Arch Linux

Kalidor

Member

Registered: 2004-06-18

Posts: 80

Upgrade after >2 years

Hi all,

I just managed to do a complete upgrade (pacman -Syu) of Arch on my old laptop (which I seldom use). It went pretty smoothly, given that the last such upgrade was about 26 months ago!

There were some problems, of course, and I had to use the "--force" option. Here's the summary:
To upgrade "pacman", I had to download the package "by hand", as there is now some prefix (-i686) on the file names of which the old version of pacman didn't know about.
After upgrading the Kernel and udev (which I did first, because I was scared of doing everything at once), the laptop wouldn't boot anymore as the device names of the hard disks had been changed from "hda*" to "sda*". Fortunately, grub let me boot from the correct device and I got far enough to be able to edit "menu.lst" and "fstab". Then, there was trouble at the initialization of runlevel 3. I could boot in single-user mode, though, and the problem went away after I completed the upgrade (with -Syu). Xorg wouldn't start at first, but this was quickly dealt with by commenting out a bothersome line in xorg.conf (concerning my video card, an ATI mach64).
The "network profile" menu didn't work anymore. After some time, I found out that this was due to /etc/network-profiles having been renamed to /etc/network.d.
Finally, there was an annoying problem with the keyboard in X. The "Alt Gr" (right Alt) key didn't work anymore, which on my german keyboard means that it is not possible to type @ and |. I still don't know what the problem with it is, but invoking "setkbd" (without arguments or with "de") once in the terminal or in .xinitrc solves the matter. I am sure to have all the right options in xorg.conf ("pc-105", "de", ...). Any hints on this are welcome, of course.

What is your experience with infrequent upgrades?

Last edited by Kalidor (2008-10-13 16:15:39)

Profjim

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 658

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

Wow! Great story, thanks for the details.

Kooothor

Member

From: Paname

Registered: 2008-08-02

Posts: 228

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

Maybe a more simple way would have been to save your datas, and do a clean new install from ftp with latest snapshot, no ?

But you seem like a guy who like to get into trouble, am I wrong ?

---

ktr

SomeGuyDude

Member

Registered: 2008-10-09

Posts: 271

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

I'm an update addict. It takes a lot of effort for me not to run the ol' pacman -Syu every half hour.

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And in the midst of such perfection,
I can't help but feel diseased.

Roberth

Member

From: The Pale Blue Dot

Registered: 2007-01-12

Posts: 894

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

I'm an update addict. It takes a lot of effort for me not to run the ol' pacman -Syu every half hour.

Me to, I pacman -Syu every 30 min or so.

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Use the Source, Luke!

SomeGuyDude

Member

Registered: 2008-10-09

Posts: 271

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

I'm an update addict. It takes a lot of effort for me not to run the ol' pacman -Syu every half hour.

Me to, I pacman -Syu every 30 min or so.

And thanks to you, I did it just now and wouldn't ya know it there's a kernel upgrade. Now we're on 2.27 like my old Ubuntu Intrepid beta. Woot.

---

And in the midst of such perfection,
I can't help but feel diseased.

pointone

Wiki Admin

From: Waterloo, ON

Registered: 2008-02-21

Posts: 379

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

Hooray!

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M*cr*s*ft: Who needs quality when you have marketing?

dav7

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 674

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

LOL

Hint: Timestamps

-dav7

Last edited by dav7 (2008-10-14 07:10:56)

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Windows was made for looking at success from a distance through a wall of oversimplicity. Linux removes the wall, so you can just walk up to success and make it your own.
--
Reinventing the wheel is fun. You get to redefine pi.

Kalidor

Member

Registered: 2004-06-18

Posts: 80

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

Maybe a more simple way would have been to save your datas, and do a clean new install from ftp with latest snapshot, no ?

But you seem like a guy who like to get into trouble, am I wrong ?

Not really. Of course I reckoned that the upgrade wouldn't work out, in which case I could still have made the new install. And with /home being on a separate partition, it wouldn't have involved much data saving.

The main problem that I have with frequent upgrades is that I need to get things done on the computer. It doesn't suffice that most of the time, 95% say, an "-Syu" upgrade works without or little intervention on my side. The remaining 5% still discourage me.

Also, considering that I use most of the installed software only infrequently, I find regular complete upgrades rather uneconomic. What's the point in upgrading a piece of software several times in-between using it?

SiC

Member

From: Liverpool, England

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 430

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

I'm an update addict. It takes a lot of effort for me not to run the ol' pacman -Syu every half hour.

Me to, I pacman -Syu every 30 min or so.

I cheat, I have a cron job that does it for me

b9anders

Member

Registered: 2007-11-07

Posts: 691

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

cool story. nice piece of troubleshooting as well. well done.

krigun

Member

From: Norway

Registered: 2005-06-06

Posts: 122

Website

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

I cheat, I have a cron job that does it for me

Do you also have a cron job that downloads your "daily websites", and reads them for you? Because.. for me, it would sort of be the same thing

News, that is.

Last edited by krigun (2008-10-16 09:04:29)

Heller_Barde

Member

Registered: 2008-04-01

Posts: 245

Re: Upgrade after >2 years

you guys are the ones blocking all the bandwidth when i try to pacman -Syu! you chatterboxes, woolgathers, cream puffs (cute swearwords courtesy of thedailywtf.com)

(no real offense intended of course )