Arch Linux

bokal

Member

Registered: 2010-12-15

Posts: 30

Start over again

Hi,

This question probably have already been poster but I can't find answer anywhere so...

Here is my story:

I use Arch for more than one year now, and of course I've installed sooooooo many things, and stuff from AUR too, that I'm totally lost about who does what and what can I remove or not.

So I would like to start again from scratch, but not completely. I would like to go back to the state that you should get right after the first update after a fresh install.
But I don't want to go through the install process again, and I don't want to lose all the configs that are in my home folder.

So, is there any magic pacman command or some steps to go back to the early state of life of an Arch?

Thanks, I hope I made my question clear.

Joel

portix

Member

Registered: 2009-01-13

Posts: 757

Re: Start over again

You could remove all packages that are not in core, just comment all repositories except for core in /etc/pacman.conf, run pacman -Syy to update your package database and then remove all foreign packages with

pacman -Rscn $(pacman -Qqm)

---

dwb

bokal

Member

Registered: 2010-12-15

Posts: 30

Re: Start over again

That sounds very good, I'm gonna try that soon and report.

Thanks!

bokal

Member

Registered: 2010-12-15

Posts: 30

Re: Start over again

It tells me that he's trying to remove pacman which hopefully is on HoldPkg.

And I can't find why. Neither Pacman is in the pacman -Qqm list, nor any of it's requirements...

Any idea?

[bokal@GreenLight ~]$ sudo pacman -Rscn $(pacman -Qqm)
Vérification des dépendances...
Avertissement: cycle de dépendances détecté:
Avertissement: lib32-gcc-libs sera supprimé après sa dépendance gcc-libs-multilib
Avertissement: pacman est indiqué comme paquet à conserver (HoldPkg).
Une des cibles est un paquet à conserver (HoldPkg). Voulez-vous continuer ? [o/N]

Yes, it's in french...

portix

Member

Registered: 2009-01-13

Posts: 757

Re: Start over again

You could try to first remove gcc-libs-multilib or replace it with gcc-libs before removing all other packages.

---

dwb

Dastingo

Member

Registered: 2011-01-15

Posts: 41

Re: Start over again

It looks like you have disabled the [core] repository, check your /etc/pacman.conf that the repo is not commented out then update the database.

bokal

Member

Registered: 2010-12-15

Posts: 30

Re: Start over again

It looks like you have disabled the [core] repository, check your /etc/pacman.conf that the repo is not commented out then update the database.

Nope...

[bokal@GreenLight ~]$ sudo pacman -Syy
:: Synchronisation des bases de données de paquets...
core                     37,4K  152,1K/s 00:00:00 [######################] 100%
[bokal@GreenLight ~]$

I will try what portix said as soon as I'm ready to really break my system.

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,688

Re: Start over again

But I don't want to go through the install process again

That's about 20 minutes, depending on your internet connection. You can back up your /etc folder and reintegrate relevant files later. You should also start having your personal logfile where you take notes about changes you did. It seems annoying at first, but every time you are in a situation you don't know anymore what's what you'll be glad to have it.

I don't want to lose all the configs that are in my home folder.

Back them up. They should fit on even the tiniest USB stick.

Kwpolska

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2010-11-01

Posts: 5

Website

Re: Start over again

Re-enable [multilib].