System locked during update

Whole system is locked at step 443/914 of update - upgrading grub-theme-manjaro.

Please help !

Welcome to the forum! :slight_smile:

Without knowing any of the specifics of your machine ─ e.g. the amount of RAM you have, whether it’s a native UEFI installation or legacy BIOS boot ─ or what installation medium you used ─ because 914 updates is quite a lot for a new (or kept-up-to-date) installation ─ no one is going to be able to help you.

Please read this very informative post below. :arrow_down:

2 Likes

Thanks for your reply.
I’m not new to the forum.
As my system is completely frozen I will obviously need to reboot - what should I do next try to reinstall the update ?

Are you sure your system is frozen? It could simply be taking a long time. If you have only 4 GiB or less, then this may happen, but given that you’re not providing us with information, we have no way of knowing.

Always remember that the quality of the help you’ll get depends on the quality of the information you provide.

And as for… :arrow_down:

Maybe not new to the forum, but according to the forum engine, that was your first post. :wink:

:arrow_down:

This is the first time lappetspm has posted — let’s welcome them to our community!

2 Likes

Thanks again I really appreciate your quick response and trying to help.
I had already registered under a different name but for some reason my password failed and i am unable to access my old e-mail to resend the password.
I am unable to switch to windows both the keyboard and mouse are stuck and there is no disk activity. I have been waiting about 15mins and I think I have more than 4gb of ram. You may find my inxi output already posted under name of lappets.

Ah, but then you are apparently not aware of the fact that this is a new forum installation. The database of the old forum got corrupted somehow, and the corruption extended into the backups. That’s why we had to start all over again from scratch, and everyone had to re-register. :arrow_down:

Thinking is not good enough, I’m afraid. We have to know for certain. With an update worth over 900 packages, things can take a long time. I’ve got 16 GiB and 6 cores in this machine, but if I have to install over 900 packages, then my system is busy for at least a whole hour.

Also ─ and this is an advice I give to everyone ─ with an update that big, best is to completely log out of the GUI environment and update the system from a tty. That way, no shared libraries are in use anymore when they’re being overwritten by the updated packages.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Manjaro is a (curated) rolling-release distribution. With the exception of urgent security updates, regular updates are normally bundled together and issued on average only twice a month.

Not only will the update notifier icon in the system tray tell you about that, but there will also always be an update announcement thread under the #announcements category ─ I recommend subscribing to notifications for said category.

Yet, if you have over 900 packages to update, then that means that you haven’t updated your system in a long time, and this in turn has a few implications, because there have been some major changes in the meantime…

  • GRUB got patched against the Boot Hole vulnerability. On a UEFI-booting system, this requires a manual reinstallation of the GRUB boot loader to the EFI system partition.

  • The latest update to the Stable branch ─ on the 28th of August 2020 ─ included a major upgrade to the PAM security subsystem, which also requires manual intervention in some cases.

I have searched the old forum for your information, but I couldn’t find it, and given that the old forum is read-only, I cannot log into it and search for your profile page. :man_shrugging:

locked to download packages or install ?
if is at download is not a problem, you can reboot,
if install (after download all) no reboot possible (kernel action pre-install), only boot on iso and run manjaro-chroot for update again

1 Like

Ok thanks can you remind me how to do that?

  1. Boot up from the live medium. If your installed system boots in UEFI mode, then make sure the live medium does too.

  2. Open up a terminal window and issue the command… :arrow_down:

su -
  1. Enter the root password of the live medium, and then issue the following commands… :arrow_down:
manjaro-chroot -a  
pacman-mirrors -f 5 && pacman -Syyu
  1. a. If you have not updated your system in a long time and it is a native UEFI boot, you must reinstall GRUB to the EFI system partition… :arrow_down:
grub-install --recheck --no-rs-codes --modules="part_gpt part_msdos zstd" --efi-directory="/boot/efi" --target="x86_64-efi"
update-grub
  1. Let the update finish.

Note: If you have not updated your system in a long time, check /etc/pam.d/ for any files whose name ends in .pacnew and merge them in with the existing files of the same name.

