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Hit by the pacman/makepkg "error: could not open file /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-uq8lgk: Error reading fd 7"
by David C Rankin 09 Jan '26

09 Jan '26

All, Devs, From earlier discussions, I thought the empty stray directory problem in /var/cache/pacman/pkg had been identified and solved. But I was hit again today with directories created this year, e.g. sudo pacman -Sc error: could not open file /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-peUZUV: Error reading fd 7 error: could not open file /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-uq8lgk: Error reading fd 7 Where, e.g.: $ sudo ls -al /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-peUZUV total 352 drwx------ 2 alpm alpm 4096 Jan 1 03:42 . drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 352256 Jan 8 21:56 .. I went ahead and just removed both directories. If there are any logs you are interested in, let me know, but I know the commit that led to this has already been identified. I'm just not sure of the fix. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.

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Incompatible gdal and python-gdal packages?
by max＠friedersdorff.com 08 Jan '26

08 Jan '26

Hi All, I have an issue trying to use the python gdal bindings. Even just importing (`from osgeo import gdal`) fails because the python bindings try to reference libgdal.so.37, but the gdal package ships libgdal.so.38. I'm not sure how this happens, given that both packages are built buy the same PKGBUILD (https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/gdal) To reproduce: ``` $ sudo pacman -S gdal python-gdal $ python Python 3.14.2 (main, Jan 2 2026, 14:27:39) [GCC 15.2.1 20251112] on linux Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> from osgeo import gdal ERROR 1: libgdal.so.37: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory ERROR 1: libgdal.so.37: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory >>> ``` Unfortunately I'm not able to reproduce this with the Arch Linux docker image, it pulls completely different versions these packages. That might be a me problem. Other than being an issue when trying to use the python-gdal package directly, it also prevents me from using qgis effectively, since it also relies on the python gdal bindings. qgis itself appears to be built against libgdal.so.38 as expected, it's the built in plugins that rely on python-gdal. Can anyone reproduce this? Many Thanks Max

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Unable to connect to aur/wiki behind SURF network
by Rein Fernhout (Levitating) 07 Jan '26

07 Jan '26

Hey, Some of my friends from snt.utwente.nl noticed that they are receiving empty responses the aur and wiki when connecting from SURF[1] (the dutch university internet provider). Tested from multiple SURF nodes and universities. $ curl http://wiki.archlinux.org/ -v * Host wiki.archlinux.org:80 was resolved. * IPv6: 2604:cac0:a104:d::4 * IPv4: 209.126.35.81 * Trying [2604:cac0:a104:d::4]:80... * Established connection to wiki.archlinux.org (2604:cac0:a104:d::4 port 80) from 2001:67c:2564:ab12:365a:60ff:fe3b:d702 port 60768 * using HTTP/1.x > GET / HTTP/1.1 > Host: wiki.archlinux.org > User-Agent: curl/8.17.0 > Accept: */* > * Request completely sent off * Empty reply from server * shutting down connection #0 curl: (52) Empty reply from server [1]: https://www.surf.nl/en

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Kernel 6.18. When will it be available?.
by Jose Luis Alarcon Sanchez 02 Jan '26

02 Jan '26

Hi. First of all, i'm new on Arch Linux, so i apologize if I'm asking something that shouldn't be asked here. As I understand it, Arch is a rolling release, so I'm a little surprised that the automatic jump to kernel version 6.18 hasn't happened yet. Other Rolling Release distros have already switched to this kernel many days ago. So, I would appreciate any brief explanation of how the kernel version change occurs in Arch Linux. Thanks very much in advance. Regards, and Happy Year 2026 for everybody!. Jose Luis. -- https://lordofunix.org/ Not Registered GNU/Hurd User. Registered BSD User 51101. Registered Linux User #213309. Memories..... You are talking about memories. Rick Deckard. Blade Runner.

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Installing multiple Emacs builds
by mail＠khalidrafi.me 30 Dec '25

30 Dec '25

How can I install multiple Emacs builds such as Emacs PGTK, Emacs Lucid on my system? Emacs PGTK is slow. So I want to keep the Lucid build on my system to use when I need stuffs fast. -- Khalid Rafi Sent with Emacs

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website seems down
by Genes Lists 27 Dec '25

27 Dec '25

Looks like archlinux.org may be down - at least for me (in usa) as well as 'isitdownrightnow'. -- Gene

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/var/log files empty
by David Rosenstrauch 23 Dec '25

