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20 Oct 2018

Debug VoidLinux unresolvable lib issue

I have been a happy user of VoidLinux for about a year now and so far have had almost no glitches whatsoever except for updating a year old version of it installed on one of my spare laptop. The issue started as following: 

xbps-install -Su
# resulted in following:
# mozjs: broken, unresolvable shlib `libicu.so'
# Transaction aborted due to unresolved shlibs.

I do not now about you but I usually start with a google search of what I think is somewhat general terms in my error message, which is "Transaction aborted due to unresolved shlibs" in my case. Searching with the above term came up with number of results and all point to the build system is still running. You can check the status of it here: Void Build Status, which I did find that all is green and idle. So it did not help me resolve my issue. Then, I decided to do one more search with "mozjs: broken, unresolvable shlib `libicu.so'", which is more specific to the state of my box only but that did not help me go anywhere. Then I decided to debug it myself. Following is my commandline session how I resolved it: 

# Ran the command again to make sure I have above issue 
xbps-install -Su
# again resulted in following:
# mozjs: broken, unresolvable shlib `libicu.so'
# Transaction aborted due to unresolved shlibs.
# Notice the /*mozjs*/, which is my clue. Then I did:
xbps-query -Rs mozjs
# from the output, I confirmed that it was not installed on my box,
# which is my second clue to check if my repos url are
# up-to-date. Remember it is a year old version of VoidLinux.  I
# noticed from the output of xpbs-install -u, that the
# void-repo-nonfree url does indeed point to an old url. So, I did:
xbps-remove void-repo-nonfree && xbps-install void-repo-nonfree
# to make sure my repo url is up-to-date. Then it is time to clean my
# repo cache and remove any packages that might be orphened since my
# repo url is pointing to a different url now. Using manpages for
# xpbs-remove, I can do above with:
xbps-remove -Oo
# Then I ran:
xbps-install -Su
# Voila!, My one year old box is up-to-date without any issues now.
# After all of this, I just made an one liner alias in my shell config:
alias c='xbps-remove void-repo-nonfree && xbps-install void-repo-nonfree && xbps-install -Su

So no love lost for VoidLinux and it is still as awesome as ever. Just to recap steps that I took to solve the issue:

  1. Start using more general term to do a google search then narrow it to specific ones. If it works, you save time and unneeded effort.
  2. Check for the problem package reported. Is it installed? If yes, try removing or updating it to see if it resolves your issue.
  3. If you do not see the package installed, it might be repo url + orphaned package issue. So update the repo url, remove orphan packages and rebuild the cache.

If you tried all of the above and your issue still did not get resolved, you might want to post it in VoidLinux forum for help.

Tags: VoidLinux