Ever have to reinstall?

beretta · 2009-03-13 13:06:03

I've been enjoying my Arch installation for over a year now, and every time I work more with the os itself, the more I really like the Arch setup. Unfortunately, I've been having a problem building up over time, which is now so bad I absolutely have to do something about it. It takes over 10 minutes to boot my computer! (Thread here.) I'm now at a point where I've tried everything I know how to do, and am thinking seriously about just reinstalling the entire os rather than figuring out where the problem is coming from.

Given that Arch is supposed to be a rolling release, I'm a little disappointed that I have to resort to this. So how long do people usually spend debugging a serious problem before they give up and reinstall? How many have never had to reinstall at all?

rson451 · 2009-03-13 13:24:01

I have arch on 4 machines and have never reinstalled that I can remember. The first was installed in January 2007.

Last edited by rson451 (2009-03-13 13:24:15)

Agent69 · 2009-03-13 13:33:12

Beretta, from my experiences with Arch Linux, your situation is atypical. I would personally backup and reinstall.

japetto · 2009-03-13 15:20:04

I have Arch running on my desktop as well as on one server. I have only reinstalled once (in 3+ years) because I upgraded a HD and enjoy the install process. This of course, was after a proper backup

Last edited by japetto (2009-03-13 15:22:20)

mythus · 2009-03-13 15:21:42

I usually reinstall just to try out the different file methods (ie.. jfs, ext4, etc) but only reinstalled once to solve a minor issue (dolphin places menu got borked.. could live without or hack away in terminal to fix i suppose, but decided to reinstall instead). Each time I reinstall I get a better arch system (probably because I'm getting better at it) and learn more about what I like and don't like and want to have.

But yours is atypical I believe. Reinstalling I am certain is not the norm here. I have one archbox for production use that hasn't had a reinstall since I first built arch on it. My play box though.. hehe well... how else am I to learn if I don't break something lol.

You should take the advice I give to everyone though. ALWAYS MAKE BACKUPS. I have my whole computer backed up across several DVD's. (by whole computer I only count my important documents, files, music, pics.. not sys settings or whatever). Then reinstall lol. If you haven't gotten to try the new ext4 then here's your chance to do so! It flies compared to ext3.

Bob_Sheep · 2009-03-13 15:24:20

I've only ever had to reinstall arch once, but I can't blame arch for that. The primary hard drive died

You could try running something like bootchart to find out why it is booting so slowly.

beretta · 2009-03-13 15:29:21

That's one reason I've decided to do the reinstall-- I converted most of my partitions to ext4, but couldn't do that of course with the root partition or the /var partition which I've had as reiserfs. It'll be interesting to see what effect changing to ext4 has.

As for backing up, I'm planning on copying important files to a partition that won't be reformatted in the install. There's not all that much I need to back up, so it shouldn't be too big of a deal. Given how long it takes to boot up, I'm not sure I would want to keep an image on hand of the current configuration for most of the system anyway.

I'm glad to know this is atypical, but it sure bothers me that this even happened. I'd really like to know what caused the problem so that it can be avoided in the future-- I wondered if it came from not updating a config file somewhere with an upgrade along the way, but I couldn't find that many .pacnew's and none of them seemed to have any significant changes anyway. I've reposted the bootchart picture on that thread, so if anyone has any thoughts there I would appreciate it. It'll be a while still before I get around to doing a reinstall, and if anyone can save it before then I'll owe you a taco or six.

SkonesMickLoud · 2009-03-13 15:41:44

More than a few times. Can't blame Arch though. Near constant tinkering on my part + lack of patience = it's just easier to reinstall.

klixon · 2009-03-13 16:03:01

SkonesMickLoud wrote:

More than a few times. Can't blame Arch though. Near constant tinkering on my part + lack of patience = it's just easier to reinstall.

++

Dheart · 2009-03-13 16:17:46

Just once: My 9 year old Maxtor hdd was starting to fuck up (Frequent hdd lockups with "ReadOnly FS" frequent hdd errors) so I had to reinstall on new hdd. I used an usb stick to save some of my configuration files, though I could manage without 'em.

yingwuzhao · 2009-03-13 16:56:46

wow, certainly I am an atypical here.
I have been using Arch for only a few months, but I have reinstalled it for at least 20 times. Maybe, I am a little paranoid or maybe I am an idealist.

I have tried almost all different file systems, in the end, they almost make no difference in my daily use, finally stick with ext3 /root, xfs for /home. I have tried pretty much most of the Desktop Environments, each time I do that I always do a fresh reinstall, (why? because I can?) Eventually I throw away all the "garbage", ending up with Openbox with no panel.

Of course, I have made nice backups, not only my data but all the important config files, thus reinstallation and reconfiguration is really easy for me. After all those trials and experiments, and annoying my wife for spending too much time in from ArchLinux, I stopped doing that about 2 weeks ago.

Now I am spending most of time on some other research:D

EVRAMP · 2009-03-13 19:38:54

yingwuzhao wrote:

wow, certainly I am an atypical here.
I have been using Arch for only a few months, but I have reinstalled it for at least 20 times. Maybe, I am a little paranoid or maybe I am an idealist.
I have tried almost all different file systems, in the end, they almost make no difference in my daily use, finally stick with ext3 /root, xfs for /home. I have tried pretty much most of the Desktop Environments, each time I do that I always do a fresh reinstall, (why? because I can?) Eventually I throw away all the "garbage", ending up with Openbox with no panel.
Of course, I have made nice backups, not only my data but all the important config files, thus reinstallation and reconfiguration is really easy for me. After all those trials and experiments, and annoying my wife for spending too much time in from ArchLinux, I stopped doing that about 2 weeks ago.
Now I am spending most of time on some other research:D

I recommand creating new user for trying DE/WM, this way you will have a clean user's folder.

Misfit138 · 2009-03-13 20:11:50

japetto wrote:

I have Arch running on my desktop as well as on one server. I have only reinstalled once (in 3+ years) because I upgraded a HD and enjoy the install process. This of course, was after a proper backup

My experience exactly.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-03-13 13:06:03

Ever have to reinstall?

#2 2009-03-13 13:24:01

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#3 2009-03-13 13:33:12

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#4 2009-03-13 15:20:04

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#5 2009-03-13 15:21:42

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#6 2009-03-13 15:24:20

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#7 2009-03-13 15:29:21

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#8 2009-03-13 15:41:44

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#9 2009-03-13 16:03:01

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#10 2009-03-13 16:17:46

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#11 2009-03-13 16:56:46

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#12 2009-03-13 19:38:54

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

#13 2009-03-13 20:11:50

Re: Ever have to reinstall?

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