That's why it's called bleeding

Why bleeding edge is sometimes bad!

I had a problem a while ago with my archlinux and it was necessary to get the latest kernel from testing. In general arch takes some days to week to push the upstream kernel into the main repository.

Since then I had the testing repository enabled. Not minding it, till this one night. I fetched an update and after a quick look something was strange. PAM did stop to work. I wasn’t able to login anymore. Damit!

It was late that night, so I went to bed in hope that this issue might be fixed by the one who has caused it till next morning.

So I started my laptop with the kernel option single and took a look into the /varlog/pacman.log for the new updated packages:

[2015-06-17 22:29] [ALPM] upgraded gnutls (3.4.1-1 -> 3.4.2-1)
[2015-06-17 22:29] [ALPM] upgraded libtirpc (0.3.1-1 -> 0.3.2-1)
[2015-06-17 22:29] [ALPM] upgraded plasma-framework (5.11.0-1 -> 5.11.0-2)

PAM did not recieve an update? So one of this three might be the one package that causing some issues. Next was to look into systemd journal:

Jun 18 19:53:05 slaxy sudo[573]: root : TTY=tty1 ; PWD=/root ; USER=root ; COMMAND=list /usr/sbin/pacman --color auto -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/libtirpc-0.3.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
Jun 18 19:53:05 slaxy sudo[574]: PAM unable to dlopen(/usr/lib/security/pam_unix.so): /usr/lib/libtirpc.so.1: undefined symbol: __rpc_get_default_domain
Jun 18 19:53:05 slaxy sudo[574]: PAM adding faulty module: /usr/lib/security/pam_unix.so

Aye…. after a look into libtirpc, it was clear to me: libtirpc was broken. I downgraded the package.

I took a look in the Archlinux site and check the latest changes for the package, reading in libtirpc following commit:

add upstream patch to fix broken sudo and pam

And also that they did this commit 30 minutes before….. ayee.. The update was stop and no rolled out. So what did I learn:

Life by the edge die by the edge… or I might should use only testing when I really think I should. It might mean that you only get half backed updates. As far I can tell this was not the case very often yet. Probly the first time. Still I disabled testing for production reasons. Unless I have to change this.

best regards Akendo