Hello, It seems I found a bug in pacman. Some information first: version: pacman 4.1.2-5 prebuilt from official repo system: Linux 3.12.7-2-ARCH i686 So it happened when I tried to remove alex package. $ sudo pacman -R alex [sudo] password for michael: checking dependencies... Packages (1): alex-3.1.3-1 Total Removed Size: 1.18 MiB :: Do you want to remove these packages? [Y/n] y error: cannot remove file '/usr/': Read-only file system ldconfig: Can't create temporary cache file /etc/ld.so.cache~: Read-only file system error: command failed to execute correctly Uhm... I forgot I have root filesystem mounted read-only. No problem. $ sudo mount / -o remount,rw $ sudo pacman -R alex error: target not found: alex What? How could pacman remove the package from a read-only filesystem? Or maybe... $ sudo pacman -S alex resolving dependencies... looking for inter-conflicts... Packages (1): alex-3.1.3-1 Total Installed Size: 1.18 MiB :: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y (1/1) checking keys in keyring [###] 100% (1/1) checking package integrity [###] 100% (1/1) loading package files [###] 100% (1/1) checking for file conflicts [###] 100% error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files) alex: /usr/bin/alex exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexTemplate exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexTemplate-debug exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexTemplate-ghc exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexTemplate-ghc-debug exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexTemplate-ghc-nopred exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexWrapper-basic exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexWrapper-basic-bytestring exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexWrapper-gscan exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexWrapper-monad exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexWrapper-monad-bytestring exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexWrapper-monadUserState exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexWrapper-monadUserState-bytestring exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexWrapper-posn exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexWrapper-posn-bytestring exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/alex/AlexWrapper-strict-bytestring exists in filesystem alex: /usr/share/licenses/alex/BSD3 exists in filesystem Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded. ...it didn't remove anything of course, but broke the database. Here is the point of the bug report. I repaired things like this: $ sudo pacman -S --force alex resolving dependencies... looking for inter-conflicts... Packages (1): alex-3.1.3-1 Total Installed Size: 1.18 MiB :: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y (1/1) checking keys in keyring [###] 100% (1/1) checking package integrity [###] 100% (1/1) loading package files [###] 100% (1/1) checking for file conflicts [###] 100% (1/1) checking available disk space[###] 100% (1/1) installing alex [###] 100% $ sudo pacman -R alex checking dependencies... Packages (1): alex-3.1.3-1 Total Removed Size: 1.18 MiB :: Do you want to remove these packages? [Y/n] y (1/1) removing alex [###] 100% but this is all but elegant. The same problem occurred for several other packages, in identical way. I'm very surpised to find bug like that in pacman and still not sure that it isn't just my mistake somewhere. Anyway, please test it. I hope this report will help you. What do you think? Best regards Michał Szymański