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flootip

Member

Registered: 2025-05-31

Posts: 1

[SOLVED] Pacman -Syu deny upgrade same as Pacman -Sy?

I am still going through alot of the recommendations and found that running pacman -Sy alone is bad and to always do a full ugprade with pacman -Syu.
In the System maintenance wiki it says that, if pacman -Syu fails because of an error, it is the same as Pacman -Sy.
But is pacman -Syu also seen as Pacman -Sy if i do not do the upgrade and deny the confirmation for upgrade?

I am sorry if this has been asked before i was unable to find the thread.

Edit: sorry found it pacman -Sy <PACKAGE> is bad not pacman -Sy. pacman -Syu does imply pacman -Sy and I should be carefull not to install new packages until i did the full upgarde

Last edited by flootip (2025-05-31 20:51:41)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 74,307

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman -Syu deny upgrade same as Pacman -Sy?

pacman -Sy
pacman -S foo

will run you into the same issue and yes, "pacman -Syu" and then aborting is equivalent to  "pacman -Sy" and the next "pacman -S bar" will get you an unsupported partial update.

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mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,591

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman -Syu deny upgrade same as Pacman -Sy?

To visualize it, compare what happens in each case:

                   mirror       syncdb      installed
---------------------------------------------------------
initial             new          old           old
pacman -Syu         new          new           new
pacman -S smth      new          new           new
---------------------------------------------------------
initial             new          old           old
pacman -Sy          new          new           old
pacman -S smth      new          new         mix/fail
---------------------------------------------------------
initial             new          old           old
pacman -Syu → quit  new          new           old
pacman -S smth      new          new         miax/fail
---------------------------------------------------------
initial             new          old           old
pacman -Sy          new          new           old
pacman -Su          new          new           new
pacman -S smth      new          new           new

In all cases except full -Syu, the second line is the same. Anything done afterwards, `pacman -S smth` included, is going to have the same outcome.

The fourth case is of course not advised for daily use of pacman, but I included it to show how `pacman -Su` fixes the situation. This is relevant both to understand how to get out of the trap, and because in some rare circumstances you may need to actually do a `pacman -Sy` to fix another issue.

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