Upgrading after long gap or try something new?

NaX_sa · 2011-12-29 13:33:59

Hi

I have been running arch for about a year now and was able to keep up with updates without to much hassle until a few months ago. I was very busy with work and never found the time to update my laptop. Its now the holidays and I have some time to get my system back up to date and I am looking for advice on the following two options.

A. Upgrade existing Arch install
B. Install Chakra 2011.12 (x86_64), trying to preserve /home

My current system is a Core i7, Kernel 2.6.38-pae i686, primary desktop KDE 4.6.3

I find Chakra interesting and possible a little less effor to maintain and I am considering giving it a try, but would like to hopeful preserve my /home directory. My only concern with this option is that if I move again I would like to move to x86_64 and my current system is i686. Does anybody know any potential problems that could occur with this kind of move.

Upgrading Arch would seem the simplest option except its a big jump to upgrade. From what I have read I have a few things to sort out with regards to Arch changes and its a major KDE version jump that I have read can also be a little problematic.

A Kmail2 migration is also something that I have to deal with regardless of what distro I decide to move to. I dont know yet if I am going to stick with Kmail yet.

The notes I have made about upgrading Arch are as follows:

make sure to install inetutils - http://www.archlinux.org/news/hostname- … inetutils/
Run pacman -S filesystem --force - http://www.archlinux.org/news/hostname- … inetutils/
delete /etc/profile.d/locale.sh before updating - http://www.archlinux.org/news/initscrip … -required/
updating your bootloader configuration to point to new kernal names - http://www.archlinux.org/news/changes-t … filenames/

The command I normally use to update my system is

yaourt -Syu --aur

I have done a full back of my personal files, does anybody have any opinions or suggestions?

ethail · 2011-12-29 15:35:39

What about reinstall Arch but this time using the x86_64 version? you'll keep your home folder without any need to change configurations and your system will be fully updated

You can also keep a list of your currently installed repo and AUR packages using pacman -Q and pacman -Qm (the first contains both) and that way install the same software

Last edited by ethail (2011-12-29 15:37:23)

ewaller · 2011-12-29 17:25:58

Or just update Arch. If something goes awry, then make up your mind.

I think it will go just fine...

Shark · 2011-12-29 17:47:52

If you try to update Arch then read Arch anouncements so you will not brake your system. Take into considerations all announcement to the date you last upgraded your system.

You can go to x86_64 but it would be better to just reinstall the system. Look herea for migrating to other architecture:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mi … installing

NaX_sa · 2011-12-29 21:31:22

When I first setup Arch I spent a lot of time learning and trying different things and read a lot of wiki docs, and I enjoyed building my system but I dont really want to do that all over again, not at the moment. I understand there are things you can do to make it easier like exporting a package list, but a re-install is not something I want to tackle now. @Shark thanks for the link I will bookmark this and keep it in mind down the road.

For the moment I am leaning towards update my current Arch setup and if that goes horribly wrong and I need to re-install I will consider looking around at things like Chakra or re-installing Arch x86_64.

I am currently documenting a upgrade path that I will run tomorrow and I am not 100% sure what order I should run things. Any suggestions.

I am currently think of the following based on the announcements made over the last few months:

# sudo rm /etc/profile.d/locale.sh
# sudo pacman -S filesystem --force
# yaourt -Syu --aur
# sudo pacman -S inetutils
# sudo rm -rf /var/tmp/kdecache-*
# sudo rm -rf /tmp/kde-*

Followed by updating my bootloader to point to re-named kernel filenames. I also still need to check if I don't already have inetutils installed.
Then reboot and hope for the best.

I have a feeling I should probably try to update pacman first and maybe yaourt as well, but I also assume if it is needed then they will tell me like in the past when doing updates.
I also think this is going to be a big upgrade, a good few GB of downloading.

ewaller · 2011-12-29 22:15:50

The plan looks reasonable. Perhaps step 0. should be pacman -Sy so all your indexes are up to date before you start.

Potomac · 2011-12-31 14:58:49

ewaller wrote:

The plan looks reasonable. Perhaps step 0. should be pacman -Sy so all your indexes are up to date before you start.

step 0 "pacman -Sy" is probably required before upgrading filesystem, otherwise an error will appear ( pacman will try to reinstall filesystem 2010 version instead of the 2011 version if we don't do the "pacman -Sy" before )

Last edited by Potomac (2011-12-31 15:02:09)

NaX_sa · 2012-01-04 23:13:22

I thought I should give some feed back on how it all turned out.

Well it was a very long process to upgrade Arch. It was almost 2G of packages that needed to be downloaded but, the biggest problem ended up being disk space. I did not notice I was running very low on my root partition. So I booted Parted Magic and used Gparted to resize my home to give my root more space. This took very long over 13 hours, mostly because I had to move my home partition's start point. I am very glad this worked, doing things like this makes me nervous.

The rest was a long process of getting lots of little things to work again and sorting out all the pacnew files and config changes. Major items being my wireless, PAE kernel and email. I ended up moving to Thunderbird with the help of a script I found called kmail2thunder.py. The kernel version number change to 3.x seemed to impact on a lot of things for some reason. I think its also to be expected when you jump so many kernel versions.

Happy new years and thanks for the advice.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-12-29 13:33:59

Upgrading after long gap or try something new?

#2 2011-12-29 15:35:39

Re: Upgrading after long gap or try something new?

#3 2011-12-29 17:25:58

Re: Upgrading after long gap or try something new?

#4 2011-12-29 17:47:52

Re: Upgrading after long gap or try something new?

#5 2011-12-29 21:31:22

Re: Upgrading after long gap or try something new?

#6 2011-12-29 22:15:50

Re: Upgrading after long gap or try something new?

#7 2011-12-31 14:58:49

Re: Upgrading after long gap or try something new?

#8 2012-01-04 23:13:22

Re: Upgrading after long gap or try something new?

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