Update with yay gives message "pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff"

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

Just ran ‘yay’ tot update.
Noticed a message that I don’t understand:

pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff

Searched with duckduckgo, but have not found anything relevant.

Anyone else seen this, or know if this is something that needs to be reported somewhere?

1/8) upgraden miniupnpc                                                                                                    [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100%
(2/8) upgraden 0ad                                                                                                          [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100%
(3/8) upgraden gvfs                                                                                                         [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100%
(4/8) upgraden gvfs-mtp                                                                                                     [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100%
(5/8) upgraden libvlc                                                                                                       [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100%
(6/8) upgraden man-pages                                                                                                    [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100%
(7/8) upgraden python-fonttools                                                                                             [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100%
(8/8) upgraden vlc                                                                                                          [---------------------------------------------------------------------------] 100%
:: Post-transactie-hooks uitvoeren...
( 1/10) Reloading user manager configuration...
( 2/10) Creating temporary files...
( 3/10) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...
( 4/10) Updating GIO module cache...
( 5/10) Compiling GSettings XML schema files...
( 6/10) Updating icon theme caches...
( 7/10) Reloading GVFS config...
**pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff**
( 8/10) Checking which packages need to be rebuilt
foreign anoise
foreign anoise-gui
( 9/10) Updating the desktop file MIME type cache...
(10/10) Updating the vlc plugin cache...
2

Hello,

saw this message (different package, different non(?)-hex string) during todays update - but using pikaur. So, mybe not related to yay/pikaur (pacman not tested) and certain package.

Ciao,
Photor

PS: ignored that message (observe status) and still running the machine - seems to work.

3

I am getting this too, related to gvfs:

(6/7) Reloading GVFS config...
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1eeff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1eeff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffdffc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
pkill: not a hex string: ffffffff80012ecb
pkill: not a hex string: fffffffd7fc1feff
(7/7) Checking which packages need to be rebuilt

Seems harmless, rebooted OK.

4

Thanks all. Will ignore as well.

5

I got this error message too, and discovered it is coming from a Pacman hook provided by the gvfs package.

gvfsd.hook · main · Arch Linux / Packaging / Packages / gvfs · GitLab

[...]
Exec = /bin/sh -c 'pkill --signal USR1 --require-handler --exact gvfsd || true'

The hook is meant to reload the GVFS configuration after the installation, upgrade, or removal of any package that affects files in the usr/share/gvfs/ directory by signaling the gvfsd process. However, due to an upstream change there is currently a bug in procps which causes pkill to incorrectly parse numeric input as base 17 instead of base 16 (that’s what causes the “not a hex string” message).

Here is the relevant issue for that:

See also this issue:

Since the hook is not working correctly, probably gvfsd is not getting restarted as intended when these files are updated and should be restarted manually if needed.

TL;DR: It’s probably fine to just ignore these error messages. If anyone has issues accessing files or using the file manager after updating grvs and seeing these error messages, restarting the computer should get things back to normal.

4 Likes
6

Thank you so much for this information!

1 Like
7

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