my troubles started when I could not update the whole system in one go, as there were some dependencies which made the update fail. Thus I’ve been updating individual packets (and groups of packets) in the order of dependencies and this worked for a while. Sometimes it requested me to reboot the system and at one of these reboots it could not boot anymore (there were 3 errors, but I did not memorize the names). I think this happened when Ihad updated some nvidia things.
This was not the first time updates broke my system, therefore I knew I can recover it with a manjaro “live-usb” stick. But this time, when I try to “manjaro-chroot -a” it fails:
~ manjaro-chroot -a ✔
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sda1. Check your device.map.
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sda1. Check your device.map.
==> Mounting (ManjaroLinux) [/dev/nvme0n1p8]
--> mount: [/mnt]
--> mount: [/mnt/boot/efi]
/bin/bash: symbol lookup error: /bin/bash: undefined symbol: rl_print_keybinding
--> umount: [/mnt/boot/efi]
--> umount: [/mnt]
I’ve not been very successful googling for that. Found one Arch forum thread about rl_print_keybinding which I think is a different issue and one manjaro thread with failing chroot due to glibc and it suggests to use pacstrap, which would install a new system from scratch, but I think that’s not what I’m after.
Does anyone know what the “undefined symbol rl_print_keybinding” is and maybe how to resolve the issue?
sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p8 /mnt
sudo manjaro-chroot /mnt /bin/bash
/bin/bash: symbol lookup error: /bin/bash: undefined symbol: rl_print_keybinding
I think that’s correct,
nvme0n1 259:0 0 953.9G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 260M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 16M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p3 259:3 0 442.4G 0 part
├─nvme0n1p4 259:4 0 750M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p5 259:5 0 22G 0 part
├─nvme0n1p6 259:6 0 200M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p7 259:7 0 301M 0 part
└─nvme0n1p8 259:8 0 488G 0 part
The laptop came with windows, I partitioned the drive kinda 50:50, there are some EFI and backup partitions from windows , I’ve never used windows after the initial setup.
it seems that rl_print_keybinding might be something newly introduced, thus maybe I’ve updated some packet that relies on that, but had not set the dependency. Can I somehow update readline without chroot?
Seems like bash is broken (which would mean your system is utterly broken too and maybe a fresh install would be better but it’s your choice).
Try manual mounting, but with another shell if you have one. What happens if you type zsh? And then try again to chroot but from zsh.
pacman -Si readline root@manjaroRepository : coreName : readlineVersion : 8.3.003-1Description : GNU readline libraryArchitecture : x86_64URL : https://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.htmlLicenses : GPL-3.0-or-laterGroups : NoneProvides : libhistory.so=8-64 libreadline.so=8-64Depends On : glibc libncursesw.so=6-64 ncursesOptional Deps : NoneConflicts With : NoneReplaces : NoneDownload Size : 409.72 KiBInstalled Size : 1532.64 KiBPackager : Tobias Powalowski tpowa@archlinux.orgBuild Date : Wed Dec 10 23:01:46 2025Validated By : MD5 Sum SHA-256 Sum Signature```
pacman -Syyu failed for the same reason
(785/785) checking available disk space [###############################################] 100%
:: Running pre-transaction hooks...
(1/2) Creating Timeshift snapshot before upgrade...
/bin/bash: symbol lookup error: /bin/bash: undefined symbol: rl_print_keybinding
error: command failed to execute correctly
error: failed to commit transaction (failed to run transaction hooks)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.
manjaro-chroot will not work for a system based on btrfs.
Depending on what you are trying to recover - most of it can be done without chrooting into the mountpoint.
pacman has some useful arguments which can be used to target the system behind the mountpoint.
Any configuration you may want to modify can be modified without chroot.
I requires some extra disicpline - but it can be done - I often forget to prefix with /mnt when I want edit edit e.g. mkinitcpio.conf - resulting in editing the rescue iso’s file system instead.
I clearly remember a very lengthy thread not so long ago where my memory was but to extreme test.
yeah, it’s bizarre. I think the bash is only called from the hook to make a snapshot, I could remove that hook, but I don’t know whether that’s suppose to work at all.
I pat my shoulders for having chosen ext4 back then, not btrfs. so mounting just to /mnt works and I can access all my files. (I’ve backed up the recent changes, so I could make a fresh install. But I like my setup and I’d hope I can just repair/recover the system somehow).
I am trying that right now, it just started.
Thank you 3 for your help so far, I really appreciate the community is as great as manjaro is
(… but pacman relies on bash internally, so what @Molski said would perhaps be an option
In that case it would be better to first download a fresh copy of bash instead of using the one from the cache)
manually chroot - do not use the -a option to manjaro-chroot
mount all needed partitions in the correct order to /mnt
(don’t forget the EFI partition)
then chroot like this:
manjaro-chroot /mnt /bin/zsh
or just: manjaro-chroot /mnt
which will land you in sh instead of bash
(I don’t know whether /bin/sh and /bin/bash are actually the same …)
I’ve ran again and again into rl_print_keybinding. Thus I gave up and just re-installed manjaro clean. Thank you everyone for putting in so much time and effort to help me! I will be back next time an update kills my system
I was going for mid-upgraded.. But I guess it’s too late for that.
Funny, I could have experienced the exact same problem as you, on btrfs, and rolled back in seconds. (And have a few other options to access or boot my root.)
, I’ve never used windows after the initial setup.
