"Privilege escalation required" will be printed even when root isn't required If paccache runs without the -m parameter and $PWD is read only, $needsroot will be set to 1 even if the cache dir has read/write. pacman 4.1.2-6 Steps to reproduce: $ whoami maxim $ pwd /var/cache $ ls -l /var/ drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4,0K 8 jun 09.06 cache $ ls -l /var/cache/ drwxr-xr-x 2 maxim root 12K 25 aug 15.36 yaourt $ paccache -rc /var/cache/yaourt ==> Privilege escalation required Cause: This happens because [[ ${movedir:0:1} != '/' ]] is true when $movedir is empty, causing $movedir to be set to $PWD (on line 276). And if $PWD is read only, $needsroot will be set to 1 on the next row. 274 if (( move || delete )); then 275 # make it an absolute path since we're about to chdir 276 [[ ${movedir:0:1} != '/' ]] && movedir=$PWD/$movedir 277 [[ ! -w $cachedir || ( $movedir && ! -w $movedir ) ]] && needsroot=1 278 fi Fix: - [[ ${movedir:0:1} != '/' ]] && movedir=$PWD/$movedir + [[ $movedir && ${movedir:0:1} != '/' ]] && movedir=$PWD/$movedir I'll send in a patch. //Maxim