Upgrade through Pacman caused network reboot and black screen

Support
1

Today I tried to upgrade my Manjaro GNOME using sudo pacman -Syyu. That command upgraded the archlinux-keyring (see below). Then it performed the system upgrade (see below – but note this is from a different machine that is also running Manjaro GNOME, so it may not be exactly the same; I did not go through with the upgrade on the second machine).

During the system upgrade, my machine went to black screen, notified of a network error in text only (not GUI-based), like at non-quiet startup, then went black. I made what appears to be a mistake by rebooting it, as now my boot manager (rEFInd) does not see my Manjaro kernel anymore, and it is not listed among my bootable partitions.

I have not had a major bork like this in a long while, so I need a little help getting my system back up and running. Is there a standard approach when this happens?

:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core                        165.2 KiB   147 KiB/s 00:01 [##############################] 100%
 extra                      1851.1 KiB   729 KiB/s 00:03 [##############################] 100%
 community                     7.1 MiB  2.58 MiB/s 00:03 [##############################] 100%
 multilib                    178.8 KiB   125 KiB/s 00:01 [##############################] 100%
:: Some packages should be upgraded first...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) archlinux-keyring-20220727-1

Total Download Size:   1.09 MiB
Total Installed Size:  1.55 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:      0.02 MiB

:: Starting full system upgrade...
warning: grub: ignoring package upgrade (2.03.6-4 => 2.06.r261.g2f4430cc0-1)
warning: grub-theme-manjaro: ignoring package upgrade (18.0-1 => 20.2-12)
warning: python-decorator: ignoring package upgrade (4.4.2-4 => 5.1.1-1)
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (85) binutils-2.38-7  clang-14.0.6-2  cryptsetup-2.5.0-1  cython-0.29.32-1
              electron-19.0.10-1  firefox-103.0.1-1  freerdp-2:2.8.0-1  fzf-0.32.0-1
              gcc-12.1.1-4  gcc-libs-12.1.1-4  gedit-42.2-1  glibc-2.36-1  gsm-1.0.21-1
              harfbuzz-5.1.0-1  harfbuzz-icu-5.1.0-1  imagemagick-7.1.0.45-1
              iproute2-5.19.0-1  iptables-1:1.8.8-2  jre8-openjdk-8.345.u01-1
              jre8-openjdk-headless-8.345.u01-1  js91-91.12.0-1  ldb-2:2.5.2-2
              lib32-gcc-libs-12.1.1-4  lib32-glibc-2.36-1  lib32-harfbuzz-5.1.0-1
              lib32-libtiff-4.4.0-3  lib32-libva-2.15.0-1  lib32-libxcrypt-4.4.28-2
              lib32-wayland-1.21.0-1  libarchive-3.6.1-2  libelf-0.187-2
              libreoffice-fresh-7.3.5-1  libsysprof-capture-3.44.0-2  libtiff-4.4.0-3
              libtool-2.4.7-3  libupnp-1.14.13-1  libwpe-1.12.2-1
              linux-api-headers-5.18.15-1  linux510-5.10.135-1  linux510-headers-5.10.135-1
              linux510-virtualbox-host-modules-6.1.36-6  linux515-5.15.59-1
              linux515-headers-5.15.59-1  linux515-virtualbox-host-modules-6.1.36-7
              llvm-14.0.6-3  llvm-libs-14.0.6-3  mhwd-nvidia-515.65.01-2
              mhwd-nvidia-390xx-390.154-1  mhwd-nvidia-470xx-470.141.03-1  mpfr-4.1.0.p13-3
              mpg123-1.30.2-1  npm-8.16.0-1  opencore-amr-0.1.6-1  osinfo-db-20220727-1
              ostree-2022.5-2  perl-alien-build-2.51-1  perl-libwww-6.67-1  python-3.10.5-2
              python-chardet-5.0.0-1  python-ipywidgets-7.7.1-2  python-jarowinkler-1.2.0-2
              python-jeepney-0.8.0-1  python-json5-0.9.9-1  python-jsonpointer-2.3-1
              python-jsonschema-4.9.0-1  python-levenshtein-0.20.1-2  python-parso-1:0.8.3-1
              python-pip-22.2.2-1  python-platformdirs-2.5.2-1  python-pyflakes-2.5.0-1
              python-rapidfuzz-2.4.2-2  python-reportlab-3.6.11-1  python-requests-2.28.1-1
              python-rfc3987-1.3.8-8  python-rtree-1.0.0-1  python-webcolors-1.12-1
              qt5-base-5.15.5+kde+r174-1  smbclient-4.16.4-2  tevent-1:0.13.0-1
              wavpack-5.5.0-1  wayland-protocols-1.26-1  webkit2gtk-2.36.5-2
              webkit2gtk-4.1-2.36.5-2  xdg-desktop-portal-1.14.6-1
              archlinux-keyring-20220727-1

Total Download Size:    886.66 MiB
Total Installed Size:  3023.13 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:         7.10 MiB
2

Sounds like a partial update. Boot a Manjaro live install media and follow the instructions here up to and including manjaro-chroot. Then enter the command sudo pacman -Syu and hit enter. In the future I would not put a second y in the pacman command.

1 Like
3

Thanks @Jim.B. Will do that. And will revise the Syyu to Syu. Will report back on how it goes. I now remember chroot – at least for other distros – and it’s always a pain in the rear.

4

I know the output is from different system and of no relevance to your problem, but can’t help but notice you have some (very) old packages holding back:

Nah, chrooting is fun now.

1 Like
5

Thanks @zbe. I thought someone might notice that; those packages are held back because I use rEFInd for my bootloader and grub updates tend to mess with it. I held back python-decorator because it was screwing something up – I don’t even remember what.

Hoping your chroot love is well-founded.

6

Shouldn’t you just remove it then? :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

Ugh. After chrooting and manually mounting the proper efi, boot, and root partitions, I got error: failed to synchronize all databases (unable to lock database). Trying to fix using suggestions online.

I used rm /var/lib/pacman/db.lck and was able to update. That worked. But it says there is nothing to do…

I know it failed mid-stream on the upgrade. And I know it now longer shows up as a bootable kernel in rEFInd. Any ideas?

8

Even though it said there was nothing to do, it really did need to do something to get my kernels back showing up.

I tried sudo mkinitcpio -p linux515, but I got an error that it could not find the preset.

So, I issued: sudo pacman -Syu linux. That did it. All fixed. Thanks!!!

9

Yes, forgot to mention that in a crashed update you are left without kernels, so you have to reinstall them.

10

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.