this might be a bit brief as it's really late and i'm already in trouble :-/ ... will expand as needed. i upgrade my machines and VMs very regularly, at least once a week, this last batch of updates broke all of my VMs in particular ... hardware devices still seem to function correctly. they are not really broken, but i am unable to regenerate `/etc/ld.so.cache` on any of them (3 ATM). upgraded packages (in order, from pacman.log): augeas linux-api-headers glibc <---------------------- prime suspect!!!! binutils fakeroot gcc-libs gcc pcre git keyutils krb5 libmysqlclient polkit yajl libvirt module-init-tools mkinitcpio linux pm-quirks postgresql-libs shadow systemd-arch-units texinfo ... during the upgrade i saw: upgraded linux-api-headers (3.0.1-1 -> 3.1.4-1) /tmp/alpm_gfNxsS/.INSTALL: line 4: 575 Aborted sbin/ldconfig -r . Generating locales... en_US.UTF-8...cannot map archive header: Invalid argument upgraded glibc (2.14.1-1 -> 2.14.1-2) upgraded binutils (2.21.1-2 -> 2.22-2) /tmp/alpm_dwiY8r/.INSTALL: line 5: 654 Aborted sbin/ldconfig -r . upgraded fakeroot (1.18.1-1 -> 1.18.2-1) ... the locale stuff is just a side effect of the ldconfig failure IIRC -- locales are a little borked because the archive file was blown away, not a problem tho. for some reason ldconfig refuses to update on all the VMs (each has worked without issue until today, for several months): # ldconfig Aborted ... i tried blacklisting some virtio modules (balloon in particular) and tripling memory, no change, and not convinced its 100% related to virtio yet. i tried removing `/var/cache/ldconfig/aux-cache` to force ldconfig to rescan everything (vs. stat checks) -- again, works on hardware but not VM. i tried removing the last library it processes before failing (per strace), no change, it just fails on another (libgcrypt -> libsysfs). i tried reinstalling glibc and whatnot ... these VMs are all pure 64bit, no multilib, and pure systemd, original initscript stuff purged. the only thing i didnt try was downgrading, because i would have to use the ARM ... i use 9p2000.L passthru for the rootfs of each VM, bindmount a local mirror into each VM's VFS, then configure pacman to use the `pool` directory of the bound mirror as a cachedir -- the net effect is pacman never downloads anything, ever, because it believes it already has :-) slightly odd perhaps, but working well for quite some time. any ideas? i can't find anything out of place, or any significant differences, and i'm not sure what to try next -- nothing unusual in dmesg or logs, on the VMs or the host. host is completely current as of Dec 14 00:00 CST. reduce strace follows, limited to files and signals. thanks for your time so far, if you made it to this point legitimately :-) C Anthony # LANG=C strace -ff -s256 -etrace=file,signal ldconfig execve("/sbin/ldconfig", ["ldconfig"], [/* 29 vars */]) = 0 open("/etc/ld.so.conf", O_RDONLY) = 3 open("/etc/ld.so.conf.d", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC) = 4 open("/etc/ld.so.conf.d/fakeroot.conf", O_RDONLY) = 4 stat("/usr/lib/libfakeroot", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0 open("/etc/ld.so.conf.d/perl.conf", O_RDONLY) = 4 stat("/usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/CORE", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0 stat("/lib", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0 stat("/lib64", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0 stat("/usr/lib", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=36864, ...}) = 0 stat("/usr/lib64", 0x7fff85a41d90) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/var/cache/ldconfig/aux-cache", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/libfakeroot", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3 lstat("/usr/lib/libfakeroot/libfakeroot.so", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=16, ...}) = 0 open("/usr/lib/libfakeroot/libfakeroot.so", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/usr/lib/libfakeroot/libfakeroot-0.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=40400, ...}) = 0 stat("/usr/lib/libfakeroot/libfakeroot-0.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=40400, ...}) = 0 stat("/usr/lib/libfakeroot/libfakeroot.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=40400, ...}) = 0 open("/usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/CORE", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3 lstat("/usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/CORE/libperl.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0555, st_size=1642088, ...}) = 0 open("/usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/CORE/libperl.so", O_RDONLY) = 4 stat("/usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/CORE/libperl.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0555, st_size=1642088, ...}) = 0 stat("/usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/CORE/libperl.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0555, st_size=1642088, ...}) = 0 open("/lib", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3 lstat("/lib/libpopt.so", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=12, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libpopt.so", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libudev.so.0.13.0", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=55952, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libudev.so.0.13.0", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libutil.so.1", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=17, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libutil.so.1", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libgcrypt.so", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=19, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libgcrypt.so", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libpamc.so.0", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=17, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libpamc.so.0", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libsysfs.so.2.0.1", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=47640, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libsysfs.so.2.0.1", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libhandle.so.1.0.3", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=14400, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libhandle.so.1.0.3", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libBrokenLocale.so.1", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=25, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libBrokenLocale.so.1", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libBrokenLocale-2.14.1.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=6264, ...}) = 0 lstat("/lib/libnss_mdns_minimal.so.2", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=9904, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libnss_mdns_minimal.so.2", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libpam.so.0", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=16, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libpam.so.0", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/liblvm2app.so.2.2", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0555, st_size=667916, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/liblvm2app.so.2.2", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libutil-2.14.1.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=10656, ...}) = 0 lstat("/lib/libbz2.so.1.0", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=15, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libbz2.so.1.0", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libsystemd-login.so.0", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=25, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libsystemd-login.so.0", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libanl-2.14.1.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=14928, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libanl-2.14.1.so", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libgpg-error.so", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=21, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libgpg-error.so", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libacl.so", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=11, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libacl.so", O_RDONLY) = 4 lstat("/lib/libpam.so.0.83.1", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=55856, ...}) = 0 lstat("/lib/libgcrypt.so.11", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=19, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libgcrypt.so.11", O_RDONLY) = 4 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_UNBLOCK, [ABRT], NULL, 8) = 0 tgkill(2559, 2559, SIGABRT) = 0 --- {si_signo=SIGABRT, si_code=SI_TKILL, si_pid=2559, si_uid=0, si_value={int=2164749013, ptr=0xffffffff810772d5}} (Aborted) --- +++ killed by SIGABRT +++ Aborted