Arch Linux

TPJ

Member

From: Gliwice, Poland

Registered: 2005-12-21

Posts: 33

Updating old system

I have a really old system... It's Arch Linux, but installed in 2005. Now I want to update it, but I have encountered a problem: pacman is unable to update itself. For some reason it tries to download the "pacman-3.1.4-1.pkg.tar.gz" file, instead of "pacman-3.1.4-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz".

I have also similar problems with other files too, and I suppose they are the same (pacman tries to download the files ending with .pkg.tar.gz, without this -i686).

What can I do with this problem? How can I tell pacman to look for files ending with -i686.pkg.tar.gz?

Morra

Member

Registered: 2008-05-16

Posts: 39

Re: Updating old system

Download the right pacman package manually and install it with "pacman -U pacman-*". It will be interesting to see how well does such an old computer upgrade.

TPJ

Member

From: Gliwice, Poland

Registered: 2005-12-21

Posts: 33

Re: Updating old system

I tried and I failed.

Pacman has its dependencies, so I decided to download all of them manually, and then to manually update them. I looked for packages without dependencies first, and I found them: kernel-headers and tzdata-2008b. I had to force install these packages because of conflicting files (the old glibc package owned some files which belong to these two packages now). Then I (forced, again) installed the new glibc package. And it was my mistake, because I was running an old kernel (2.6.11). The "FATAL: kernel too old" messages started to show up.

All in all I decided to install a new system. In my case it was an option - and it's easier than installing a newer kernel and updating all the remaining packages.

Thank you for your help!

left

Member

Registered: 2009-10-21

Posts: 2

Re: Updating old system

Hi, I've been trying to do the same thing explained in the first post, and I'm having the same problem. Pacman seems to try to download the right file (version) but with the wrong filename (the i686 part lacks).

1. I really wonder why that happens, since I've succesfully updated (-Sy) the packages list. Does pacman look somewhere else to know what to download?

2.

Download the right pacman package manually and install it with "pacman -U pacman-*". It will be interesting to see how well does such an old computer upgrade.

Tried that. The result was:

 [root@MOB7 ~]# pacman -U pacman-3.3.2-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz
loading package data... pacman: syntax error in description file line 18
pacman: syntax error in description file line 19
pacman: syntax error in description file line 22
pacman: syntax error in description file line 23
pacman: syntax error in description file line 24
pacman: syntax error in description file line 25
pacman: syntax error in description file line 26
pacman: syntax error in description file line 27
done.
error: unsatisfied dependencies:
 pacman: requires bash
 pacman: requires libarchive
 pacman: requires libfetch>=2.25
 pacman: requires pacman-mirrorlist

P.S.: I've chosen to raise an old topic since I'm having the exact same problem as the above user and since the problem is not exactly time-related. Hope it doesn't look like necroposting. :-)

Spider.007

Member

Registered: 2004-06-20

Posts: 819

Website

Re: Updating old system

Why not use these instructions: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … ting_Linux

left

Member

Registered: 2009-10-21

Posts: 2

Re: Updating old system

Why not use these instructions: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … ting_Linux

because that would be the 'easy' solution ...And I'd find it annoying to install arch from an existing arch!

I was also wondering how I can install arch in partition X using that wiki on the same partition X. (No bootable cd/usb/... on that laptop...)

Spider.007

Member

Registered: 2004-06-20

Posts: 819

Website

Re: Updating old system

I didn't mean you needed to reinstall; but the solution to upgrade/install pacman (manually) is perfectly described in the wiki. If you install/upgrade pacman using those instructions; I assume you can upgrade the rest of your system as well