[SOLVED] Did pacman -Syu and now gdm, gnome, and pacman won't work

Question

Hi everyone, I did a search for my problem, but cannot find the solution. Basically, I updated my computer this morning and as soon as the packages got installed my computer crashed. I am using another computer right now. These were the packages that were upgraded: dbus-core, bluez, dbus, gsfonts, libcups, libgdiplus, mono, openssl.
So after I installed the packages, my screen went black with some error message (don't remember what it is now. I believe it was something about GDM not working.) So I rebooted and "rpcbind" and "File Alteration Monitor" failed. Then I got a bunch of Gdm error messages with "gdm-binary[46081]: WARNING: GdmLocalDisplayFactory: maximum number of X display failures reached: check X server log for errors"  as the last message. I don't know how to check the X server log for errors so I logged in and tried pacman -Syu again. I got this error "pacman: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.8: invalid ELF header." I also tried startx and gnome-session , but they both failed to work as well. It seems like I'm having a graphics error. I don't know what to do now. Any help would be appreciated.
Last edited by Eivuwan (2010-04-01 06:24:17)

Answer 1

Eivuwan wrote:Hi everyone. After some thinking, I realized that as attached as I am to Arch, I do not have as much free time as I did in the past to tinker with it. So I manually mounted my IPod and copied everything in my home folder to it. Then I installed Ubuntu. Maybe I'll come back to Arch one day, but for now, farewell. Thanks for all your help.
Wise decision -- Ubuntu is very stable (we used it extensively in my last place of business; I'm now retired). I've gone a different route, since I prefer to start small, build the environment I want and nothing more (which was my reason for choosing Arch). My preferred environment is pretty minimal -- no desktop system (no Gnome or KDE), just a window manager (dwm) and the apps I need. I did a test install in the last day or so and learned enough about Slackware (I first used it in the early 90s when it was pretty much the only Linux distribution) to convince myself that it will work for me. It's more of a pain to get the apps installed than Arch, certainly, but once you know how to do it and where to find them, it's not really a problem. But my objective is the same as yours -- get away from Arch's rolling releases. Again, as an old hand at both individual development and managing large software projects, what Arch is trying to do is difficult. Because the various components of the system are updated more or less continuously, it's impossible to thoroughly test the whole thing every time it changes. So on any particular day, you are likely to see problems, as happened to you, me, and other folks who have started threads in this category. And sometimes the problems are so severe you end up with a non-functioning system, as happened to both of us.
I would hope that, in the future, the powers-that-be at Arch would consider periodic, thoroughly tested releases, say every 6 months like Ubuntu and OpenBSD. The fundamental machinery of Arch is excellent (pacman, etc.), installation is easy, the documentation is adequate (I'm not as impressed by the wiki as others seem to be -- see the OpenBSD or FreeBSD documentation; what's available for Slackware is also very good). But I think there are tremendous quality hazards in the rolling release methodology, and forcing it on Arch's users is a bad idea, I think. It can be optional, for the adventurous. This is exactly how the OpenBSD people operate. There's a release every 6 months that is invariably rock solid. If they find problems after the release, they will make changes on a STABLE cvs branch. But you can also, if you choose, run what is on the cvs trunk, which they designate CURRENT, if you are so inclined and willing to take the chance on less thoroughly tested code. This is more or less equivalent to Arch now. I'm suggesting that Arch consider adding a STABLE version.