That would appear to point to a malformed pacman.conf ..
What is in it?
cat /etc/pacman.conf
PS.
Please make use of the formatted </> code button in the editor here when copying output.
#
# /etc/pacman.conf
#
# See the pacman.conf(5) manpage for option and repository directives
#
# GENERAL OPTIONS
#
[options]
# The following paths are commented out with their default values listed.
# If you wish to use different paths, uncomment and update the paths.
#RootDir = /
#DBPath = /var/lib/pacman/
#CacheDir = /var/cache/pacman/pkg/
#LogFile = /var/log/pacman.log
#GPGDir = /etc/pacman.d/gnupg/
#HookDir = /etc/pacman.d/hooks/
HoldPkg = pacman glibc
#XferCommand = /usr/bin/curl -L -C - -f -o %o %u
#XferCommand = /usr/bin/wget --passive-ftp -c -O %o %u
#CleanMethod = KeepInstalled
#UseDelta = 0.7
Architecture = auto
# Pacman won't upgrade packages listed in IgnorePkg and members of IgnoreGroup
#IgnorePkg =
#IgnoreGroup =
#NoUpgrade =
#NoExtract =
# Misc options
#UseSyslog
Color
ILoveCandy
#NoProgressBar
#CheckSpace
VerbosePkgLists
DisableDownloadTimeout
ParallelDownloads = 10
DownloadUser = alpm
#DisableSandbox
# By default, pacman accepts packages signed by keys that its local keyring
# trusts (see pacman-key and its man page), as well as unsigned packages.
SigLevel = Required DatabaseOptional
LocalFileSigLevel = Optional
#RemoteFileSigLevel = Required
# NOTE: You must run `pacman-key --init` before first using pacman; the local
# keyring can then be populated with the keys of all official Arch Linux
# packagers with `pacman-key --populate archlinux`.
#
# REPOSITORIES
# - can be defined here or included from another file
# - pacman will search repositories in the order defined here
# - local/custom mirrors can be added here or in separate files
# - repositories listed first will take precedence when packages
# have identical names, regardless of version number
# - URLs will have $repo replaced by the name of the current repo
# - URLs will have $arch replaced by the name of the architecture
#
# Repository entries are of the format:
# [repo-name]
# Server = ServerName
# Include = IncludePath
#
# The header [repo-name] is crucial - it must be present and
# uncommented to enable the repo.
#
# cachyos repos
[cachyos-v4]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/cachyos-v4-mirrorlist
[cachyos-core-v4]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/cachyos-v4-mirrorlist
[cachyos-extra-v4]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/cachyos-v4-mirrorlist
[cachyos]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/cachyos-mirrorlist
# The testing repositories are disabled by default. To enable, uncomment the
# repo name header and Include lines. You can add preferred servers immediately
# after the header, and they will be used before the default mirrors.
#[core-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
[core]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
#[extra-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
[extra]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
# If you want to run 32 bit applications on your x86_64 system,
# enable the multilib repositories as required here.
#[multilib-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
# An example of a custom package repository. See the pacman manpage for
# tips on creating your own repositories.
#[custom]
#SigLevel = Optional TrustAll
#Server = file:///home/custompkgs
Odd ..
That file only has ` in commented sections and ends before line 124.
The [multilib] section appears OK. Likely that naming line 124 and the multilib sections are both more due to end-of-file.
How did we get here? Is this a new issue? Or maybe a newly attempted conversion?
I got to here after trying to get certain games to work. One of my difficulties was that the dedicated GPU on this laptop would not wot initialize. Everything I looked through pointed to up-date problems and I stopped being able to install anything new and CacyOS can’t see the repositories. It said something like mirrors were not accessible. I tried rating mirrors and I tried re-loading the system keyrings but that didn’t help. Where can I download a correct pacman.conf?
When rating mirrors I got this. Seems like the file is missing somehow.
==> ERROR: /etc/pacman.d/cachyos-mirrorlist doesn't exist! You must install package that contains /etc/pacman.d/cachyos-mirrorlist
I am not sure its the issue but here are links to a standard one and one with your v4 things added.
Yes that was my next guess .. the original error popping up because of trying (and failing) to get the mirrors for the necessary repos.
This all seems like you should maybe follow the original manual steps to get yourself back in place.
# Import the repository key
sudo pacman-key --recv-keys F3B607488DB35A47 --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com
# Sign the repository key
sudo pacman-key --lsign-key F3B607488DB35A47
sudo pacman -U 'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/cachyos-keyring-20240331-1-any.pkg.tar.zst' \
'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/cachyos-mirrorlist-22-1-any.pkg.tar.zst' \
'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/cachyos-v4-mirrorlist-22-1-any.pkg.tar.zst' \
'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/pacman-7.0.0.r7.g1f38429-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst'
(Here you can reconfigure your pacman.conf or copy the one linked above.)
Then if we were doing a conversion we would finish up with the following but it may not be necessary for you;
sudo pacman -Scc
pacman -Qqn | sudo pacman -Syu -
In the end if you did not follow the last steps we still want to sync/refresh/update;
sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman-key --lsign-key F3B607488DB35A47
-> Locally signed 1 key.
==> Updating trust database...
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2025-10-10
~
❯ sudo pacman -U 'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/cachyos-keyring-20240331-1-any.pkg.tar.zst' \
'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/cachyos-mirrorlist-22-1-any.pkg.tar.zst' \
'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/cachyos-v4-mirrorlist-22-1-any.pkg.tar.zst' \
'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/pacman-7.0.0.r7.g1f38429-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst'
warning: database file for 'core' does not exist (use '-Sy' to download)
warning: database file for 'extra' does not exist (use '-Sy' to download)
warning: no /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ cache exists, creating...
