I received this morning an update hint.
But pacman throws an error on the screen about libxml:
Error: Process could not be prepared (Cannot fulfill dependencies)
:: Installation of libxml2 (2.14.2-2) violates dependency “libxml2.so=2-64”, required by electron32
Any thoughts on this?
electron32 is an AUR package. You should remove it (sudo pacman -R electron32) before doing the update. If you still require electron32, rebuild it after the update:
pamac build electron32
Thanks, did not think about that.
Meanwhile i messed up the system by deleting the libxml2 file.
Sometimes i should think before typing something in my CLI…
How do I fix now that pacman is not working any longer?
pacman: error while loading shared libraries: libxml2.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
I think i need to boot from live and repair in chroot, right?
Or is there an easier way to support that stupid me ?
EDIT:
Helped myself by downloading the libxml package manually and copied the missing so back to /usr/lib
That made pacman running again, now i can repair libxml entirely.
Interesting side effect: The update which failed regarding electron was working after that without issues.
Thanks for moving the topic.
I found a different problem with the electron32 install on my device.
When it started the update it was downloading > 40GB of data.
I stopped it and tried to find what happened.
Something installed electron32 instead of electron32-bin on the system.
I removed electron32 and installed the bin instead which worked
Just in case someone ran in the same problem.
I just updated (or tried to) my Plasma VM - and got this exact error.
A minute before I updated my Xfce VM without problems.
Looks like chroot and pacman-static will be needed - will do that later.
I have got no time for this now.
The error was caused by myself 
because i removed the package libxml2 which stopped pacman from working.
I needed to download and copy the package manually then pacman was working again as expected.
O.k. I’ll try this - but will likely have to unpack “manually” because pacman and pamac refuse to work because this library is missing. 
… will see - later …
That will exactly happen. But simply copying the single file from the package to the /usr/lib/ folder brought pacman back to work.
Maybe there is a backup somewhere on the device already, but i didn’t search for it.
I got the same message except it read:
Warning: installing libxml2 (2.14.2-2) breaks dependency ‘libxml2.so=2-64’ required by rest
Add rest to remove
Error: Failed to prepare transaction:
could not satisfy dependencies:
What is rest ?
I have NEVER installed any third party or AUR packages
prior update installed fine
Found the solution seaching for ‘rest’
sudo pacman -R lib32-rest
gave it a shot and it worked.
replying with newly booted system.
For me, it had nothing to with rest - I did use the VM to test install some AUR packages - that’s what it is for.
But I always clean up afterwards.
The system was effectively in a pristine state.
Then the update failed because of libxml2 and pacman as well as pamac where not functional anymore.
And, of course, since it didn’t complete, the kernel was also missing.
I know how to chroot - but I simply had no patience for this.
Everything went just fine a few minutes earlier when I updated my Xfce4 and Cinnamon and Gnome VM’s.
I deleted the VM and will perhaps reinstall Plasma instead of jumping through hoops trying to fix what should not have been broken.