[Solved] Selective system upgrade?

halogen · 2017-08-03 13:56:06

I usually run yaourt -Syua daily to keep my system up-to-date, but sometimes the amount/weight of packages is such that I have to postpone the upgrade.

Would it possible to tell yaourt/pacman to do all "urgent" upgrades only, e.g. only those belonging to the base & core repos, so that i can upgrade the rest when I have the time?

Last edited by halogen (2017-08-03 14:27:10)

V1del · 2017-08-03 14:04:45

No, this constitutes a partial upgrade which can potentially lead to all sorts of issues. It's fine to simply not update for a while if you have urgent work to do that you can't risk any downtime on. You should keep that time to as short as possible which will lessen the changes you have to deal with.

Maintaining an Arch install does occasionally require you to sit down and properly do an update for a few hours. Don't try to circumvent that fact with single package upgrades. Very often the time to intervene isn't really all that much especially if you update regularly.

There are a few packages you could hold back if need be, which ones those are does often require experience and knowledge of how to system is set up and is definitely not generally recommended and assuredly not a long term solution.

Here's a little snippet that illustrates what might happen if you were to go through with your proposition: https://gist.github.com/vodik/5660494#file-sos-md

Last edited by V1del (2017-08-03 14:15:14)

ugjka · 2017-08-03 14:05:13

no, partial upgrades are not supported. It is all or nothing

halogen · 2017-08-03 14:26:42

V1del wrote:

Here's a little snippet that illustrates what might happen if you were to go through with your proposition: https://gist.github.com/vodik/5660494#file-sos-md

Interesting read

Thanks for the explanation.

eschwartz · 2017-08-03 21:12:25

V1del wrote:

Maintaining an Arch install does occasionally require you to sit down and properly do an update for a few hours. Don't try to circumvent that fact with single package upgrades. Very often the time to intervene isn't really all that much especially if you update regularly.

Whoa, since when does it take "a few hours" to properly do an update? I can honestly say that I've never really had any update that required more than a couple minutes to handle, with the exception of bugs that aren't going to get fixed no matter how long I devote to the update.

Last edited by eschwartz (2017-08-03 21:13:20)

Trilby · 2017-08-03 23:49:47

Has some time away made me the only one who can spot the obvious here?

halogen wrote:

I usually run yaourt -Syua daily...

Notwithstanding all the good advice some might give you to reconsider using yaourt - there is the major issue of the 'a' flag here. Running pacman updates (or `yaourt -Syu` if you must) daily should take a minute or so as Eschwartz noted. But that 'a' flag to yaourt tacks on a potential boatload of extra work that could very well take a long time depending on which aur packages you have installed. Using yaourt may even be obscurring the difference between repo packages updates and aur package rebuilding for you. If that's the case, stop using yaourt now.

In either case, there is absolutely no reason you need to update AUR packages along with the main repo packages. Often it is fine for them to lag behind a bit - some may argue it's a questionable practice, but in reality it is actually fine much of the time, and in the cases it's not fine, the very worst it can do is leave that AUR package unusable until it is rebuilt. Updating repo packages and letting some AUR packages lag behind could never do any damage to repo packages - and assuming you have not replaced some integral repo packages with aur counterparts, it could also never harm the overall functionality of your system.

So in summary, run a proper update with `pacman -Syu` daily. It should take a minute or so (depending on download times ... but pick a good mirror, it will be fast). Then periodically (weekly, monthly, whenever you're bored) rebuild any AUR packages that may need it.

V1del · 2017-08-04 02:12:45

Well I was exaggerating there with the few hours, to drive the point of not doing partial updates, I also can't remember the last time it took me a few hours, but OP read like this was a common occurrence and I don't know what's installed.

Good point on the potential AUR package workload

HiImTye · 2017-08-04 06:40:07

Trilby wrote:

In either case, there is absolutely no reason you need to update AUR packages along with the main repo packages.

there might be a few that you should keep in mind, such as virtualbox-ext-oracle, but you know that, because you only use yaourt because you're comfortable with the AUR and AUR packages in general, and not because it is the "easy" AUR helper that doesn't require you learn how to use them

Last edited by HiImTye (2017-08-04 06:41:02)

eschwartz · 2017-08-04 15:07:07

Trilby wrote:

Has some time away made me the only one who can spot the obvious here?

Whoa, just noticed your custom title is now "Forum Fellow", when did that happen???

In either case, there is absolutely no reason you need to update AUR packages along with the main repo packages. Often it is fine for them to lag behind a bit - some may argue it's a questionable practice, but in reality it is actually fine much of the time, and in the cases it's not fine, the very worst it can do is leave that AUR package unusable until it is rebuilt. Updating repo packages and letting some AUR packages lag behind could never do any damage to repo packages - and assuming you have not replaced some integral repo packages with aur counterparts, it could also never harm the overall functionality of your system.

This is... a good point, actually, though in my case as I have in fact replaced e.g. glibc with glibc-git I cannot take your advice.

(Other, rather more common things to note are Qt5 platformthemes which can leak into and crash *all* Qt5 applications, and a WM/DE, which if not harmful to the system itself can end up being fairly harmful to your ability to use it.)

halogen · 2017-08-04 15:26:46

Trilby wrote:

Notwithstanding all the good advice some might give you to reconsider using yaourt - there is the major issue of the 'a' flag here. Running pacman updates (or `yaourt -Syu` if you must) daily should take a minute or so as Eschwartz noted. But that 'a' flag to yaourt tacks on a potential boatload of extra work that could very well take a long time depending on which aur packages you have installed.

I usually go through every single package listed (aur or not) and manually edit the list before allowing the upgrade. Since yaourt does the aur stuff last, I can (and usually do) skip it unless there's a package listed that I regularly use and want to keep up-to-date.

When I wrote my question I thought it could be a good idea to do the critical updates daily, and then I would do all the stuff I said above weekly or monthly... but ok, I changed my mind

V1del · 2017-08-04 15:41:32

Well you can switch to a weekly (even monthly) schedule, however as already been mentioned to amount of packages will simply increase and you should not update single packages selectively.

And sometimes there will be large updates even on a daily schedule, but this is most often deliberately and precisely because of the reason outlined in that snippet and these are the times were you absolutely should update all of them (at least the repo packages)

Last edited by V1del (2017-08-04 15:45:44)

Arch Linux

#1 2017-08-03 13:56:06

[Solved] Selective system upgrade?

#2 2017-08-03 14:04:45

Re: [Solved] Selective system upgrade?

#3 2017-08-03 14:05:13

Re: [Solved] Selective system upgrade?

#4 2017-08-03 14:26:42

Re: [Solved] Selective system upgrade?

#5 2017-08-03 21:12:25

Re: [Solved] Selective system upgrade?

#6 2017-08-03 23:49:47

Re: [Solved] Selective system upgrade?

#7 2017-08-04 02:12:45

Re: [Solved] Selective system upgrade?

#8 2017-08-04 06:40:07

Re: [Solved] Selective system upgrade?

#9 2017-08-04 15:07:07

Re: [Solved] Selective system upgrade?

#10 2017-08-04 15:26:46

Re: [Solved] Selective system upgrade?

#11 2017-08-04 15:41:32

Re: [Solved] Selective system upgrade?

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