Pamac updates broke my entire computer (kernel panic)

Support Kernel
1

Was just a regular day, i see that there’s suddenly 430+ updates from pamac, i hit the update button. After ignoring the updates from a few annoying packages (electron33 and some others i don’t remember), it goes through.

But after that, all hell breaks lose: mouse settings are reset, then the settings app won’t launch, then the terminal won’t launch. So i figure maybe it’s like past occurrences of this kind of bug: just restart and it’ll be fine, but now my pc is not booting at all anymore.

(wanted to embed the images but apparently the forum doesn’t allow it on this thread? Also tried putting links but it’s not allowed either?) here’s the links regardless

https://ibb.co/MyZBF6Bx

https://ibb.dot.co/tM60LR1z

Other info from the top of my head:

  • AMD CPU
  • AMD GPU
  • running KDE env
  • using btrfs on an SSD

Thank you very much for your future support and time!

2

You just need to format the links.

for example:
https://ibb.co/MyZBF6Bx

or even:

IMG-20250307-133442 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB

top row of the edit window here …

pictures are pretty much useless, btw

You’ll likely need to boot from USB (the Manjaro ISO if you have it)
and chroot to fix your system.

Guides exist here on the forum.

1 Like
3

thanks! Could you please link to a specific guide?

4

You could look at these for ideas of things to try:

5

For your next sync

:smile: not so imaginary after all

I get it you are frustrated but Manjaro Linux is not at fault here.

What you can do

Use a live Manjaro ISO to boot the system. If you don’t have one - either download an official ISO or a dedicated Manjaro Rescue ISO from manjaro.dk

Open a terminal and change root to the system on disk.

Assuming a default installation on nvme using EFI and btrfs, first mount the subvols

mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@ /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@cache /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/var/cache
mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@log /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/var/log
mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@home /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/home
mount -t vfat /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi

Some operations requires to mount hardware related filesystems as well

mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs sysfs /mnt/sys
mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /mnt/sys/firmware/efi/efivars

Create the chroot environment and use bash as shell

chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Inside chroot

Create a list of alien packages

pacman -Qqem > /alien-package-list.txt

Unconditionally remove all aliens

pacman -Rdd < (pacman -Qqem)

Then run a full system sync

pacman -Syu

Exit chroot and reboot the system

System restored

Evaluate the content of the alien-package-list.txt and rebuild only those required for your day-to-day operation.

1 Like
6

Thank you very much!
After following the GRUB rescue guide i managed to at least try to complete the pacman updates.

Unfortunately when it comes to updating/reinstalling grub, i get critical errors like tee_jee_file_system_path_combine: assertion path1 != NULL failed and E: Selected snapshot device is not a system disk

But the weirdest, and possibly what prevents me from reinstalling grub is that manjaro-chroot -a and os-prober and grub-probe seem to be unable to detect my system, which makes it fail to detect kernels and possibly writes a config that prevents me from booting.

Moreover, when i try to update a package via pacman, it often ends with

(2/4) Refreshing PackageKit...
Error connecting: Could not connect: No such file or directory
error: command failed to execute correctly

also, for more info, when i do pacman -Syu grub, near the end of the log i get WARNING: EFI directory not found! Grub couldn't be installed.

What’s going on?

7

I am not sure that work with btrfs

The What you can do generic and could need adjustment for a specific usecase - after all the partition schema could be different.

To mount your subvolumes correct - you need to know them - assuming an nvme device

mount -o subvol=@ /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
sudo btrfs subvolume list /mnt
8

Redid all the steps to rescue grub but i still get the same bluescreen (this time though grub detected my partitions and stuff).

Tried your command and it outputs

ID 256 gen 231687 top level 5 path @
ID 257 gen 231684 top level 5 path @home
ID 258 gen 231685 top level 5 path @cache
ID 259 gen 231685 top level 5 path @log
ID 331 gen 231619 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2025-02-25_23-58-37/@
ID 332 gen 231619 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2025-02-26_00-13-18/@
ID 333 gen 231620 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2025-03-07_13-24-33/@
9

No, it doesn’t. With btrfs, one has to follow the manual chroot approach. Assuming that the EFI system partition is on /dev/sda1 and the Manjaro root filesystem on /dev/sda2, it would be something like this… :point_down:

mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@ /dev/sda2 /mnt
mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@home /dev/sda2 /mnt/home
mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@log /dev/sda2 /mnt/var/log
mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@cache /dev/sda2 /mnt/var/cache
mount -t vfat  /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs sysfs /mnt/sys
mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /mnt/sys/firmware/efi/efivars
chroot /mnt /bin/bash