:: Retrieving packages...
cachyos-keyring-20240331-1-any 4.9 KiB 14.3 KiB/s 00:00 [#################################] 100%
cachyos-mirrorlist-22-1-any 3.1 KiB 9.08 KiB/s 00:00 [#################################] 100%
cachyos-v4-mirrorlist-22-1-any 3.1 KiB 9.61 KiB/s 00:00 [#################################] 100%
pacman-7.0.0.r7.g1f38429-1... 2.8 MiB 3.81 MiB/s 00:01 [#################################] 100%
loading packages...
warning: cachyos-keyring-20240331-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
warning: cachyos-v4-mirrorlist-22-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
warning: pacman-7.0.0.r7.g1f38429-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
Packages (4) cachyos-keyring-20240331-1 cachyos-mirrorlist-22-1 cachyos-v4-mirrorlist-22-1
pacman-7.0.0.r7.g1f38429-1
Total Installed Size: 10.12 MiB
Net Upgrade Size: 0.00 MiB
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
(4/4) checking keys in keyring [#################################] 100%
(4/4) checking package integrity [#################################] 100%
(4/4) loading package files [#################################] 100%
(4/4) checking for file conflicts [#################################] 100%
(4/4) checking available disk space [#################################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/4) reinstalling cachyos-keyring [#################################] 100%
==> Appending keys from cachyos.gpg...
==> Updating trust database...
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2025-10-10
(2/4) installing cachyos-mirrorlist [#################################] 100%
error: extract: not overwriting dir with file /etc/pacman.d/cachyos-mirrorlist
error: problem occurred while installing cachyos-mirrorlist
error: could not commit transaction
error: failed to commit transaction (transaction aborted)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.
We could either clean out the dir first or add overwrite;
sudo pacman -U 'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/cachyos-keyring-20240331-1-any.pkg.tar.zst' \
'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/cachyos-mirrorlist-22-1-any.pkg.tar.zst' \
'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/cachyos-v4-mirrorlist-22-1-any.pkg.tar.zst' \
'https://mirror.cachyos.org/repo/x86_64/cachyos/pacman-7.0.0.r7.g1f38429-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' \
--overwrite '/etc/pacman.d/*'Overwrite didn’t work. So cleaning out the directory means deleting everything in /etc/pacman.d ?
Yeah .. though maybe just the (cachy) mirror ones as thats what it seems to be complaining about.
sudo rm /etc/pacman.d/cachyos*mirrorlist
Though .. reading it again .. maybe /etc/pacman.d/cachyos-mirrorlist is a folder and not a file and thats why its being difficult?
If so then the rm command above would not work either without an -r (recursive flag is required for directories) ex;
sudo rm -r /etc/pacman.d/cachyos-mirrorlist
Now I’m left with:
gnupg/ hooks/ mirrorlist mirrorlist-backup mirrorlist.pacnew
try running the commands again? or different ones?
This means you have been ignoring pacnews as well .. but we will get to that later.
Yes we want the rest of the steps to complete successfully.
(And they are going to give you cachy mirrorlists again.)
Looks like it reinstalled the mirrorlists. but I’m Still getting
warning: database file for 'extra' does not exist (use '-Sy' to download)
warning: database file for 'extra' does not exist (use '-Sy' to download)
You still need to do the final steps and sync as its telling you (though just about never use -Sy alone) ..
The ‘reconfigure’ part is meaning get your pacman.conf containing the v4 entries .. I have left what should be a perfect example at the pastes above.
If it already contains those then you can move directly to the next steps.
If you dont need to clean the cache or replace packages with cachy variants (performed a conversion recently) then you can skip that too ..
and simply do sudo pacman -Syu. But you need to at least do that.
I pasted the new .conf files in. I then followed all those steps.
pacman -Qqn | sudo pacman -Syu -
ultimately ended with
installing pcre2 (10.46-1) breaks dependency 'pcre2=10.45' required by lib32-pcre2
I got a lot of warnings about downgrading packages.
You might want to sort mirrors as this seems like some sort of mismatch.
(lib32-pcre2 is in the repos as v. 10.46-1 and does not need 10.45)
The automated tool for that is cachyos-rate-mirrors;
sudo cachyos-rate-mirrors
I tried to answer yesterday but I hit the 21 hour lockout for new users.
Rating mirrors did nothing, still didn’t work. I brought up the bauh application and uninstalled lib32-pcre2 and that which depended on it. I then used
pacman -Qqn | sudo pacman -Syu -
and it appears to have done what it is supposed to do. I got warnings but no errors and no refusal to commit transaction.
I can now install things and update what is needed.
I guess removing the depending package could work ..
Though that does not necessarily mean all is well.
If you still have a broken or flaky mirror then that could continue to cause issues.
But if it was just a hiccup then 
.
And by the way that lib32-pcre2 package would likely not really be needed unless you were planning on gaming.
Also a note - I would not suggest using bauh as in my review it had bad buttons - mapped to tools that dont exist, or forcing refresh, possibility of partial-upgrades, etc.
And then we have had a handful of users commenting here about how they randomly had their drivers or kernels deleted while using it - leading to a non-booting system.
If a GUI is needed then the only reliable option is octopi.
I suspect that is what happened and led to problems with my password failing.
Thanks for your help on these problems. I’m going to re-install Cachy. Fortunately it’s on my gaming laptop and won’t be that critical. I won’t use bauh in the future.
Thanks!, it works for me.