23 Dec '25

I have 2 Arch machines, both of which had been set up to forward messages from journald to syslog, and so eventually to the log files in /var/log. I noticed the other day that on both machines, the /var/log log files are now all empty, which I'm guessing means that journald is no longer forwarding messages to syslog. I'm certain that I had this configuration working in the past. But something seems to have changed at some point that's broken it. I'm not sure what changed, or when it happened. I've tried to fix, but with no luck. I have syslog-ng installed, and the syslog-ng@default service enabled and running. I also have "ForwardToSyslog=yes" set in my /etc/systemd/journald.conf file, and the systemd-journald service is enabled and running. Yet somehow they're (I'm guessing) not talking to each other and forwarding the log messages. According to this forum post there might a socket /run/systemd/journal/syslog that needs to be created in order for this setup to work. This socket file doesn't exist on my system. That socket file seems to get created by the systemd unit script /usr/lib/systemd/system/syslog.socket, which seems to be triggered by /usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-journald.service. However, that syslog.socket unit either doesn't seem to be getting triggered or is failing. And when I try to start the syslog.socket unit script manually, it fails. (And with very little in the way of explanatory messages.): [darose@titan log]$ sudo systemctl start syslog.socket Job failed. See "journalctl -xe" for details. [darose@titan log]$ systemctl status syslog.socket ○ syslog.socket - Syslog Socket Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/syslog.socket; static) Active: inactive (dead) Triggers: ● syslog.service Docs: man:systemd.special(7) https://systemd.io/SYSLOG Listen: /run/systemd/journal/syslog (Datagram) Dec 20 19:52:01 titan systemd[1]: syslog.socket: Socket service syslog.service not loaded, refusing. Dec 20 19:52:01 titan systemd[1]: Failed to listen on Syslog Socket. Anyone have any idea what might be broken here / how to fix? Thanks, DR

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Misspelled description for package "toml-bombadil"
by Keon Cachia 20 Dec '25

20 Dec '25

Sven-Hendrik Haase, you misspelled the description for "toml-bomdadil", the current description is "Adotfile manager with templating" when it should be "A dotfile manager with templating". Thank you for all your time and effort maintaining packages for Arch Linux. I am unsure if I should send this directly to Sven's email, so I'm putting this in the general mailing list. -- Keon Cachia

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pacman - errors with expac already existing, then errors on clean cache??
by David C Rankin 19 Dec '25

19 Dec '25

All, devs, During a system update minutes ago, I was hit with two separate pacman errors. The first, /usr/bin/expac and the man1 page already existed in the filesystem prevented update. I removed expac -dd, did the system update, then went to reinstall expac (devtools dependency) and I could not install it for the same errors - the same files continued to exist in the filesystem. So I rm'ed /usr/bin/expac and the man1 man-page and then installed it without issue. What's up with expac?? Second on -Sc to clear the cache I was again hit by errors: 18:04 ragnarok:~> sudo pacman -Sc Packages to keep: All locally installed packages Cache directory: /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ :: Do you want to remove all other packages from cache? [Y/n] removing old packages from cache... error: could not open file /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-2YRxYx: Error reading fd 7 error: could not open file /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-wLBLSA: Error reading fd 7 error: could not open file /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-8iPKGh: Error reading fd 7 Database directory: /var/lib/pacman/ :: Do you want to remove unused repositories? [Y/n] removing unused sync repositories... 18:07 ragnarok:~> su 18:08 ragnarok:/home/david # l /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-* /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-2YRxYx: total 240 drwx------ 2 alpm alpm 4096 Dec 18 18:00 . drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 237568 Dec 18 18:07 .. /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-8iPKGh: total 240 drwx------ 2 alpm alpm 4096 Dec 18 17:57 . drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 237568 Dec 18 18:07 .. /var/cache/pacman/pkg/download-wLBLSA: total 240 drwx------ 2 alpm alpm 4096 Dec 18 17:52 . drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 237568 Dec 18 18:07 .. What is the cause of the empty directories throwing errors on cache cleaning? Do I just need to manually delete the directories? Last update was just about two weeks ago and there were no errors on either issue at that time. Really strange. Not too many times in the past 16+ years that pacman has hiccuped. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.

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Anyone Else Having Errors with python-autobahn
by Storm Dragon 19 Dec '25

19 Dec '25

Howdy All, I first noticed this when using magic-wormhole, but it showed up in a couple other commands too before I found the problem. I rebuilt and installed python-autobahn and problems went away. Problems included wormhole segfaulting and some other key related errors. I thought I had all this stuff written down, but either forgot what I named the file or didn't save it, so sorry I don't have pastes of actual output. -- ⛈🐲

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