[Stable Update] 2023-10-04 - Kernels, Systemd, LibreOffice, NVIDIA, Mesa, GNOME, AMDVLK

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:arrow_right: 2023-10-04

Changes to default password hashing algorithm and umask settings

2023-09-22 - David Runge

With shadow >= 4.14.0, Arch Linux’s default password hashing algorithm changed from SHA512 to yescrypt [1].

Furthermore, the umask [2] settings are now configured in /etc/login.defs instead of /etc/profile.

This should not require any manual intervention.

Reasons for Yescrypt

The password-based key derivation function (KDF) and password hashing scheme yescrypt has been chosen due to its adoption (readily available in libxcrypt, which is used by pam [3]) and its stronger resilience towards password cracking attempts over SHA512.

Although the winner of the Password Hashing Competition [4] has been argon2, this even more resilient algorithm is not yet available in libxcrypt [5][6].

Configuring yescrypt

The YESCRYPT_COST_FACTOR setting in /etc/login.defs is currently without effect, until pam implements reading its value [7]. If a YESCRYPT_COST_FACTOR higher (or lower) than the default (5) is needed, it can be set using the rounds option of the pam_unix [8] module (i.e. in /etc/pam.d/system-auth).

General list of changes

  • yescrypt is used as default password hashing algorithm, instead of SHA512
  • pam honors the chosen ENCRYPT_METHOD in /etc/login.defs and does not override the chosen method anymore
  • changes in the filesystem (>= 2023.09.18) and pambase (>= 20230918) packages ensure, that umask is set centrally in /etc/login.defs instead of /etc/profile

[1] yescrypt - scalable KDF and password hashing scheme

[2] umask(1p) — Arch manual pages

[3] PAM - ArchWiki

[4] https://www.password-hashing.net/

[5] [RFC] Add argon2 backend. by ferivoz · Pull Request #113 · besser82/libxcrypt · GitHub

[6] Add support for Argon2 by maandree · Pull Request #150 · besser82/libxcrypt · GitHub

[7] pam_unix: Support reading YESCRYPT_COST_FACTOR from /etc/login.defs · Issue #607 · linux-pam/linux-pam · GitHub

[8] pam_unix(8) — Arch manual pages

– Arch Linux - News: Changes to default password hashing algorithm and umask settings

2023-09-18

filesystem and bashrc-manjaro pacnews

With the filesystem 2023.09.03-1 and bashrc-manjaro 5.1.016-3 updates there may be pacnews for the following files if you have local modifications:

  • /etc/shells
  • /etc/bash.bashrc

This would be a good time to test @Ste74’s new manjaro-pacnew-checker program. See Check and manage pacnew files for more info.

updates for linux515-r8168 and linux61-6168 drivers fail to load r8168 driver

See this post for how to revert to using r8168 driver or install r8168-dkms driver from AUR
Problem with 6.5 kernel and-r8168 module

2023-09-10

LLVM 16 update may break 3rd party MESA drivers

Mesa drivers are affected when there is no matching LLVM version they are complied on. If you use a 3rd party repo like mesanonfree you may want to install llvm15-libs until those get recompiled. See for releases: https://github.com/mesa-freeworld/mesa-nonfree/releases

2023-08-11

Avoid black screen on Ryzen 7 / ThreadRipper / RX7xxx - perhaps others as well

You may be able to avoid black screen if you - prior to rebooting after the update - sync the latest stable kernel - currently - linux64 or linux65 - any of those solves the issue.

sudo mhwd-kernel -i linux65
budgie-desktop >= 10.7.2-6 update requires manual intervention

When upgrading from budgie-desktop 10.7.2-5 to 10.7.2-6, the package mutter43 must be replaced with magpie-wm, which currently depends on mutter. As mutter43 conflicts with mutter, manual intervention is required to complete the upgrade.

First remove mutter43, then immediately perform the upgrade. Do not relog or reboot between these steps.

pacman -Rdd mutter43
pacman -Syu
Manjaro-hello does not start after update

Known issue: "Manjaro Hello" does not start after Update

rm -f ~/.config/autostart/manjaro-hello.desktop
Multiple sink outputs shown in KDE audio controls

Known issue: Bluetooth headset showing multiple entries in KDE after update

2023-07-17

A bug in KDE Frameworks can delete targets of symlinks.

More info here.

Steam cashes on startup with lib32-libgudev installed

The latest lib32-libgudev update does not cooperate with the version of the same package provided by steam, and steam seems to attempt making calls to both leading to the crash.

Details: bug report, arch task, arch forum thread.

  • Workaround #1 (causes steam to avoid making any calls to lib32-libgudev by using a different library altogether)

    • sudo pacman -S lib32-libnm

  • Workaround #2 (forces steam and any other application to always use the new lib32-libgudev)

    • sudo pacman -S lib32-libudev0-shim

  • Workaround #3 (use steam-native-runtime, which doesn’t have the issue)

    • sudo pacman -S steam-native-runtime

2023-07-10

libpamac 11.5.5-1 breaks update function

We are currently working on fixing a reported security vulnerability which gave you root access via pamac-daemon. During that process we broke the update functionality. Hence use sudo pacman -Syu to update to the latest libpamac release (11.5.7-2)

The community repository has been merged into extra and is now empty

The Arch git migration is now complete .

The [community] repository has been merged into [extra] and is now empty.
It may take a bit of time for mirrors to catch up (more details here).

