Arch Linux

markhadman

Member

Registered: 2010-10-09

Posts: 39

[SOLVED] Must I really upgrade to Pacman-5.0.1 before a certain date?

According to https://www.archlinux.org/news/required … 016-04-23/, "we require all users to have updated to at least pacman-5.0.1 before 2016-04-23".

I maintain several machines to which I will not have easy access until August.

What are the consequences? Why can't I just upgrade whenever? Is this news story aimed at people who do selective upgrades?

Last edited by markhadman (2016-03-29 05:23:38)

eschwartz

Fellow

Registered: 2014-08-08

Posts: 4,097

Re: [SOLVED] Must I really upgrade to Pacman-5.0.1 before a certain date?

If you haven't upgraded to pacman 5.x by that time, then the post-install scriptlets which no longer exist won't be run, because your pacman install doesn't support the hooks that replaced them.

I suppose an easy way to get around that is to do

pacman -Sy && pacman -S pacman && pacman -Su

But upgrading an Arch install after more than a month or so of absence can in general be complicated.

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x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: [SOLVED] Must I really upgrade to Pacman-5.0.1 before a certain date?

Not a System Administration issue. Moving to Arch Discussion.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,523

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Must I really upgrade to Pacman-5.0.1 before a certain date?

I maintain several machines to which I will not have easy access until August.

Is this downtime a regular occurrence?  If so, arch is almost certainly not the right disto to use.

Are these powered off in storage somewhere, or did you set up arch for a freind family member?  If the systems are running somewhere, you should be able to shell in and do any needed maintenance remotely.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

kokoko3k

Member

Registered: 2008-11-14

Posts: 2,394

Re: [SOLVED] Must I really upgrade to Pacman-5.0.1 before a certain date?

For systems with very old installations, i'd use Arch rollback machine to upgrade them gradually.
I think you can use the following logic to upgrade too:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ar … cific_date

-edit-
Just in case, i just emailed my mom saying that i need to upgrade his laptop asap

Last edited by kokoko3k (2016-03-24 15:06:20)

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markhadman

Member

Registered: 2010-10-09

Posts: 39

Re: [SOLVED] Must I really upgrade to Pacman-5.0.1 before a certain date?

I maintain several machines to which I will not have easy access until August.

Is this downtime a regular occurrence?  If so, arch is almost certainly not the right disto to use.

Are these powered off in storage somewhere, or did you set up arch for a freind family member?  If the systems are running somewhere, you should be able to shell in and do any needed maintenance remotely.

Well, I've been an Archer for six years now it seems, so I think it'll be quite a wrench to change. Yes, I have some backup machines in storage which I'd like to be able to fall back on if necessary. I update them when I can. I managed, with a little hand holding, to get through the switch to pacman 4 (with its package signing) and the switch to systemd, and various Arch-wide borks. I also have a live desktop machine at home, but there's no way I'd ever update a machine remotely that somebody else relies on, since this debacle: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/27385 (which would have been hilarious if I hadn't actually needed the machine in question that day)

If you haven't upgraded to pacman 5.x by that time, then the post-install scriptlets which no longer exist won't be run, because your pacman install doesn't support the hooks that replaced them.

Thanks. It's taken me a while to parse that sentence, but along with the original news story I think I may now have a grip on what's happening.

I suppose an easy way to get around that is to do

pacman -Sy && pacman -S pacman && pacman -Su

So if I upgrade pacman first it's probable that I'll get away with it.

Thanks for all the replies. I'll mark this solved.