How actually important is it to do system maitenence on arch?

Dunked0n · 2019-06-09 20:30:35

A lot of the stuff on the arch wiki for system maitenence looks big, is doing all of it really essental to the system running smoothly

jasonwryan · 2019-06-09 20:37:15

Like everything else in Arch, you do what makes sense for your setup.

Read through the wiki and then only implement what you determine is necessary.

Trilby · 2019-06-09 22:13:24

Much of the real content of that page is things to avoid rather than things you need to proactively do. This is, of course, all just my two cents which may not be worth that much:

1. Check for errors. Really, just don't ignore error messages. Sure it's good to glance at logs periodically even if nothing seems to be going wrong. Skim through for red flags. But depending on your use, I don't know how much of a regular routine this needs to be. Just respond to any problems/symptoms as soon as they arise rather than trying to brush them under the rug.

2. Backup. If you don't have backups, you don't have data. Whether you need a full system backup or not is up to you. I don't have much on my system that wouldn't be easy to regenerate. I just make sure the few things that are not so easy to reproduce are also copied to an off-site server.

3. Upgrading the system. This seems like the most valuable part of that wiki page to me. But still here, much of this is just things to avoid. Update regularly. If you want to check for orphans and get rid of them, that's nice for keeping things tidy, but it has (almost) no bearing on the stability of your system.

4. Use the package manager. Well, duh. This definitely isn't a "do" but a "don't". Don't use other package managers to install things to the root filesystem (except perhaps into /usr/local/).

5. Clean the filesystem. Just like dealing with orphans above, this is (almost) only to keep a tidy system.

6. Tips and Tricks. More don'ts: don't use crap software. As for the lts recommendation, I have no idea why that is on that wiki page.

So I think all of these can be summed up as "1. use common sense, if some data are important, keep a backup, and 2. don't do stupid things".

How important is system maintenance for using arch? It's absolutely essential. Do all the steps in that wiki page apply to maintaining your system? Probably not.

Last edited by Trilby (2019-06-09 22:17:10)

Arch Linux

#1 2019-06-09 20:30:35

How actually important is it to do system maitenence on arch?

#2 2019-06-09 20:37:15

Re: How actually important is it to do system maitenence on arch?

#3 2019-06-09 22:13:24

Re: How actually important is it to do system maitenence on arch?

Board footer