  1. Exit the chroot environment. :arrow_down:
sync && exit
  1. Reboot your machine.
3 Likes

I am trying the command manjaro-chroot -a but nothing is happening - should it return to the command prompt or do I just type in the next commands ?

[manjaro@manjaro ~]$ su -
Password:
[manjaro ~]# manjaro-chroot -a

It should return a command prompt, with the current working directory being /, albeit that this would then be the root directory of your installed root filesystem, and thus in reality, it’s actually /mnt (or wherever it mounts the installed system).

I’m running the command from a Live CD, maybe it’s just slower - I have a multiple system installation.

Normally that should not make any difference once the system is loaded into memory, because even the live CD uses caching. :thinking:

[manjaro@manjaro ~]$ inxi -Faz
System:
  Host: manjaro Kernel: 5.4.22-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 
  parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=(loop)/boot/vmlinuz-x86_64 lang=en_US keytable=us 
  tz=UTC driver=free nouveau.modeset=1 i915.modeset=1 radeon.modeset=1 
  img_dev=/dev/disk/by-label/LXFDVD262 
  img_loop=/Manjaro/manjaro-xfce-19.0.1-200228-linux54.iso 
  misobasedir=manjaro misolabel=MANJARO_XFCE_1901 quiet 
  systemd.show_status=1 apparmor=1 security=apparmor 
  Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: X58-USB3 serial: <filter> BIOS: Award 
  v: F1 date: 07/19/2010 
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7 950 bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  family: 6 model-id: 1A (26) stepping: 5 microcode: 1D L2 cache: 8192 KiB 
  Speed: 1651 MHz min/max: 1596/3060 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1619 2: 1621 
  3: 1619 4: 1628 5: 1620 6: 1639 7: 1752 8: 1749 
  Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: Split huge pages 
  Type: l1tf 
  mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable 
  Type: mds status: Vulnerable: Clear CPU buffers attempted, no microcode; 
  SMT vulnerable 
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
  Type: spec_store_bypass 
  mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
  Type: spectre_v1 
  mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, 
  IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GT215 [GeForce GT 240] driver: nouveau v: kernel 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.7 driver: nouveau unloaded: modesetting 
  resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: NVA3 v: 3.3 Mesa 19.3.4 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 82801JI HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
  Device-2: NVIDIA High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.22-1-MANJARO 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  driver: r8169 
  IF: enp4s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 9.21 TiB used: 116.8 MiB (0.0%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: SanDisk model: SDSSDP128G size: 117.38 GiB 
  block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B 
  ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Toshiba model: DT01ACA300 size: 2.73 TiB 
  block size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B 
  ID-3: /dev/sdc vendor: Western Digital model: WD10EARS-00MVWB0 
  size: 931.51 GiB block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B 
  ID-4: /dev/sdd vendor: Western Digital model: WD10EARS-22Y5B1 
  size: 931.51 GiB block size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B 
  ID-5: /dev/sde vendor: Western Digital model: WD20EARS-00MVWB0 
  size: 1.82 TiB block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B 
  ID-6: /dev/sdf type: USB vendor: Seagate model: ST31000333AS 
  size: 931.51 GiB block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B 
  ID-7: /dev/sdg type: USB vendor: Toshiba model: External USB 3.0 
  size: 1.82 TiB block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B 
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw size: N/A size: 8.77 GiB used: 116.8 MiB (1.3%) fs: overlay 
  source: ERR-102 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 45.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nouveau temp: 36 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:
  Processes: 213 Uptime: 10m Memory: 11.70 GiB used: 1.34 GiB (11.4%) 
  Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.37 
[manjaro@manjaro ~]$ 

I’m trying again with the 19.3 live dvd

Don’t. Use 20.1-rc6. The difference is way too big.

I wonder if that’s the issue, the latest livedvd I have is May 2020

A lot has changed since May. Do try the rc6. It fixes many bugs.

I’m trying to download and install it to a usb stick

1 Like

I can only find the 20.0.3 version, can you point me to the 20.1-rc6 ?