Cannot update system after I deleted a key with pacman-key

Issues & Assistance
1

About a month ago, every time sudo pacman -Syu failed. When I ran pacman -D -k, an error message appeared about soulharsh key being invalid. I need to run

sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring
sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys

before sudo pacman -Syu would succeed. But the “refresh-keys” remedy is only temporary. Each time I tried to update the system, the invalid “soulharsh” issue reappeared and I had to refresh the keys before I could update the system.

I got fed up with this situation and decided to do something about “soulharsh”. I ran sudo pacman-key --delete <key>. Most likely I chose the wrong thing for <key> because now, I cannot update my system even after refreshing the keys. Now, I see this everytime:

$ sudo pacman -Syu
error: Reborn-OS: key "38D3F838D6A0A3AB32DDDF2299EABCFB664B3E5F" is unknown
:: Import PGP key 38D3F838D6A0A3AB32DDDF2299EABCFB664B3E5F? [Y/n] Y
error: key "38D3F838D6A0A3AB32DDDF2299EABCFB664B3E5F" could not be looked up remotely
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
 Reborn-OS             106.7 KiB   271 KiB/s 00:00 [######################] 100%
error: Reborn-OS: key "38D3F838D6A0A3AB32DDDF2299EABCFB664B3E5F" is unknown
:: Import PGP key 38D3F838D6A0A3AB32DDDF2299EABCFB664B3E5F? [Y/n] Y
error: key "38D3F838D6A0A3AB32DDDF2299EABCFB664B3E5F" could not be looked up remotely
error: failed to synchronize all databases (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))

I get the same error message when I run sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring

I appreciate any assistance since I have not be able to update my system for more than 2 weeks.

2

Hello,

A simple fix for this would be to import the key and locally sign it, you can do this by using the following commands:

sudo pacman-key --recv-keys 38D3F838D6A0A3AB32DDDF2299EABCFB664B3E5F

sudo pacman-key --lsign-key 38D3F838D6A0A3AB32DDDF2299EABCFB664B3E5F

and then, finally update your system using:

sudo pacman -Syyuv

PS: note the double ‘y’, it would also forcefully refresh / download the database files

3

To rule out the possibility of our old outdated mirrors serving an old outdated keyring, could you determine which of the mirrors are from OSDN and remove them?

cat /etc/pacman.d/reborn-mirrorlist | grep -i osdn

Then edit the file to remove all those lines:

sudo nano /etc/pacman.d/reborn-mirrorlist

Save using Ctrl X

Then you can try an upgrade normally

sudo pacman -Syyuv
4

I got the following error on the first command

$ sudo pacman-key --recv-keys 38D3F838D6A0A3AB32DDDF2299EABCFB664B3E5F
gpg: keyserver receive failed: Server indicated a failure
==> ERROR: Remote key not fetched correctly from keyserver.
5

No joy after removing all osdn-related lines from /etc/pacman.d/reborn-mirrorlist.

6

@lilaboc

sudo pacman-key --init

sudo pacman-key --populate rebornos archlinux

sudo pacman -U https://ny-mirror.soulharsh007.rocks/RebornOS/rebornos-keyring.pkg.tar.zst
7

@shivanandvp . I suppose after removing all lines relating to osdn from /etc/pacman.d/reborn-mirrorlist, I need to re-initialize and populate the keyring. Your instructions work. I got my system back. Thank you very much.

1 Like
8

Glad to know it is fixed :slightly_smiling_face: