Arch Linux

caelia

Member

Registered: 2016-05-14

Posts: 8

How to safely update system after a long interval?

Hi, all! I have just restarted my desktop Arch Linux box, which has been in storage for almost a year. So of course the system has not been updated in all that time. According to the file dates in /var/lib/pacman/*, my last update was March 24, 2021.

So, are there any specific steps I should follow in order to minimize breakage? Are there any particular packages I need to watch out for? Also, have there been any changes in the way GRUB handles UEFI partitions? TIA.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,523

Website

Re: How to safely update system after a long interval?

Read the front page news.  It's been a pretty boring year - only one manual intervation that may or may not even apply.  Generally, the advice would be to do a couple step-wise updates using dated snapshots from the archlinux archive.  But I'd not be suprised if you could just run an -Syu without anything special (other than some pacnews and configs to update).

So the stepwise process through the ALA would be the conservative approach - but if I were in your shoes, I'd just run the update.  If pacman reports an error, you can use it to decide on what dated snapshot to use; if it doesn't then you're good.

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

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 11,544

Re: How to safely update system after a long interval?

The only thing you'll likely have to do is update archlinux-keyring first. If you don't have the key to even do that, you may have to disable signature checking, which is NOT recommended.