How do I use pacman on a loop-mounted Arch image for a different architecture?

Question

I would like to install some packages on an ARM image before flashing it to an SD card. So far, I have loop mounted the image

sudo mount -o loop,offset=99614720 archlinuxarm-13-06-2012.img /mnt

and added the ARM mirrors to my /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. I've then tried to run

sudo pacman --root /mnt --arch arm --conf /mnt/etc/pacman.conf -S curl

But it fails with the following output...

warning: curl-7.26.0-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...

Targets (1): curl-7.26.0-1

Total Download Size:    0.48 MiB
Total Installed Size:   1.50 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:       0.00 MiB

Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
:: Retrieving packages from core...
error: failed retrieving file 'curl-7.26.0-1-arm.pkg.tar.xz' from mirror.lividpenguin.com : The requested URL returned error: 404
 curl-7.26.0-1-arm                   492.9 KiB   293K/s 00:02 [##################################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                              [##################################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                                   [##################################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                             [##################################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space                           [##################################] 100%
(1/1) upgrading curl                                          [##################################] 100%
call to execv failed (Exec format error)
error: command failed to execute correctly

Any ideas on how to get this to work without emulation? Any idea what is being execv-d?

Update

I have discovered it is trying to run ldconfig, which is obviously failing. Luckily, I don't need that to be run!

Answer 1

Most Linux distributions do not support installing packages for a target system on an incompatible host system. Arch is no exception. ldconfig is just one among many programs of the target system that may need to be run during the package installation.

Perform the installation on the ARM device itself, or in an emulator such as QEmu.

Alternatively, download the tar.xz file, modify the archive to remove the .INSTALL file, and run pacman again on the modified archive. Then deal with the breakage caused by not having run the installation script manually.