Installation of packages with Pacman

Question

I have been using Ubuntu/Mint for some years now, but I'm new to Arch Linux and such. I tried installing Arch Linux using this guide and at the time of running pacstrap -i /mnt base I got an error such as

==> Creating install root at /mnt
==> Installing packages to /mnt
error: GPGME error: No data
error: GPGME error: No data
error: GPGME error: No data
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core                                                      1545.0   B  0.00B/s 00:00 [################################################] 100%
 core.sig                                                  1545.0   B  0.00B/s 00:00 [################################################] 100%
error: GPGME error: No data
error: failed to update core (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))
 extra                                                     1545.0   B  0.00B/s 00:00 [################################################] 100%
 extra.sig                                                 1545.0   B  0.00B/s 00:00 [################################################] 100%
error: GPGME error: No data
error: failed to update extra (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))
 community                                                 1545.0   B  0.00B/s 00:00 [################################################] 100%
 community.sig                                             1545.0   B  0.00B/s 00:00 [################################################] 100%
error: GPGME error: No data
error: failed to update community (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))
error: failed to synchronize any databases
error: failed to init transaction (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))
==> ERROR: Failed to install packages to new root

Link to some other guy with a similar error.

I took that as an inability of mine to install Arch Linux and tried to install Manjaro instead. It installed fine, but when I run, for example, pacman -Syu from Manjaro I get a similar error.

I did some digging (for example here) and I think that it's an issue with my ISP. To use the words another person used: I think my "ISP is filtering and redirecting pacman requests to it's own html redirection page".

The problem is that I can't install this from another ISP. Is there any way around that?

P.S.: I've tried already pretty much everything on this page.

EDIT

I've tried several different mirrors and all of them give the same result.

I tried running pacman -S archlinux-keyring on Manjaro and this is the output:

error: GPGME error: No data
error: GPGME error: No data
error: database 'community' is not valid (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))
error: database 'multilib' is not valid (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))

Answer 1

Possible Solution #1

# rm -R /var/lib/pacman/sync
# pacman -Syuf

Possible Solution #2

If you modified /etc/pacman.conf, then verify that this line exists and it is uncommented:

SigLevel    = Required DatabaseOptional

If not, add it, save the file and then run # pacman -Syyu in a new shell window.

Possible Solution #3

1) Download a new mirrorlist:

IPv4 mirrorlist

# wget "https://www.archlinux.org/mirrorlist/?country=all&protocol=http&protocol=https&ip_version=4" -O /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.new

IPv6 mirrorlist

# wget "https://www.archlinux.org/mirrorlist/?country=all&protocol=http&protocol=https&ip_version=6" -O /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.new

2) Uncomment every mirror:

# sed -i 's/^#Server/Server/' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.new

3) Rank the mirrors. Operand -n 6 means only output the 6 fastest mirrors:

# rankmirrors -n 6 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.new > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

4) Force pacman to refresh the package lists:

# pacman -Syyu

More information can be found here

Answer 2

I just had this problem, and the issue was that I was behind a captive portal and so instead of downloading the list of Arch packages, it was downloading the "please log in to access the Internet" web page.

I suspect this is the same problem here, because if you look at the output, all the repositories downloaded are shown as being exactly the same size (in this case 1545 bytes). The repos are much larger than this, and all different sizes, so this is the clue that tells you the downloaded data is different to what pacman is expecting, hence the errors when pacman tries to validate it.

In my case I had to use the console-based web browser elinks (available in the installer) to access the captive portal and log in, and once I had proper Internet access again, everything worked.

Answer 3

First of all, this is not your inability to install arch, if your iso is from a couple of months ago, you probably have a bad GPG database, and because of that you have that problem.

The fastest way is to download the most recent ISO since the problem is solved by now.

On the other hand, you can try this

sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring

The output should be something like:

resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) archlinux-keyring-20170104-1

Total Installed Size: 0.81 MiB
Net Upgrade Size: 0.04 MiB
>
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
(1/1) checking keys in keyring [######################] 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%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/1) upgrading archlinux-keyring [######################] 100%
==> Appending keys from archlinux.gpg...
gpg: marginals needed: 3 completes needed: 1 trust model: PGP
gpg: depth: 0 valid: 1 signed: 6 trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 1u
gpg: depth: 1 valid: 6 signed: 69 trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 6m, 0f, 0u
gpg: depth: 2 valid: 69 signed: 7 trust: 69-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 0u
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2017-09-07
==> Locally signing trusted keys in keyring...
 -> Locally signing key 0E8B644079F599DFC1DDC3973348882F6AC6A4C2...
 -> Locally signing key 684148BB25B49E986A4944C55184252D824B18E8...
 -> Locally signing key 91FFE0700E80619CEB73235CA88E23E377514E00...
 -> Locally signing key 44D4A033AC140143927397D47EFD567D4C7EA887...
 -> Locally signing key 27FFC4769E19F096D41D9265A04F9397CDFD6BB0...
 -> Locally signing key AB19265E5D7D20687D303246BA1DFB64FFF979E7...
==> Importing owner trust values...
==> Disabling revoked keys in keyring...
 -> Disabling key F5A361A3A13554B85E57DDDAAF7EF7873CFD4BB6...
 -> Disabling key 7FA647CD89891DEDC060287BB9113D1ED21E1A55...
 -> Disabling key D4DE5ABDE2A7287644EAC7E36D1A9E70E19DAA50...
 -> Disabling key BC1FBE4D2826A0B51E47ED62E2539214C6C11350...
 -> Disabling key 9515D8A8EAB88E49BB65EDBCE6B456CAF15447D5...
 -> Disabling key 4A8B17E20B88ACA61860009B5CED81B7C2E5C0D2...
 -> Disabling key 63F395DE2D6398BBE458F281F2DBB4931985A992...
 -> Disabling key 0B20CA1931F5DA3A70D0F8D2EA6836E1AB441196...
 -> Disabling key 8F76BEEA0289F9E1D3E229C05F946DED983D4366...
 -> Disabling key 66BD74A036D522F51DD70A3C7F2A16726521E06D...
 -> Disabling key 81D7F8241DB38BC759C80FCE3A726C6170E80477...
 -> Disabling key E7210A59715F6940CF9A4E36A001876699AD6E84...
==> Updating trust database...
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2017-09-07

After that run one more time:

sudo pacman -Syy

after that you can run again the

pacstrap /mnt base