Arch Linux

Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

What pacman is: Pacman is a very versatile package manager with a wide array of available switches to perform nearly every conceivable function of package management.

What pacman is not: Pacman is not an automatic system maintenance program. System maintenance is left to you, the power user. Pacman will not upgrade, modify, nor change system configuration files.
In short, Pacman will not automatically reconfigure your system for you. (This is a k.i.s.s. feature, not a flaw.)

Use the --overwrite switch sparingly, if you know exactly what you are doing.
Forcibly overwriting files can potentially cause varying degrees of breakage. There are times when it is perfectly safe, and is even recommended, in specific circumstances. Check the Arch home page for Latest News, to see if an --overwrite option is advised for a package upgrade issue.

Think before upgrading.
The power user must be prepared to set aside some time for attention to system upgrade. Arch is a bleeding-edge, rolling release, and it is designed to be used as such..However, keep in mind that system upgrade is an interactive process, sometimes requiring user intervention, which leads us to the next point,

Read before upgrading.
Check the front page Arch news, Announcement lists, and optionally the forum and Mailing Lists, before hitting enter. Bookmark them. The Arch devs and community are quite vigilant about providing information and possible known issues during an upcoming upgrade. Take advantage of these resources.

Read pacman's output while upgrading.
The devs have placed pertinent information in the package install output for a reason. The 'fire and forget' mentality may be ok for some users, but if you are still learning the ropes, it is safest to pay more than the usual attention to pacman's output.

Most importantly...
Using these guidelines will prepare you for more seamless upgrades in the future.
The more often you perform upgrades, the faster you will become accustomed to them, and the general process of Arch system maintenance. Arch does not require an unbalanced amount of 'work' to keep it running, merely an eye for details that will be acquired by good upgrading practices.

We must walk before we can run. Therefore, get familiar with pacman (read the man page), system upgrade and maintenance from a 'bottom-to-top' approach as opposed to a 'top-down' approach.

Enjoy, and welcome to Arch.

Last edited by WorMzy (2020-11-05 23:27:52)

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DonVla

Member

From: Bonn, Germany

Registered: 2007-06-07

Posts: 997

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

and suscribe to the arch-announce mailing list

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Read also about downgrading packages.

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Great post, Misfit!

Could you also add something to the effect of "Check the front page news, or arch-announce lists frequently" ?

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Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Great post, Misfit!

Could you also add something to the effect of "Check the front page news, or arch-announce lists frequently" ?

Thanks...
...and done.

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creslin

Member

Registered: 2008-10-04

Posts: 241

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Maybe emphasize SUBSCRIBE TO THIS MAILING LIST IF YOU ENABLE [TESTING] in the "Read before upgrading" section.

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abhidg

Member

From: City of Kol

Registered: 2006-07-01

Posts: 184

Website

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

If you've time, then subscribe to it anyway (even if not using [testing]) since it
gives a look-out on the possible transitions in the next fortnight into [extra] or
[core], so you get to know what's coming before a pacman -Syu.

nogoma

Member

From: Cranston, RI

Registered: 2006-03-01

Posts: 217

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Read before upgrading
Check the front page Arch news, Announcement lists, and optionally the forum and Mailing Lists, before hitting enter. Bookmark them. The Arch devs and community are quite vigilant about providing information and possible known issues during an upcoming upgrade. Take advantage of these resources.

Absolutely the best advice. While every possible issue might not make it in here, pretty much anything major and obvious does (klibc upgrade, etc.). My upgrade command:

[nogoma@alfheim[3268]:~]% alias|grep pacup
pacup='pacup.rb && sudo pacman -Suy'

Where pacup.rb is a simple script that pulls and displays any announcements from the Latest News RSS feed since my last full system upgrade. Great for catching any announcements I missed in the forums or mailing lists!

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haxit

Member

From: /home/haxit

Registered: 2008-03-04

Posts: 1,247

Website

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Great post

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bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

And yet people still ask the same questions... Ahhh, the pointlessness of life...
Perhaps this thread will be read by only those that search before posting anyway

Acecero

Member

Registered: 2008-06-21

Posts: 1,373

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

It's an awesome set of pacman rules, Misfit. I like it. Hopefully people will get a better idea of using pacman before commenting.

While you are at it, you were mentioning that "Pacman will not upgrade, modify, nor change system configuration files." Shouldn't you be more specific, like adding more information about configuring with .pacnew/.pacsave files? I can see what you are originally talking about, but some others might not, especially new users imo.

takedown

Member

From: Argentina

Registered: 2008-08-31

Posts: 219

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

nogoma: can you post the code the pacup.rb script?

thanks, I'd like to implement it.

pete-the-meat

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2008-08-14

Posts: 26

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

I wish I had read this yesterday before I did -Syuf - how much easier my life would have been

lesson learnt

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That looks like a much better way of trying to do what I was trying to do than trying to do what I was trying to do...

rson451

Member

From: Annapolis, MD USA

Registered: 2007-04-15

Posts: 1,233

Website

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Sticky?

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Dieter@be

Forum Fellow

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-11-05

Posts: 2,001

Website

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

My upgrade command:

[nogoma@alfheim[3268]:~]% alias|grep pacup
pacup='pacup.rb && sudo pacman -Suy'

Where pacup.rb is a simple script that pulls and displays any announcements from the Latest News RSS feed since my last full system upgrade. Great for catching any announcements I missed in the forums or mailing lists!

Very useful.. Better then my way of checking my feed reader before doing an upgrade
Can you show us the code?

