How long have you been without a reinstall?

SyXbiT · 2008-07-02 16:22:11

Having recently switched over to Arch from Debian, I'm curious about this.
I know that Arch is a rolling release, which, in theory should mean you never have to reinstall. But, how accurate is this in practise.
I'm sure sometimes there are problems with the upgrading. Surely upgrading versions of gnome or kde, or several different kernels could cause problems.
or when you manually install madwifi, but the new 2.6.25 includes ath5k etc..
Right now I have my laptop on Arch, and my Desktop on Lenny. Before switching over completely, I'd just like some more feedback, as once school starts up, the last thing I'll be able to do when my exams start is reinstall when stuff breaks.

moljac024 · 2008-07-02 16:29:27

Nope, haven't had any major trouble because of kernel or gnome upgrades.

Maybe if you go really long without updating, but I wouldn't know about that.....

lucke · 2008-07-02 16:36:38

In my home I have Arch running on three boxes, while I performed only one install procedure almost 4 years ago. During that time I changed disks and other hardware number of times, did a lot of experimenting and risky stuff too.

If you know your way around Arch and Linux, there's certainly no need to reinstall, whatever happens. That's not Windows ;-)

marxav · 2008-07-02 16:36:58

Reinstall ?? What is that ?

daf666 · 2008-07-02 16:41:37

I maintain several Arch workstations which are at least a year old installations, these are updated most of the time, and never had problems with that.
My Desktop on the other hand... I Installed Arch on in at least 4 times in the past year but only because I had to... added/removed RAID, changed RAID configurations.. etc.
I had a very unpleasant one with my fit-pc appliance though, after an update kernel panic.. and it totally sucks on an appliance - I had to reinstall then, but I guess if I was stubborn enough I could have saved it.

So I think the bottom line from my perspective is, that Arch is an adventure, but if you got skills you will get out of any tough situation

.:B:. · 2008-07-02 16:45:07

Server runs Arch since april 2007. Desktop since september 2007 or sth, because of the fugly bug that pacman had with the transition from 2.9 to 3.0.

Laptop runs Arch since april 2008, but then again, that's when I got it .

XFire · 2008-07-02 16:47:36

I had to reinstall a few days ago because I frakked up the init scripts... I had no idea that they were SO important, stupid pacman for letting me install the splashy ones but not reinstall the others...

Before that, it was running for around a month without any issues what so ever.

lucke · 2008-07-02 16:53:36

Well, to make it clear: if you fsck something up, making your Arch unbootable, you just boot from some decent admin livecd (like Recovery is Possible) and tackle that (eg. reinstall initscripts). Less hassle than reinstalling.

azleifel · 2008-07-02 16:59:00

[2007-10-19 21:23] synchronising package lists
[2007-10-19 21:23] starting full system upgrade

That's when I installed, and I reckon mine's a young installation compared with some. Since then the kernel has gone from 2.6.22 through to 2.6.25 and gnome from 2.20 to 2.22 with a few point upgrades in between. There have been no major issues at all, just the odd twinge due to being fairly close to the bleeding edge

meandean · 2008-07-02 17:21:56

if you dont want to reinstall then when something breaks you fix it. Of course, it may be quicker to reinstall.

I dont think I have ever HAD to reinstall debian even though I often do reinstall debian for a minty fresh do-over.

Rumor · 2008-07-02 19:21:27

SyXbiT wrote:

Having recently switched over to Arch from Debian, I'm curious about this.
I know that Arch is a rolling release, which, in theory should mean you never have to reinstall. But, how accurate is this in practise.

Arch has been on my computer from its first boot after I built it in August of last year. I've not re-installed once since that time. There was a thread, which I can't seem to locate on the age of folks' installations. I remember a few were several years old.

I've had no breakages due to upgrades even with the 'testing' repo enabled.

SiD · 2008-07-16 17:36:46

That are the first two lines of my pacman.log

[05/03/07 16:58] synchronizing package lists
[05/03/07 16:58] starting full system upgrade

Never reinstalled since that date.
I backup my Arch on a USB-Disk from time to time, but never needed the backup until now.

