Year-old setup, much trouble updating to latest (many attempts so far)

Question

In brief: I'm about a year behind on Arch with a production server that would be a gigantic pain to migrate to a fresh install. Some updates require a glibc that requires a filesystem more recent than the one I have, which I can't update to because I'm still not even up to systemd and such, and I can't update to systemd and such because there are file conflicts with the old filesystem. It seems like a catch-22 to me; I don't know what to do and would really appreciate some direction.
In full: First of all, yes, I know this post about how to get through the filesystem change to /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin.
However, I am running into some problems that seem to total to a catch-22 when I try to do it.
First of all, my setup is so old that when I run (from the above post)
pacman -Qqo /bin /sbin /usr/sbin | pacman -Qm -
then
pacman -Sy
and then the preceding command again, I have new packages added. In particular:
# pacman -Qqo /bin /sbin /usr/sbin | pacman -Qm -
error: cannot determine ownership of directory '/bin'
error: cannot determine ownership of directory '/sbin'
error: cannot determine ownership of directory '/usr/sbin'
courier-authlib 0.64.0-2
courier-imap 4.10.0-1
courier-maildrop 2.5.5-2
dbus-core 1.6.0-5
dcron 4.5-3
initscripts 2012.06.3-1
libfetch 2.33-3
libgl 8.0.3-3
libglapi 8.0.3-3
libmysqlclient 5.5.25-1
libsystemd 185-4
mysql 5.5.25-1
mysql-clients 5.5.25-1
owncloud-git 20120531-1
php-suhosin 0.9.33-1
pure-ftpd 1.0.35-1
qt 4.8.2-2
spawn-fcgi-php 1.1.1-1
squirrelmail 1.4.22-1
systemd-tools 185-4
sysvinit 2.88-6
tcp_wrappers 7.6-12
You can see the old initscripts, libsystemd, systemd-tools packages still on my server.
The problem that I am running across is that some of these packages, such as dcore and systemd-tools, are outdated and no longer in the repositories.
If, however, I try to upgrade those, such as upgrading to systemd:
# pacman -S systemd
:: The following packages should be upgraded first :
pacman
:: Do you want to cancel the current operation
:: and upgrade these packages now? [Y/n] n
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
:: systemd and libsystemd are in conflict. Remove libsystemd? [y/N] y
:: systemd and systemd-tools are in conflict. Remove systemd-tools? [y/N] y
Targets (3): libsystemd-185-4 [removal] systemd-tools-185-4 [removal] systemd-204-3
Total Download Size: 2.24 MiB
Total Installed Size: 13.88 MiB
Net Upgrade Size: 10.54 MiB
Proceed with installation? [Y/n]
:: Retrieving packages from core...
systemd-204-3-i686 2.2 MiB 3.57M/s 00:01 [######################################] 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)
systemd: /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/udevadm exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.
or something other file conflict.
I've tried moving the contents of /sbin, /bin, /usr/sbin to /usr/bin and then using /usr/bin/ln to make symbolic links to replace those directories and then going ahead with
# pacman -Syu --ignore filesystem,bash
# pacman -S bash
# pacman -Su
However, I've tried three or four different ways of doing this (god bless VPS backups) and always end up with a completely broken system that doesn't even boot afterwards.
As a last resort, I tried simply uninstalling all repositories that would leave files in /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin, symlinking those three directories to /usr/bin, and then trying the update. /lib still gives me a problem, however; I tried moving the contents of /lib to /usr/lib and symlinking /lib to /usr/lib, but once I move the contents of /lib, as expected, nothing works. If I do pacman -Syuf, it all goes straight to fell.
I feel as though I am stuck. Is there something I'm missing? Is there a solution, or will I be stuck migrating to a fresh install? I could really use some advice.
Last edited by 78666cdc (2013-08-07 05:13:17)

Answer 1

# pacman -Qo udevadm
/usr/bin/udevadm is owned by systemd-tools 185-4
Yes, it is past the /lib symlink upgrade. I got 99% of the way there with the various bin directories and /lib was the very last obstacle, and I just could not figure out a way around that.
However, one of my tries did leave me with the /lib symlink. I don't recall how I get there and didn't appreciate its importance, so I've been unable to duplicate it; since I saw it once, I have hope that there is a solution.
Migrating this server and all its various user data, git repositories, SQL databases, and such would take me a couple days. I got 99% of the way there and hope that there's a way I can get this done in a couple hours, given the right sequence of steps.
Last edited by 78666cdc (2013-08-07 05:17:22)