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#26 2020-06-28 17:28:38

cirrus
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From: Glasgow Scotland
Registered: 2012-08-24
Posts: 340
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Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

eschwartz wrote:

What is an "informant pkg"?

Sorry I’m using phone to post hence no hyperlink to the pkg in question, I agree the code is a bit of a mess and I’m glad that you gave op better advice.

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#27 2020-10-18 22:39:34

icar
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From: Catalunya
Registered: 2020-07-31
Posts: 442

Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

eschwartz wrote:

That software scares me. Why is it using a pacman hook to force pacman -Syu to fail after having done the -y part but not the -u part? There are other programs which do something similar, but only by wrapping pacman and checking if you read the news before finally running pacman -Syu.

This software on the other hand is vulnerable to partial updates, by default/design.

What are these other programs? I am interested as right now I use it (and so far, no problems because I make sure to read the news and then always perform the update).

About the unattended upgrades. You could also make it send all the pacman output through mail (attach a .txt) and in the mail body highlight things like "optional dependency mentioned" or "pacnew file appeared".
This means you should be available to perform mantainance every time this happens.

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#28 2020-10-18 23:00:32

eschwartz
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Registered: 2014-08-08
Posts: 4,097

Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

For example, pacmatic, in the official repos.

It also greps the mailing list to tell you how many recent emails mention packages you have installed.

It also prompts you for pacnew at the end.

Last edited by eschwartz (2020-10-18 23:02:24)


Managing AUR repos The Right Way -- aurpublish (now a standalone tool)

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#29 2020-10-19 07:06:40

icar
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From: Catalunya
Registered: 2020-07-31
Posts: 442

Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

eschwartz wrote:

For example, pacmatic, in the official repos.

It also greps the mailing list to tell you how many recent emails mention packages you have installed.

It also prompts you for pacnew at the end.

Thanks. Last commit is 5 years old. Is this software working alright?

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#30 2020-10-20 00:07:33

eschwartz
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Registered: 2014-08-08
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Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

I don't see why not.

Did you try it?


Managing AUR repos The Right Way -- aurpublish (now a standalone tool)

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#31 2020-10-20 09:01:08

icar
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From: Catalunya
Registered: 2020-07-31
Posts: 442

Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

eschwartz wrote:

I don't see why not.

Did you try it?

No, I did not. I wanted to ask first. I'll keep this on my radar till I see someone that has been using this recently enough to know it's alright.

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#32 2020-10-20 10:41:56

Awebb
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Registered: 2010-05-06
Posts: 6,275

Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

icar wrote:
eschwartz wrote:

I don't see why not.

Did you try it?

No, I did not. I wanted to ask first. I'll keep this on my radar till I see someone that has been using this recently enough to know it's alright.

Do some research! The package maintainer is the author. The package has been rebuilt three months ago. The only reported package bug is a missing dependency (pacman-contrib). The script is only a few lines long.

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#33 2020-10-20 11:26:30

eschwartz
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Registered: 2014-08-08
Posts: 4,097

Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

icar wrote:

No, I did not. I wanted to ask first. I'll keep this on my radar till I see someone that has been using this recently enough to know it's alright.

You make it sound like some fearsome threat to the well-being of your arch system. I'm not sure why.

...

Programs that work fine do not suddenly stop working due to old age.


Managing AUR repos The Right Way -- aurpublish (now a standalone tool)

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#34 2020-10-20 13:26:15

Trilby
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Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,449
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Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

eschwartz wrote:

Programs that work fine do not suddenly stop working due to old age.

And that's the key difference between programs, and programmers.


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#35 2020-10-20 19:59:45

icar
Member
From: Catalunya
Registered: 2020-07-31
Posts: 442

Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

eschwartz wrote:

You make it sound like some fearsome threat to the well-being of your arch system. I'm not sure why.

...

Programs that work fine do not suddenly stop working due to old age.


Because I'm very cautious with programs related to my package manager as it is one of the key things that need to work flawlessly to have a stable system.

...

Well, since it's a wrapper of pacman, and pacman gets updated, you understand why I might fear...

Last edited by icar (2020-10-20 20:00:32)

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#36 2020-10-20 20:08:43

Trilby
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Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,449
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

icar wrote:

since it's a wrapper of pacman, and pacman gets updated, you understand why I might fear...

Not really.

If pacman changed in a way such that an old and not-updated wrapper stopped working, it wouldn't stop pacman from working.  So in the abolute worst case, the wrapper would crap out, and you'd be back in the same position you were in before you started using the wrapper: no harm done.


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#37 2022-11-29 10:27:13

4internetanonymity
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Registered: 2009-07-09
Posts: 56

Re: [SOLVED] Risks of automatic/unattended upgrades (w/o manual work)

For those who have tried this - curious about your experience. Also curious what unattended-upgrades in Debian in missing that Arch would have (if you implemented unattended upgrades for it). And yes, the main issue seems to be "when does the kernel need to be upgraded" aka "when does the system need to be rebooted".

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