Pacman Full system upgrade failure

Question

I'm trying to do a full system upgrade using pacman on ArchLinux. I have kernel 3.2.

When typing sudo pacman -Syu I got the following errors

:: Synchronizing package databases...
core is up to date
extra is up to date
community is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
error: could not parse package description file 'libice-1.0.8-1/desc' from db 'extra'
resolving dependencies...
warning: cannot resolve "p11-kit>=0.12", a dependency of "gnutls"
warning: cannot resolve "vim-runtime=7.3.495-1", a dependency of "gvim"
:: The following packages cannot be upgraded due to unresolvable dependencies:
      gnutls  gvim

Do you want to skip the above packages for this upgrade? [y/N] y
looking for inter-conflicts...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: nvidia: requires linux<3.3

I've tried to reinstall libice but I got the following error

error: could not parse package description file 'libice-1.0.8-1/desc' from db 'extra'
warning: libice-1.0.8-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
error: failed to prepare transaction (package filename is not valid)

How can I fix this problem?

Answer 1

I believe you are using a mirror that's (way) out of sync.

The p11-kit, vim-runtime packages have been updated on 2012-04-01 and 2012-04-10 respectively. The nvidia package has been updated today (2012-04-11), so all you need to do is wait a while.

It's quite interesing that you have a linux package version 3.3, though and a gvim package from 2012-04-10. Did you change repositories (disabled testing) or mirrors lately? You might want to use the mirrorlist or mirrorlist updater to find an up-to-date mirror near you. This would most likely also repair your extra db file.