archlinux system update cycle

guorke · 2008-10-22 05:45:05

If I pacman -Syu after one year, what happened? and Why?

Some people say ,if you use archlinux ,you must do system update (pacman -Syu ) every two or three weeks. Is that right ? If yes ,why? and can I avoid this?

I did not search any article about this, so i post a new topic here, hope somebody can help me.

Thanks.

Last edited by guorke (2008-10-22 05:47:11)

ikithme · 2008-10-22 08:27:20

I actually tend to pacman -Syu every day... Its become a habit I love having the latest and greatest and it doesn't even take that long if you do it daily or even weekly I assume. So why not do it? I'm sure if you don't for a long time you will fall so far out of date that an application may not be supported anymore but will still stay on the system and mess things up?

leo2501 · 2008-10-22 10:08:49

me too, once a day... (maybe twice, lol) i have a script telling me how many updates are available

Kooothor · 2008-10-22 10:40:59

leo2501 wrote:

me too, once a day... (maybe twice, lol) i have a script telling me how many updates are available

Yeah me too, in my conky.
I'd hate knowing I can upgrade something and not doing it !

As for guorke, maybe doing a nice fresh install would be better.
But I read that some ppl do -Syu after more than a year and do not encounter so much problems..

ikithme · 2008-10-22 10:44:17

How do you set up a conky?

ashyanbhog · 2008-10-22 15:24:23

If the system is connected to net, its not wise to run it without updating for so long. There'll be too many unapplied security fixes, and atleast theoritically the machine is vunerable.

One year may look like a long time to us Archers(?), but other than a few file conflicts, I guess there should be no other drama,

Xyne · 2008-10-22 15:30:41

Kooothor wrote:

leo2501 wrote:
me too, once a day... (maybe twice, lol) i have a script telling me how many updates are available
Yeah me too, in my conky.

ikithme wrote:

How do you set up a conky?

EDIT
At first I took the question to mean "how do you set up package update info in Conky", which is why I had only posted the following three links.
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57291
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=37284
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=53761

For information about setting up Conky in general, take a look at the Wiki page and the Conky configs thread here on the forum:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Conky
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=39906

Last edited by Xyne (2008-10-22 15:43:49)

Mr.Elendig · 2008-10-22 15:40:54

guorke wrote:

If I pacman -Syu after one year, what happened? and Why?
Some people say ,if you use archlinux ,you must do system update (pacman -Syu ) every two or three weeks. Is that right ? If yes ,why? and can I avoid this?
I did not search any article about this, so i post a new topic here, hope somebody can help me.
Thanks.

You can ignore updates for a year, but you will get probems if you want to install new packages, and when you finally do a -Syu, then you will have a lot of work to do before it's safe to reboot.

denisfalqueto · 2008-10-22 15:41:29

It depends very much on what happened in the year that you didn't update.

The biggest problems are those updates which require intervention from the user. There are situations in which you must change some files or delete others manually. So, in this cases, if you skip the update which required it and gone for some more recent one which relied on that, you may have problems.

That's why you should avoid staying a long time without updating. Or, at least, you should update every time you see a news item saying that some update will need manual intervention. In the end, you must be in touch with the distribution status any time, even if you don't update often.

timetrap · 2008-10-22 16:34:41

This was posted the yesterday: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57444

oht wrote:

For some reason or another i have been neglecting my Arch installation for the past year or so. Becoming a digital DJ caused me to focus on windows and mac, and busy with schoolwork, I didn't have much time anymore to tinker around with linux as I used to love doing.
Why is arch awesome?
After booting up my arch installation that probably hasn't ran for about 6 months, I fired up X and instantly ran pacman -Syu (after following the klibc upgrade instructions i saw on the homepage). Everything worked, Nothing broke. A 6 month update executed perfectly.
Here's to a great package manager!

Might I also remind you of the excellent search functionality of this forum. The above link USED to be the first result for "pacman one year" until yours displaced it.

The only error with pacman in the last year was last week. You need to delete you asm folder in klibc:

#rm -rf /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm/

Then pacman -Syu as normal.

Xinix · 2008-10-22 17:14:56

What I was wondering... Pacman makes it possible to run pre or post-install scripts, right? So why was the klibc issue not tackled by including a little script that took care of the deletion?

Rumor · 2008-10-22 17:44:47

I think it is up to the individual user. You can "Syu" once a day, once a week, once a month, or never. If your system is working fine and you are happy with the software you have any don't care about updates, then it is fine as is.

I tend to "Syu" once a week or so. Sometimes I forget one one machine or another and it will be a month or more. I know others tend to "Syu" every fifteen minutes after a new version of a package is announced, hoping to find it in the repo already

This is Arch. You decide what works best for you.

SomeGuyDude · 2008-10-22 17:50:30

I didn't set up my package update script in Conky and was under the impression I'd had no updates for about a week. Out of curiosity I ran a pacman -Syu and holy crap there was 600MB in updates. I was downright angry at my conky for not alerting me.

ghostHack · 2008-10-22 18:26:12

Xinix wrote:

What I was wondering... Pacman makes it possible to run pre or post-install scripts, right? So why was the klibc issue not tackled by including a little script that took care of the deletion?

Because pacman looks for file conflicts before it installs any packages, and if it finds any it exits without touching the system. This means that the install script in the klibc package would not get a chance to run.

guorke · 2008-10-23 07:59:07

I hope arch will resolve these question (like require intervention from the user when update system after a long time).
such as i can update system to 2xxx from 2008 smoothly.
Is that possible?

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-22 05:45:05

archlinux system update cycle

#2 2008-10-22 08:27:20

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#3 2008-10-22 10:08:49

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#4 2008-10-22 10:40:59

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#5 2008-10-22 10:44:17

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#6 2008-10-22 15:24:23

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#7 2008-10-22 15:30:41

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#8 2008-10-22 15:40:54

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#9 2008-10-22 15:41:29

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#10 2008-10-22 16:34:41

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#11 2008-10-22 17:14:56

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#12 2008-10-22 17:44:47

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#13 2008-10-22 17:50:30

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#14 2008-10-22 18:26:12

Re: archlinux system update cycle

#15 2008-10-23 07:59:07

Re: archlinux system update cycle

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