Arch Linux

rupeshforu3

Member

Registered: 2023-01-06

Posts: 64

Using old packages in newly installed system.

Hi I am Rupesh and I have a system with Intel i3 10th gen 10100 processor and Asus prime h510 me motherboard. I am using Arch Linux on my system since one year and upto now I have installed four times freshly from the beginning.

From the beginning I have kept the downloaded packages in a secondary Hard disk I mean I have changed the cachedir entry of pacman.conf to the directory which is contained in xfs partition of secondary Hard disk.

After fresh installation I changed the cachedir entry in pacman.conf to the previously downloaded directory which is present in xfs partition of secondary Hard disk.

After issuing update command not all packages are being downloaded only few are fetched because remaining are already present in secondary Hard disk.

This saves a lot of bandwidth.

Suppose I want to install complete kde desktop I will issue the following command

sudo pacman -S plasma kde-utilities kde-system

Generally fetching or downloading the packages will take easily 1700 mb but a lot of packages are available in secondary Hard disk the download will be limited to 200 mb.

Each and every package has its own name size and signing file.

Suppose there's a package named mediainfo and it was uploaded by the developer 5 months ago and I have used it by downloading and installing it.

After 6 months I have decided to use mediainfo and so I have issued the command pacman -S mediainfo and finally it has been installed without fetching from online repository.

Now my question is whether I am doing wrong by using old packages in newly installed system.

Can I use package groups like xorg gnome base-devel etc., in the same way.

Is there any harm to my system if I use old packages in newly installed system.

Kindly try to suggest whether can I use safely old packages in newly installed system or not.

Regards,
Rupesh.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,866

Re: Using old packages in newly installed system.

There's no safe way to do this, Arch isn't designed in such a way. If you routinely want to mix old versions with newer versions then you're better off with a different distribution that caters to that usecase: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System … nsupported

Despite every reccommendation against running a system like this, you can "somewhat" keep track of it by updating in manageable increments via the ALA, but you are micromanaging the dependencies in that case. Or you are diligent in only using -S and never mixing in an -Sy without also running an -u, but in the case that your cache already contains a package, then even -Syu would pick the package from the cache.

Going by your literal example, the damage would be quite minimal as long as you really pay attention to what you are installing from the cache. A broken mediainfo will likely result in simply a broken mediainfo. Do this with a more vital package and you can easily have an unbootable system.

Last edited by V1del (2023-10-10 16:24:18)

rupeshforu3

Member

Registered: 2023-01-06

Posts: 64

Re: Using old packages in newly installed system.

Thanks for your suggestions and I will follow what you said.

Last edited by rupeshforu3 (2023-10-10 16:27:40)

walkingstickfan

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2021-05-10

Posts: 105

Re: Using old packages in newly installed system.

Another way to use old packages is to mark them appropriately in the /etc/pacman.conf file; reference https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman … g_upgraded. Note the warning in the provided link about partial upgrades not being supported.

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seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 52,132

Re: Using old packages in newly installed system.

The support question is less reelvant here.

If you've to ask how to perform partial updates, you don't perform partial updates, because you'll most certainly have not a remote idea of the implications and fuck up the system for almost sure.
So the OP is going to fuck up their system for almost sure this way.

You need some experience to even ballpark the impact of a partial update/downgrade and even that can go horribly wrong

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rupeshforu3

Member

Registered: 2023-01-06

Posts: 64

Re: Using old packages in newly installed system.

Can I use my Arch Linux system without installing freshly from the starting upto years.

As Arch Linux is rolling release system it is not needed to do so.

Here my question is suppose I have installed Arch Linux today with package groups gnome, gnome extra, plasma, lxde, lxqt etc and the installation has taken approximately 25 GB of disk space.

I will use mainly the software present in these package groups and rarely I will install other packages.

And every week I update my system using the following command

Pacman -Syu

Is this enough to keep my system packages upto date.

Can I run my system for years without starting from the beginning I mean formatting the partitions etc.,.

Here I am not doing partial update.

Someone says that we need to install Linux from the beginning atleast for one year is it true.

Last edited by rupeshforu3 (2023-11-07 14:27:56)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,866

Re: Using old packages in newly installed system.

No that last statement isn't true at all. Doing proper full system upgrades once a week is fine as well. Yes you can run it that way for years, it's what most of us do.

rupeshforu3

Member

Registered: 2023-01-06

Posts: 64

Re: Using old packages in newly installed system.

No that last statement isn't true at all. Doing proper full system upgrades once a week is fine as well. Yes you can run it that way for years, it's what most of us do.

Thanks for your suggestion and straight reply.