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4 8 15 16 23 42

Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Sticky?

Stickied.

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clrtxt

Member

Registered: 2008-10-19

Posts: 3

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

I've updated the relevant section of the Beginner's Guide to include your advice about reading the News and Mailing Lists before upgrading.  Good stuff

Last edited by clrtxt (2008-10-20 04:02:30)

nogoma

Member

From: Cranston, RI

Registered: 2006-03-01

Posts: 217

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

My upgrade command:

[nogoma@alfheim[3268]:~]% alias|grep pacup
pacup='pacup.rb && sudo pacman -Suy'

Where pacup.rb is a simple script that pulls and displays any announcements from the Latest News RSS feed since my last full system upgrade. Great for catching any announcements I missed in the forums or mailing lists!

Very useful.. Better then my way of checking my feed reader before doing an upgrade
Can you show us the code?

Updated version found a few posts down
Sure, although it's pretty simplistic. Particularly, I wrote this for my personal use, so stuff like the pacman log path is hard coded, and it assumes the log messages are in english. Also, it just goes from the last time of you -Syu'd, regardless of whether you cancelled the upgrade or not. Feel free to tailor to your own needs! Only requirement is ruby.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'rss'
require 'time'

last_update = File.open('/var/log/pacman.log', 'r') do |f|
  Time.parse f.readlines.select { |i| i =~ /starting full/ }.last
end

feed = RSS::Parser.parse('http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/')
items = feed.items.select { |i| i.pubDate >= last_update }
if items.count == 0
  puts "No news items since last upgrade at #{last_update}"
else
  items.each do |fi|
    puts "#{fi.title.chomp} @ #{fi.pubDate}\n\t#{fi.description}"
  end
end

Last edited by nogoma (2008-12-05 13:54:57)

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Xyne

Administrator/PM

Registered: 2008-08-03

Posts: 6,965

Website

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Suggestion:
Change this post's subject to "ABOUT PACMAN AND UPGRADES" and include the content of this post: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=56373

Last edited by Xyne (2008-11-15 13:05:37)

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ArchArael

Member

Registered: 2005-06-14

Posts: 504

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

@nogoma Thank you...your script is really useful.

Profjim

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 658

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Sheez, next thing you'll be asking us to post bugreports before getting that clever bot at bbs.archlinux.org to do our troubleshooting for us...

Dieter@be

Forum Fellow

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-11-05

Posts: 2,001

Website

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Sure, although it's pretty simplistic. Particularly, I wrote this for my personal use, so stuff like the pacman log path is hard coded, and it assumes the log messages are in english. Also, it just goes from the last time of you -Syu'd, regardless of whether you cancelled the upgrade or not. Feel free to tailor to your own needs! Only requirement is ruby.

It's maybe simple, but does the job just fine for me Thanks
One little suggestion: maybe you could incorporate a 'safety buffer', eg instead of making last_update the exact time of the last update, you could make it the time of the last update minus one day/week or so.  Because messages from shortly before the last upgrade could still be relevant.  Also because the time in the logfile is not the exact moment you ran pacup.rb, you could miss a message because of this race-condition.

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tlaloc

Member

From: Lower Saxony

Registered: 2006-05-12

Posts: 359

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Actually, it would be much better to post an edited version of Misfit's OP (perhaps under a slightly different name), to close the topic immediatedly, and to sticky that. After all, this is directly adressed to people who simply don't read enough. They will read even less when you expect them to crawl through >20 comments.

kaola_linux

Member

From: Bacolod City/Philippines

Registered: 2008-09-23

Posts: 513

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Very informative....I always upgrade my arch system if updates are available...heheh

So far no crash or whatsoever, but this post changed my mind...Thanks alot...

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nogoma

Member

From: Cranston, RI

Registered: 2006-03-01

Posts: 217

Re: PLEASE READ BEFORE UPGRADING

Found this thread again after it was linked from yet another 'please have pacman tell me what's going on' thread; here's the latest version of my pacup.rb (incorporating a couple of suggestions from up above):

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'rss'
require 'time'

DEFAULT_LOG_FILE = '/var/log/pacman.log'
FEED_URL = 'http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/'
BUFFER_MINS = 60*24
@log = nil

def log_file
  if @log.nil?
    @log = DEFAULT_LOG_FILE
    File.open('/etc/pacman.conf', 'r') do |f|
      lf = f.readlines.select { |i| i !~ /^#/ and i =~ /LogFile/ }
      unless lf.empty?
        _log = lf[0].split(/=/)[1].strip
        @log = _log if File.exists? _log and File.readable? _log
      end
    end
  end
  @log
end

unless File.exists? log_file and File.readable? log_file
  raise "Unable to locate or read log file #{log_file}"
end

last_update = File.open(log_file, 'r') do |f|
  Time.parse f.readlines.select { |i| i =~ /starting full/ }.last
end

last_update = last_update - 60*BUFFER_MINS

feed = RSS::Parser.parse(FEED_URL)
items = feed.items.select { |i| i.pubDate >= last_update }
if items.count == 0
  puts "No news items since #{last_update}"
else
  items.each do |fi|
    puts <<EOI
#{fi.title.chomp} @ #{fi.pubDate}
#{fi.description}

EOI
  end
end

You can set a window of time to include log messages for (BUFFER_MINS, set to a days worth of messages before your last full upgrade), and it now parses pacman.conf to find the location of your logfile if you've set a custom one. Still english-specific, though...

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