Update your system and handle the pacman

sudo pacman -Syu "pacman>=6.0.2-11"

In order to remove the defunct [community] repo changes must be made to /etc/pacman.conf.
Changes will be provided in a file with the extension .pacnew.
Pacman provides the utility pacdiff to manage these files and will use vim -d for comparison if the environment variable DIFFPROG is not set.

pacdiff -s

If you would like to use a different comparison tool you may prepend the env var:

DIFFPROG=meld pacdiff -s

Then sync with the repositories again:

sudo pacman -Syu

And you can also remove the now unused repository.

sudo pacman -Sc

NOTE: Be aware that this last command will also remove all packages in the pacman cache that are not currently installed: in other words, backup copies of packages that you have uninstalled at some point will no longer be stored on your hard drive.

In most cases, this probably will not cause headaches. To prevent even minor aches and pains, see the Arch Wiki for information on cleaning the cache

Steam fails to launch

A while ago the Steam Runtime developer maintaining the library detection/promotion “greatly encouraged” that the Steam package would (opt)depends on lib32-libnm and friends. The bugs have been opened since alas

In the absence of an updated steam package with updated dependencies,
A workaround is to install lib32-libnm

sudo pacman -Syu lib32-libnm

Steam will not launch - #12 by cscs
FS#79006 : [lib32-libgudev] Recent Update broke steam
Steam crashes at launch with libgudev 238 · Issue #9805 · ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux · GitHub

OpenBLAS >= 0.3.23-2 update requires manual intervention

2023-06-14 - Felix Yan

The openblas package prior to version 0.3.23-2 doesn’t ship optimized LAPACK routine and CBLAS/LAPACKE interfaces for compatibility. This decision has been reverted now, and the ability to choose a different default system BLAS/LAPACK implementation while keeping openblas installed is now provided to allow future co-installation of BLIS, ATLAS, etc.

The default BLAS implementation will be used for most packages like NumPy or R. Please install blas-openblas and blas64-openblas to make OpenBLAS the default BLAS implementation, just like the old behavior.

Unfortunately you will get errors on updating if you currently have OpenBLAS installed as the default BLAS implementation:

error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: installing openblas (0.3.23-2) breaks dependency 'blas' required by cblas
:: installing openblas (0.3.23-2) breaks dependency 'blas' required by lapack

Please append your preferred default BLAS implementation to the regular -Syu command line to get around it. For example:

sudo pacman -Syu blas-openblas

or

sudo pacman -Syu blas

– Arch Linux - News: OpenBLAS >= 0.3.23-2 update requires manual intervention

TeX Live package reorganization

2023-06-18 - Antonio Rojas

Starting from version 2023.66594-9, TeX Live packages have been reorganized to mirror upstream collections. Even though the new texlive-basic replaces the old texlive-core, many of the texlive-core contents (including language specific files) are now split between different packages. To find out which Arch package contains a specific CTAN package, you can use the tlmgr utility, eg.

$ tlmgr info euler | grep collection
collection:  collection-latexrecommended

which means the euler CTAN package is contained in texlive-latexrecommended. You may also use pacman -F to query for specific files.

A new metapackage texlive-meta is available to install all subpackages (except for language specific ones), and the new texlive-doc package provides the full documentation for offline use.

– Arch Linux - News: TeX Live package reorganization

Pamac GUI theme does not match theme for Xfce

pamac-gtk 11.0.1 uses Gtk 4 that is not supported by Xfce
user can replace pamac-gtk with pamac-gtk3

sudo pacman -S pamac-gtk3
Black screen after login with SDDM 0.20

Check ~/.profile for any commands that don’t execute properly (but return non-zero exit code instead). May include ~/.bash_profile and .zprofile too. Downgrading to SDDM 0.19 also restores desktop after login.

The issue has been reported upstream.

2023-06-04

DKMS is currently broken as our kernels got compiled against an older gcc

Since the last stable update provided an older toolchain our kernels and binaries got compiled against GCC 12.2.0-1. A similar issue was already posted at Arch years ago: [SOLVED] Kernel 5.5.2 is built with the wrong version of gcc / [testing] Repo Forum / Arch Linux Forums. Therefore users of DKMS have to wait for kernel updates compiled against the new toolchain or downgrade to the older one.

Update (2023-06-05): We pushed a rebuild of all regular kernels against the new toolchain to all branches. Real-Time Kernels we still have to check.

Many applications (firefox, thunderbird, telegram, etc) slow to start on desktops other than Gnome

There is a bug with xdg-desktop-portal-gnome (more details here).

Workaround for gtk-based desktops (including Xfce) 
sudo pacman -Rdd xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
sudo pacman -S xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
Workaround for KDE 
sudo pacman -Rdd xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
sudo pacman -S xdg-desktop-portal-kde
Workaround for Lxqt 
sudo pacman -Rdd xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
sudo pacman -S xdg-desktop-portal-lxqt
Workaround for desktops using hyprland 
sudo pacman -Rdd xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
sudo pacman -S xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland
Workaround for desktops using wlroots 
sudo pacman -Rdd xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
sudo pacman -S xdg-desktop-portal-wlr

If you have a lot of pip/AUR packages to upgrade to Python 3.11, read this.

If you installed python311 from the AUR, you need to uninstall it before running this update.

Previous stable update threads:

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