Great collection!
Since I already updated pacman, and have full system backup anyway, decided to try
this. And it worked - so far.

The only thing, I fixed
fontconfig and cleaned up
/lib and
/var/lib dirs
before installing updates with:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'pacman -Syu --ignore glibc # updates all packages
pacman -Su # (re)installs glibc')
It says now:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'Linux version 3.6.2-0-ARCH
[root@alarm ~]# pacman -Syu
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core is up to date
extra is up to date
community is up to date
alarm is up to date
aur is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
there is nothing to do')