have to reformat. Looks like manjaro with mate isn’t supported anymore anyway.

Thank you everyone for your help looking at this, though.

16

There is just no “official” Mate flavor edition - but running Mate as such is of course possible.
There is a person who made a spin off with his own preferences:

SbK Mate-Compiz 24.2.0

3 Likes
17

Do I detect a Windows user here?

Official Manjaro editions include: KDE Plasma, XFCE and GNOME. These are supported by Manjaro.

Is Chromium (official repo’s) an option for you?