Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

forkboy · 2010-10-31 22:16:43

Xyne wrote:

@forkboy
You need to use a monospace font for the alignment to work properly, assuming that you're using the second script on the project page.

Of course, sorry I see that you pointed it out on your site too, guess I must have skipped that part, thankyou!

Perre · 2010-12-12 00:17:18

I get this when running paconky:

'/usr/bin/paconky: line 38: $1: ambiguous redirect'

And the the update information only shows

'Available updates:'

and nothing more. Even though I know at least one package is out of date.

What can I do?

Xyne · 2010-12-12 02:06:33

Perre wrote:

I get this when running paconky:
'/usr/bin/paconky: line 38: $1: ambiguous redirect'

 35 }
 36 
 37 function parse_config()
 38 {
 39   PKGS=()
 40   AUR_PKGS=()

I don't see what could cause that error on line 38. You could try re-installing paconky in case the file has been corrupted but I don't know how that could have happened.

Use the replacement script on the project page otherwise. Paconky is basically deprecated.

Perre · 2010-12-12 08:05:27

Thanks for the quick reply Xyne!
I removed paconky and used the replacement script instead. Things are now working again.

jalu · 2010-12-26 21:54:54

Lately, Conky has been displaying Paconky output strangely, aligning text right when it should not be aligned right. I'm not sure if this is the fault of Conky or Paconky.

The Setup

.paconky:

#SET MSG_0 up to date
#SET MSG_1 1 package 
#SET MSG_N %N% packages
#
#SET AUR_MSG_0 up to date
#SET AUR_MSG_1 1 package
#SET AUR_MSG_N %AUR_N% packages

Main ${alignr} %MSG%
AUR ${alignr} %AUR_MSG%

.conkyrc:

...
${execpi 86400 echo As of `date "+%l:%M %p"`; echo; paconky /home/me/.paconky}
...

The Result

Paconky shell output: http://imgur.com/BEa8x.png

Conky display: http://imgur.com/uTozz.png

Very strange. Has anybody else had issues like this?

Last edited by jalu (2010-12-26 21:57:33)

skunktrader · 2010-12-26 22:05:57

This is a known bug in conky 1.8.1
See these
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=106320
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=106495
You might find a link to the bug report in one of those

jalu · 2010-12-26 22:06:50

Interesting. Thanks for the links, skunktrader.

Xyne · 2010-12-27 05:55:38

Use the second replacement script on the project page with a fixed width until the alignment bug has been fixed upstream.

Spot · 2011-02-01 14:32:57

Finally I found a minimalistic script for new pacman-files....works great ! Thanks !

Tycon712 · 2011-04-14 05:26:09

I'm kind of new to this, so go easy.

Conky is not displaying the repo and AUR info script that you created (http://xyne.archlinux.ca/projects/pacon … alignr-bug)
I've followed the instructions and looked at other forums, but couldn't figure it out.
I've placed the short update script in /etc/cron.hourly/sync
Copied your script into ~/.scripts/pac_upgradeable.pl
Put this ${execpi 7200 perl /home/tyler/.scripts/pac_upgradeable.pl} into conky
And set text_buffer_size 1024 , but its just not showing anything.

When I run the repo and AUR info script in a terminal, I get this:

[tyler@arch ~]$ ~/.scripts/pac_upgradeable.pl 
Can't locate Xyne/Arch/Bauerbill.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl /usr/share/perl5/site_perl /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib/perl5/core_perl /usr/share/perl5/core_perl .) at /home/tyler/.scripts/pac_upgradeable.pl line 5.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /home/tyler/.scripts/pac_upgradeable.pl line 5.

Xyne · 2011-04-15 15:29:10

@Tycon712
The script relied on perl-xyne-arch, which no longer exists. Here's the explanation.

Sorry about that. I've updated the page.

cga · 2011-06-20 17:35:44

Hi all,

@Xyne: so what's the situation now? which script should we use? can you link ?

I would put a [DEPRECATED] in topic (maybe on first post as well?) or on wiki.

please and thanks

ps: one more suggestion: if I was you, on your site I would separate projects in old/deprecated and actual/active. it is confusing to look at projects and not knowing what's actual and whatnot.

