Borked my system, Urgently need support

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

I recently updated both my PC and laptop using yay. During the update process, I excluded ICU, and with my luck, both devices crashed. After attempting to reboot, neither device had a kernel installed. Having dealt with this issue before, I grabbed my live USB, booted into it, and chrooted into both systems (PC and laptop).

from there, I ran into an issue where I couldn’t run pacman. I don’t remember the exact error message, but I managed to fix it on both devices by manually downloading the ICU package from its AUR page and copying the files into /usr/lib/. After that, pacman started working again, and after some additional faffery, I was able to fully update the system, rebuild the initramfs, etc.

Now, though, whenever I boot either device, I’m stuck at the screen that usually just says “OK” repeatedly, but I’m seeing many errors, including failed attempts to start the login manager and D-Bus.

If you need any further information to help diagnose this, please let me know. I need to get this fixed as soon as possible.

2

icu is the repos, not AUR. If you got some alternative version of icu from AUR, replace it with the one from the repos.

In the future, if pacman stops working, don’t install files manually. Grab a copy of pacman-static

3

ok, i propperly installed icu, thanks for the tip for next time. do you think that’ll fix the issues while booting? (if not i’m doing homework in the live boot enviroment rn :sob:)

4

Run sudo dracut-rebuild to ensure the initrds have the new icu

5

sorry i had to go eat dinner, i’ll try that then let you know

6

The only thing I can’t figure out is—during chroot—you re-introduced ICU a second time to Endeavour since it was already there. Did installing AUR ICU twice cause any problems?

7

to my knowledge it only fixed them, allowing me to use pacman again

8

that didn;t fix anything… any suggestions or need any info?

9

maybe remove all ICU versions? throw away all folders in /home.
sudo yay -Qtdq will show you any deps you can manually remove (I use -Rn per package after that but that’s just me).

then reinstall ICU from extra? finish off with a yay -Syyu?

reboot and pray :wink: .

yay is a whole different package then pacman as you know.
This may seem extreme, but I’ve gotten a lot of Linux Mileage from the Start Completely Fresh ethos. Not always, but enough.
2 cents and probably not worth more.
edit: I’d be real cautious with judging deps though. maybe disregard. use yr gut.–I don’t know what is directly shared between yay and pacman, that’s where I’m at

10

hello, a few clarifications
what do you mean by throw aray all home folders?
what does -Rn do?

11

folders=remnants of aur package (i.e. conf if applicable etc)

-Qtdq shows all the debris that never really gets uninstalled when you uninstall something.
when the list of debis is displayed in terminal, I remove the debris with yay -Rn package1 package 2 etc
I was not clear, apologies

12

This would remove half the system. You can’t practically remove icu.

-R removes a package.

-n doesn’t create .pacsave files. It is a virtually useless option since very few packages have files that get saved in the first place.

13

so you suggest i remove all the orphaned packages and go from there?

14

that was my biggest fear with that plan

15

not after Dalto’s comments. I did not realize how huge and tentacled this package was

16

i think i’ve gotten past all the issues with icu, now i just cant proppery enter kde plasma, the system boots, but gets hung up on the screen that gets hidden when you use the quiet kernel parameter (it says ok and failed, specifically failing the startup of a bunch of services incluing system dbus messengher)

17

any ideals y’all?

18

i may have found the solution, as this issue looks very similar: i will put the link here for reference and so i can reboot without losing it

19

That was, in fact, the solution. I will provide an in-depth guide on what I did to both bork and fix it in case somebody else (or I, once again) runs into the issue.

Preface

I stupidly updated both my laptop and PC at the same time (using yay). Even more stupidly, I excluded the ICU package from updating (I did this to deal with conflicting packages), which prevented both systems from:

  1. Utilizing pacman
  2. Actually booting the system

Not quite sure how, but I also borked my kernel while updating. It’s not my first time doing that (I should probably fix that), so luckily, I already knew what to do. I grabbed my trusty, rusty USB with Ventoy and booted into an EndeavourOS image circa last year. (All commands provided show what I did on the PC, but the only difference on the laptop was having different partitions.)

Steps to Fix It

  1. List partitions:
lsblk
  1. Mount the proper partition (the one that actually has Linux on it):
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
  1. chroot into the mounted partition:
sudo arch-chroot /mnt
  1. Reinstall the Linux kernel:
sudo pacman -S linux

Running pacman is where I experienced my second major hiccup of the day—receiving an error somewhere along the lines of:

“You uninstalled ICU, dumbass.”

So, as per ChatGPT, I “manually” installed ICU by copying the files from “Download From Mirror” on this page.

Basically, I just extracted it on the live USB and copied it over to the root of the borked system. There should be a bin folder—this is what you actually move. Then just “write into” for all, “overwrite” for all, and if you get an error about expecting a folder when it’s a file, skip it. (I know there’s probably a few Linux sins in there, but I was desperate.)

That got pacman working, so I could properly update, but then I couldn’t boot. (There’s an image of the issue I was experiencing in the old forum post.)

After a few more hours of troubleshooting, as per the forum post, I found that the solution was as simple as running:

sh

CopyEdit

pacman -Syu $(pacman -Qnq) --overwrite "*"

as root while arch-chroot-ed into the borked system.

Hopefully, this will help someone. Moral of the story: Don’t exclude packages while updating. Also, I hate Electron.

Thanks for the help and support y’all :3 :heart:

2 Likes
20

If you are using an EFI-based system you also need to mount your EFI partition.

Just for those reading this in the future, don’t ever do this.

If pacman breaks, you can download pacman-static and use it.