From 6ce926d5375dc725c3d33aee2b89c838954be7b8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Douglas Teles <dga.teles@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2026 01:30:02 -0300
Subject: [PATCH] pacman: install /var/lib/pacman as symlink, not dir + child
 symlink
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User reported on a freshly flashed R36S:

    archr:~ # pacman
    error: failed to initialize alpm library:
    (root: /, dbpath: /var/lib/pacman/)
    could not find or read directory

The package.mk created /var/lib/pacman as a real directory in
post_makeinstall_target (mkdir -p), then in post_install ran
`ln -sf /storage/.pacman/db ${INSTALL}/var/lib/pacman`. When LINK is
an existing directory, ln -sf does not replace it — it creates
LINK/$(basename TARGET). So the installed image ended up with:

  /var/lib/pacman/                ← real, empty dir (rootfs, ro)
  /var/lib/pacman/db -> /storage/.pacman/db   ← child symlink

Pacman reads dbpath=/var/lib/pacman/ from pacman.conf, looks for
local/ and sync/ inside it, finds nothing, and bails.

Fix: install /var/lib/pacman directly as a symlink to
/storage/.pacman/db in one shot, no intermediate mkdir. Same for
/var/cache/pacman/pkg. Move both into post_makeinstall_target so the
file layout is decided in one place; post_install now only enables
the pacman-init service.

Runtime escape hatch on already-installed systems (since the rootfs
is squashfs-ro and can't be patched):

    mount --bind /storage/.pacman/db /var/lib/pacman
    mount --bind /storage/.pacman/cache /var/cache/pacman/pkg

This commit fixes the build so the next image flashes correctly.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 .../ArchR/packages/sysutils/pacman/package.mk | 25 ++++++++++++-------
 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

diff --git a/projects/ArchR/packages/sysutils/pacman/package.mk b/projects/ArchR/packages/sysutils/pacman/package.mk
index 739b4bac7d..2e06360c79 100644
--- a/projects/ArchR/packages/sysutils/pacman/package.mk
+++ b/projects/ArchR/packages/sysutils/pacman/package.mk
@@ -36,9 +36,22 @@ post_makeinstall_target() {
   cp ${PKG_DIR}/config/mirrorlist ${INSTALL}/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
   cp ${PKG_DIR}/config/makepkg.conf ${INSTALL}/etc/makepkg.conf
 
-  # Create pacman state directories (symlinked to /storage at runtime)
-  mkdir -p ${INSTALL}/var/lib/pacman
-  mkdir -p ${INSTALL}/var/cache/pacman/pkg
+  # /var/lib/pacman is a symlink directly into the rw storage overlay.
+  # Earlier versions did `mkdir -p /var/lib/pacman` here and then
+  # `ln -sf /storage/.pacman/db /var/lib/pacman` in post_install, but
+  # `ln -sf TARGET LINK` when LINK is an existing directory creates
+  # LINK/$(basename TARGET) instead of replacing LINK — so we ended up
+  # with /var/lib/pacman/db as a symlink (correct destination) inside
+  # an empty real /var/lib/pacman directory in the read-only rootfs,
+  # while pacman went looking for /var/lib/pacman/local and
+  # /var/lib/pacman/sync and reported "could not find or read directory".
+  mkdir -p ${INSTALL}/var/lib
+  ln -sf /storage/.pacman/db ${INSTALL}/var/lib/pacman
+
+  # /var/cache/pacman keeps the package cache. Same shape as above.
+  mkdir -p ${INSTALL}/var/cache/pacman
+  ln -sf /storage/.pacman/cache ${INSTALL}/var/cache/pacman/pkg
+
   mkdir -p ${INSTALL}/var/log
 
   # Remove unnecessary files
@@ -54,10 +67,4 @@ post_makeinstall_target() {
 
 post_install() {
   enable_service pacman-init.service
-
-  # Create /storage symlinks for pacman mutable state
-  mkdir -p ${INSTALL}/var/lib
-  ln -sf /storage/.pacman/db ${INSTALL}/var/lib/pacman
-  mkdir -p ${INSTALL}/var/cache/pacman
-  ln -sf /storage/.pacman/cache ${INSTALL}/var/cache/pacman/pkg
 }