Last edited by cga (2011-06-20 17:36:10)

keenerd · 2011-06-20 19:12:35

I found an enormous bug. On the Paconky webpage, you recommend "/usr/bin/pacman -Sy >/dev/null 2>&1" in cron. This can lead to problems. In the past, these problems have included unable to boot (broken bash) and unable to start X (broken libjpeg, libpng). Here is how it should be done:
http://bashlnx.blogspot.com/2011/05/hey … rt-ii.html

Xyne · 2011-06-23 05:56:29

@cga
I haven't tested it recently but afaik paconky still works. I just won't be working on it and will eventually replace it. I'm mostly waiting for pyalpm to acquire missing features (about to email Rémy about that right now).

@keenerd
Huh? How could updating the sync database possibly break bash or X? You could overwrite the entire sync database with random data and it wouldn't affect anything else on the system. The local database is not affected by -Sy. I see no reason to copy everything into empty directories, and doing so in an hourly cronjob would just be ridiculously inefficient.

Please explain what problems you think pacman -Sy can cause.

Xyne · 2011-06-27 12:37:27

I've written a new replacement script using pyalpm and python-aur: http://xyne.archlinux.ca/scripts/conky/
Customizing it should be straight-forward if you know the basics of Python. If not, let me know what you want to do and I will try to help.

Screenshot:

forkboy · 2011-06-29 17:56:47

Xyne, thanks for writing the replacement script. Probably really simple question now but how can I remove the lines from the display? I've rather just have spaces between the sections.

keenerd · 2011-06-29 20:45:33

Xyne: The sync DB gets ahead of the local DB. Then you do pacman -S foo and it installs foo and the dependencies. Now let's say one of those deps is lib-kaboom, which got an update. A bunch of apps already installed depend on lib-kaboom. If these other apps depend on the older version of lib-kaboom, then stuff breaks. In the past three years this has made systems without a package manager (SSL broke pacman), that could not start X (libjpg and libpng updates broke login managers) or even boot (libreadline broke bash). There are many forum threads, all of which come down to "you used -Sy and did not understand what -Sy really does".

Can this be avoided by paying very close attention? Like any accident, yes. But only if you are a terminal optimist. Avoiding -Sy is a safe practice, one that should be the default behavior.

Last edited by keenerd (2011-06-29 21:00:15)

Doorbreath · 2011-06-29 21:00:16

Xyne wrote:

@keenerd
Huh? How could updating the sync database possibly break bash or X? You could overwrite the entire sync database with random data and it wouldn't affect anything else on the system. The local database is not affected by -Sy. I see no reason to copy everything into empty directories, and doing so in an hourly cronjob would just be ridiculously inefficient.
Please explain what problems you think pacman -Sy can cause.

This
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 58#p802658

Xyne · 2011-07-01 11:09:53

@forkboy
At the top of the display function, remove "${color1}${hr}" from "header" and "footer", i.e. change

  header = '${color1}${hr}\n${color1}[${color2}%s${color1}]%s${color3}%s'
  footer = '\n${color1}${hr}\n${voffset 10}'

to

  header = '${color1}[${color2}%s${color1}]%s${color3}%s'
  footer = '\n${voffset 10}'

@keenerd
Meh. I definitely wouldn't call that an "enormous bug". It's relatively well known that you should upgrade the system before installing anything after a database upgrade. You could argue that because it's being run in a cronjob the user might not be aware that an upgrade is required, but the user was the one who set the cronjob. In addition, the cronjob was set in order to display the list of upgradable packages in conky, which is right in front of the user. I think it's fair to assume that the user is thus aware of pending upgrades.

Saying that the issue can only be avoided "if you are a terminal optimist" thus implies very little confidence in the average user. If someone can't remember to append a "u" when installing a package in this case then they probably shouldn't be adding hourly cronjobs to their system from the forum.

Fwiw, I've had that cronjob running for at least a year without incident and I suspect that many others have as well, but admittedly I haven't even considered that issue for a while.

So, that stated, I agree that it's not strictly necessary and that an overly casual user could do some damage, so I've added a warning to the old paconky page referencing this thread, and I've changed the paconky.py script to use a configurable alternative database path.

