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

SyXbiT
Member
From: Seattle, WA
Registered: 2008-06-28
Posts: 177
Website

How long have you been without a reinstall?

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.

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

moljac024
Member
From: Serbia
Registered: 2008-01-29
Posts: 2,676

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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.....


The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But if they tell you that I've lost my mind, maybe it's not gone just a little hard to find...

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

lucke
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2004-11-30
Posts: 4,018

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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 ;-)

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

marxav
Member
From: Gatineau, PQ, Canada
Registered: 2006-09-24
Posts: 386

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

Reinstall ??  What is that ?

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

daf666
Member
Registered: 2007-04-08
Posts: 470
Website

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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 smile

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

.:B:.
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2006-11-26
Posts: 5,819
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Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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 tongue.


Got Leenucks? :: Arch: Power in simplicity :: Get Counted! Registered Linux User #392717 :: Blog thingy

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

XFire
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2008-05-11
Posts: 192

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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.


There is a difference between bleeding [edge] and haemorrhaging. - Allan

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

lucke
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2004-11-30
Posts: 4,018

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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.

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

azleifel
Member
Registered: 2007-10-28
Posts: 486

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

[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 smile

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

meandean
Member
Registered: 2008-06-24
Posts: 67

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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.


Even a chicken can install Debian, when you put enough grain on the enter key.

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

Rumor
Member
From: Albany, NY
Registered: 2006-07-07
Posts: 638

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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.


Smarter than a speeding bullet
My Goodreads profile

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

SiD
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2006-09-21
Posts: 729

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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)

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#13 2008-07-16 18:22:03

slackhack
Member
Registered: 2004-06-30
Posts: 738

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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

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#14 2008-07-16 21:27:18

neotuli
Lazy Developer
From: London, UK
Registered: 2004-07-06
Posts: 1,204
Website

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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.


The suggestion box only accepts patches.

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#15 2008-07-16 22:32:31

quetzyg
Member
From: /home/quetzyg
Registered: 2006-08-03
Posts: 129

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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! wink


ZzZz...

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#16 2008-07-16 22:53:32

timetrap
Member
From: Here and There
Registered: 2008-06-05
Posts: 342
Website

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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

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#17 2008-07-16 22:55:24

Allan
Pacman
From: Brisbane, AU
Registered: 2007-06-09
Posts: 11,365
Website

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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

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#18 2008-07-17 06:54:55

clarence
Member
From: fremantle.au
Registered: 2005-10-12
Posts: 294

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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


fck art, lets dance.

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#19 2008-07-20 09:29:41

Leigh
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2004-06-25
Posts: 533

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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.


-- archlinux 是一个极好的 linux

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#20 2008-07-20 10:03:59

KimTjik
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-08-22
Posts: 715

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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.

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#21 2008-07-20 10:15:04

INCSlayer
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-09-06
Posts: 296
Website

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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


dovie andi se tovya sagain

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#22 2008-07-20 12:56:27

Kai
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2006-12-11
Posts: 27

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

[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 ;-)

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#23 2008-07-20 13:19:21

andre.ramaciotti
Member
From: Brazil
Registered: 2007-04-06
Posts: 649

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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. tongue


(lambda ())

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#24 2008-07-20 13:27:40

lang2
Member
Registered: 2006-02-10
Posts: 386

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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. ;-)

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#25 2008-07-20 14:03:58

kclive18
Member
From: Columbus, Ohio, USA
Registered: 2008-05-08
Posts: 219

Re: How long have you been without a reinstall?

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)


My Rigs:
- Mid-2007 iMac 20", Intel 2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2x1GB DDR2-800, 250GB SATA HDD, and...MIGHTY MOUSE!!! tongue, OSX 10.5 Leopard, ATI Radeon 2400XT 128MB
- HP zv6203cl, AMD Athlon 64 3200 S939, 2x512MB DDR400, 80GB 4200rpm HDD, ATI Radeon Xpress 200M 128MB, Arch i686 cool
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