Last edited by SiD (2008-07-16 17:52:50)

slackhack · 2008-07-16 18:22:03

one reinstall since I first installed arch 4 years ago. but that was more because I wanted to than because I had to.

neotuli · 2008-07-16 21:27:18

It's not unheard of to update a system that sat dormant for a year and have everything go just fine, so for all intents and purposes you can assume you won't ever have to reinstall. Now, there are some cases when your own actions may necessitate a reinstall (I nuked my pacman db with a careless rm -fr a few years back) and it was quicker to reinstall than figure out what had been installed, but "I did something stupid" is really the only reason I've ever heard of a reinstall being necessary.

quetzyg · 2008-07-16 22:32:31

Hi there!

According to /var/log/pacman.log, I've got Arch installed more than a year now (my laptop's age).

[04/23/07 10:59] synchronizing package lists

Since then, I never had to reinstall the system.
I started using Fluxbox, then switched to Gnome, and I'm currently using XFCE. Since I'm curious about KDE4, I'll be switching to it when 4.1 hits the repos.
Concerning the kernel upgrades, I custom compile my own, and never had troubles what so ever.
I've got tree other machines running Arch. One headless server, and two workstations. All in the same situation (installed once, and updated once in a while).

You can't beat rolling release!

timetrap · 2008-07-16 22:53:32

I had MANY more problems with Ubuntu than I have had with Arch . . .

Allan · 2008-07-16 22:55:24

The only time I ever "reinstalled" Arch was after a hard-drive failure. Not many other choices there...

clarence · 2008-07-17 06:54:55

once in two years. though i didn't really need to. it was more to do with boredom over a long weekend.....

Leigh · 2008-07-20 09:29:41

When I switched from 32bit to x86_64 over a year ago. Before that, It was 2 or three years. I'm getting ready to do a fresh install on a new Lenovo Notebook for my Mother. I hope not too much has changed, but I'm looking forward to diving into it again.

KimTjik · 2008-07-20 10:03:59

My current install was made in February of 2008. Actually it wouldn't have been necessary (my first ever Arch installation was fine and had been so from early summer 2007, but the cause was "I did something stupid". I decided to do some changes to my partitions, but mixed up which file-system I had on which partition, hence ending in an resizing error from which I couldn't recover. Very stupid indeed.

Otherwise: never been forced to reinstall neither on my or others' computers on which I installed Arch.

INCSlayer · 2008-07-20 10:15:04

never had to reinstall but i have done it a couple of time usually because im bored or i want to check the differences in the new install disks

Kai · 2008-07-20 12:56:27

[12/27/06 16:50] synchronizing package lists
[12/27/06 16:50] starting full system upgrade

And running like hell... Except a few things ;-)

andre.ramaciotti · 2008-07-20 13:19:21

My installation has about one year, I reinstalled it when I changed the / HDD. I'm thinking of reinstalling it, I don't like very much how I divided my partitions, but that would require writing something like 3 DVDs of backup, so I'm procrastinating.

lang2 · 2008-07-20 13:27:40

My pacman.log says
[2007-10-27 17:17] synchronizing package lists
[2007-10-27 17:18] synchronizing package

But then again, that's when I replaced my old PC. ;-)

kclive18 · 2008-07-20 14:03:58

Not since May 1, when I took my maiden voyage into Arch for the first time installing it onto my laptop.

Last edited by kclive18 (2008-07-20 14:04:32)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-07-02 16:22:11

How long have you been without a reinstall?

#2 2008-07-02 16:29:27

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

#3 2008-07-02 16:36:38

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

#4 2008-07-02 16:36:58

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#5 2008-07-02 16:41:37

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#6 2008-07-02 16:45:07

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#7 2008-07-02 16:47:36

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#8 2008-07-02 16:53:36

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#9 2008-07-02 16:59:00

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#10 2008-07-02 17:21:56

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#11 2008-07-02 19:21:27

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#12 2008-07-16 17:36:46

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