@everyone
The script now requires a directory path argument. See the comments in the script and the previous discussion for details.

Last edited by Xyne (2011-07-01 11:12:57)

Doorbreath · 2011-07-02 11:24:59

Is there a way to make the script run soon after the sync cron job, so the list is up to date as it can be out by up to an hour? Or maybe get the cron job to only run when I log in?

Zom · 2011-07-02 12:24:16

Doorbreath wrote:

Is there a way to make the script run soon after the sync cron job, so the list is up to date as it can be out by up to an hour? Or maybe get the cron job to only run when I log in?

Just run it in a separate cronjob in the same crontab? Or just run it in your user crontab? Make it run like 2 minutes after the sync cronjob and it should be fine I think.

E: Oh, you meant from conky.

Last edited by Zom (2011-07-03 10:13:43)

keenerd · 2011-07-02 14:01:07

Xyne: Fair enough. -Sy is a bit of an issue for me, just because it is not entirely obvious. I used Arch for three years before even hearing about that it could happen (the readline incident, I think). Devs at the time considered it an issue not even worth a single sentence in the docs. (Still do as far as I know.)

Xyne · 2011-07-02 16:08:01

@Doorbreath
See my reply to keenerd above. The cronjob no longer has any effect on the displayed information. The script now downloads copies of the sync databases to a custom directory. See the comments at the top of the script too.

You should remove the old cronjob, then update paconky.py and your conky configuration file. Set the conky update_interval to at least 3600 and the information will always be up-to-date when it's refreshed.

@keenerd
*nods*

I understand both sides of the argument I think. For the devs, it's obvious that updating e.g. a library without updating the packages that are built against it is a bad idea. But it's not reasonable to expect all users to be aware of internals of the dependency chains. Then the counter argument is that Arch is at least nominally for "competent users', etc. Then again, I believe that they wanted to implement sodeps to avoid this very issue, so it's obviously on the their mind.

The simplest solution that would probably keep everyone happy might be to issue a simple warning when installing a package after -Sy if it would update dependencies of another package. That might have even been suggested before.

Doorbreath · 2011-07-02 17:29:10

Ah right I see now, I didn't understand that the script downloads the sync databases, I thought it still needed to be done and a symlink made to a custom directory. The script sounds even better now I know it does that! Any way we can buy you a beer or anything?
Putting the script at the end of the .conkyrc I already have with execpi 3600 is the same as running it on it's own with update_update interval 3600 right?

Xyne · 2011-07-02 23:28:32

Doorbreath wrote:

Putting the script at the end of the .conkyrc I already have with execpi 3600 is the same as running it on it's own with update_update interval 3600 right?

Yeah, that should be the same. In both cases the script will be run once an hour. I don't know how conky handles caching and redrawing of execpi output, but I would expect it to be efficient, so there should be no noticeable difference in overhead from redrawing the window after each update interval. Check the CPU usage to be sure though.

Arch Linux

#101 2010-10-31 22:16:43

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#102 2010-12-12 00:17:18

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#103 2010-12-12 02:06:33

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#104 2010-12-12 08:05:27

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#105 2010-12-26 21:54:54

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#106 2010-12-26 22:05:57

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#107 2010-12-26 22:06:50

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#108 2010-12-27 05:55:38

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#109 2011-02-01 14:32:57

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#110 2011-04-14 05:26:09

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#111 2011-04-15 15:29:10

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#112 2011-06-20 17:35:44

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#113 2011-06-20 19:12:35

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#114 2011-06-23 05:56:29

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#115 2011-06-27 12:37:27

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#116 2011-06-29 17:56:47

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#117 2011-06-29 20:45:33

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#118 2011-06-29 21:00:16

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#119 2011-07-01 11:09:53

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#120 2011-07-02 11:24:59

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#121 2011-07-02 12:24:16

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#122 2011-07-02 14:01:07

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#123 2011-07-02 16:08:01

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#124 2011-07-02 17:29:10

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

#125 2011-07-02 23:28:32

Re: Paconky: displays repo and AUR pkg info in conky

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