Trying to update, Error: Could not update key

Support System Updates
1

I haven’t used this system in six months. It appears a lot of keys are out of date. I have followed the steps in multiple posts that I found in the forum but still see errors like

ERROR: One or more PGP signatures could not be verified!

Many of thighs I tried included running

sudo pacman-key –refresh-keys

which always trows a bunch of

==>ERROR: Could not update key: [xxxxxxxxxx]

I also tried to follow the related wiki but got stuck on commands like

rm manjaro-keyring* archlinux-keyring*

because it does not tell in which directory to run this command

or this

curl -O https://mirror.easyname.at/manjaro/pool/overlay/manjaro-keyring-YYYYMMDD-R-any.pkg.tar.zst

because I don’t know what I don’t know what values to put in YYYYMMDD-R

Any suggestions?

2

First of all - read the whole thing - you refer to the wiki page - it appears you only executed the commands and disregarding the context.

Pacman troubleshooting - Manjaro

Start with the simple approach

sudo pacman -Syy manjaro-keyring archlinux-keyring

Then rerun the update

sudo pacman -Syu

It the issue persist, I suggest you read the troubleshooting guide thoroughly, getting the context will help a lot.

2 Likes
3

Yep, I did those already. Before I posted I read all the previous suggestions on the forum from ~ 3 years, and the wiki. I included in my original post the problems I had with the wiki. Thank, though.

4

I am sorry if I do not understand your issue.

What is the issue?

Is it problem with understanding?

Is it still an issue with keyring?

Did you solve the issue with keyring?

As I said - context has the answer

What ever directory you decide to place the packages in, but only if keyring packages is present in the directory.

The page you presumable read

Info

Retrieving the latest keyring packages can be done by browsing a current mirrors pool folder. E.g. from Index of /manjaro/pool - using the overlay for Manjaro keyring and sync for Arch keyring and downloading them to your system. Do not download .sig files.

And

Use either your browser or curl to download. Using curl assumes you know the correct package name as located with the mirror. Replace YYYYMMDD-R as available from the mirror.

And most human know that YYYY is the year, MM is the month and DD is the date - and in the context R is self-explanatory, it is the package release number.

5

I followed the detailed steps in this document

in the section called: Errors about keys

I don’t think the document states it but the it seems the commands must be run from the /var/cache/pacman/pkg dirrectory or they do not run.

In any event I followed all for the steps in this document and when I return to the GUI the software package manager shows 18 packages that require an update, and when I try to update them each package throws an error box that says

“Error key [key number displayed for each error message] could not be imported”

So these 18 packages are not getting updates. That is the problem.

6

And which version of the keyring packages did you use? And were the initialisation and populate commands successful?

7

archlinux-keyring-20260107-1-any,pkg.tar.zst

manjaro-keyring-20251003-1-any.pkg.tat.zst

sudo pacman-key –init Runs without error and returns to cursor without any messages

sudo pacman-key –populate manjaro archlinux Runs and returns the following:
==> Appending keys from manjaro.gpg…
==> Appending keys from archlinux.gpg…
==> Locally signing trusted keys in keyring…
→ Locally signed 2 keys.
==> Importing owner trust values…
==> Updating trust database…
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2026-01-30

8

Looks good to me. Then i don’t know.
You can post the full error log of the update command, but please use the <> button this time!.

9

Which 18 packages?

I suspect it could it be AUR recipes?

pamac list --foreign
10

I don’t know what this means.

11

The </> button is at the top of the Reply window; this is a way to format pasted Terminal output according to Forum guidelines.

An alternative is to add either ``` or ~~~ on its own lines preceding and following the pasted output. :wink:

1 Like
12

I went through one by one and looked up the packages and their dependencies and and determined I didn’t need a number of them.
Some were
qt5-webchannel
qt5-webengine
lib32-libappindicator-gtk2
phonon* (I don’t remember the full name
steam-native-runtime
…

There were all AUR packages
I can’t say I understand what pacman is doing. When I tried to remove these from the command line I got the message
“could not find or read package”
however from the graphical interface I was able to look them up and remove them. The wiki troubleshooting guide did not seem to address what what going on. Anyway, it is resolved now - how do I close this request?

Thanks for your interest.

13

Most likely because what is going on is not related to the official repositories

Unmaintained, deprecated and otherwise obsolete packages may be moved to AUR.

When this happens packages will be left on the system as unknown packages.

It is the local system administrators task to keep the system in a tidy state.

But it is common knowledge that this is often left to a better time and because that better time never arrives, such maintenance to go forgotten.

That fact is one of the reason why the update announcement contains a shortlist of preparation steps - take the time every once in a while to go over the guide and clear your system of obsolete and abandoned packages.

1 Like
14

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