$ pacman -Qo mkarchroot /usr/bin/mkarchroot is owned by devtools 1:1.2.1-1 Referring to https://archlinux.org/news/manual-intervention-for-pacman-700-and-local-repo... and to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/DeveloperWiki:Building_in_a_clean_chroot#Se... with a modified pacman.conf: error: could not open file /home/user/chroot/root/var/lib/pacman/sync/download-o6cp5z/core.db.part: Permission denied error: failed to setup a download payload for core.db error: failed to synchronize all databases (failed to retrieve some files) ==> ERROR: Failed to install packages to new root ==> ERROR: Failed to install all packages The modified pacman.conf is using links created with ln -s /var/lib/pacman/sync/*.db /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ I have also tried the naive approach of --- a/usr/bin/mkarchroot 2024-06-23 21:00:54.158267054 +0000 +++ b/usr/bin/mkarchroot 2024-09-22 19:31:52.984269364 +0000 @@ -73,6 +73,7 @@ [[ -e $working_dir ]] && die "Working directory '%s' already exists" "$working_dir" mkdir -p "$working_dir" +chown :alpm "$working_dir" lock 9 "${working_dir}.lock" "Locking chroot" In addition, the most basic suggestion of https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/DeveloperWiki:Building_in_a_clean_chroot#Se... , namely # mkarchroot /home/user/chroot/root base-devel also fails. Though it could be due to a usually working XferCommand in pacman.conf. Does mkarchroot broken? -- u34