Arch Linux

slice

Member

Registered: 2024-08-24

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Pacman could not open file on a clean install

I've installed arch on a clean device like this:

mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda1
mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sda2
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot
pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware

But then when I `arch-chroot` into it and try to install zsh, it spits out this error:

# pacman -S zsh
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) zsh-5.9-5

Total Download Size:   2.22 MiB
Total Installed Size:  6.56 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] 
:: Retrieving packages...
error: could not open file /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-hNR2rT/zsh-5.9-5-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst.part: Permission denied
error: failed to setup a download payload for zsh-5.9-5-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
warning: failed to retrieve some files
error: failed to commit transaction (failed to retrieve some files)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

What's weird actually is that when i try to replicate that error manually, alpm doesnt have access to execute something which has 755 permissions?

# sudo -ualpm bash
sudo: unable to execute /usr/bin/bash: Permission denied
# sudo -ualpm touch fgdvcxz
sudo: unable to execute /usr/bin/touch: Permission denied
# stat /usr/bin/bash
  File: /usr/bin/bash
  Size: 1162312   	Blocks: 2272       IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 0,121	Inode: 53080       Links: 1
Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
# cat /etc/passwd | grep alpm
alpm:x:970:970:Arch Linux Package Management:/:/usr/bin/nologin

Im very confused by all this and have no idea what's going on. Is this supposed to happen? I can execute anything as alpm on my main arch machine. The weirdest thing is that its all reproducible, meaning that the same errors turn out if i nuke this current install and start over.

Last edited by slice (2026-01-11 09:25:06)

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,553

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman could not open file on a clean install

I’m not sure if that is related, but recently there have been a few cases of a similarly named directory being left in cache. Feel free to remove this directory:

sudo rm -r /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-hNR2rT/

From what I get, the situation is a one-off event.

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slice

Member

Registered: 2024-08-24

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman could not open file on a clean install

That directory is not there, and I tried many different things, as far as chmod'ing 777 -R /var. I can also see it first being detected as not existing in strace and then being automatically created with proper permissions. I tried using ext4 instead of btrfs to no avail. I would blame arch-chroot as it is now the only point of failure I could think of but it worked perfectly fine a few days ago and I had not updated the system, and I checked with pacman -Qkk to confirm that the files had not been altered.

I also think that this is connected with the part where I tried to sudo -ualpm bash and it didn't have access to anything

slice

Member

Registered: 2024-08-24

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman could not open file on a clean install

The issue was that I created these partitions with gnome's GUI disks utility. Turns out it automatically assigned my personal non-root user ownership to these partitions which was problematic. I fixed the issue by repartitioning and reinstalling everything manually with fdisk