I’m not listening
I’m not listening
I’m not listening
I’m not listening
welcome 3dcase
SInce you are targeting first time EOS users, can I suggest you add a small section at the front of the guide, how maintenance tasks should be run before the desktop environment has loaded and why? The possible consequences of not doing it if something goes wrong.
How, when and which shortcut keys interrupt the boot process. Which account to log into, etc…
Since being able to recover from a nasty update, Timeshift could save a new user a lot of time. Just my 2 cents worth 
1 Like
No.
I don’t use timeshift as many others don’t. And it doesn’t ship on the iso.
2 Likes
I get you dont use Timeshift, and neither do I.
Your guide is for complete idiots in the Newbie category, what do they do if they don’t use Timeshit and the update craps it’s pants?
What about
Chroot and repair? This isn’t about fixing an install. And Timeshift doesn’t get installed by default.
What maintenance task would you feel needs to be included that I missed?
Great list and you didn’t ask me, but consider these:
Read before upgrading the system
Before upgrading, users are expected to visit the Arch Linux home page to check the latest news, or alternatively subscribe to the RSS feed or the arch-announce mailing list. Arch Wiki
And whatever the problem with the mirror was, read before -Syyu.
Passing two --refresh/-y flags forces pacman to refresh all package lists even if they are considered to be up to date. Issuing pacman -Syyu is an unnecessary waste of bandwidth in most cases, but can sometimes fix issues when switching from a broken mirror to a working mirror. See also Is -Syy safe?.
Warning: In most cases if you force refresh the pacman database, you will want to force downgrade any potentially too-new packages to correspond to the versions offered by the new mirror. This prevents issues where packages are inconsistently upgraded, leading to a partial update.
pacman -Syyuu
This is not necessary when using successfully syncing mirrors or checking timestamp of mirror’s lastsync file to ensure package lists are up to date.
Force pacman to refresh the package lists
pacman -Syyu… I understand the what not the why.
Thank you. Reading the news and Arch Linux home page is definitely a good idea.
I don’t understand what you mean about the mirror and passing the double y??
I guess that should mean to better use -Syyuu instead of -Syyu because the new mirror could have less recent packages than the one before hence some of your locally installed packages could be newer than on the new mirror (and thus sync DB). Not downgrading then would mean that you cloud be in a “partial upgrade” state…
2 Likes
- (a) Update Mirrors - Arch
- maintenance schedule - approximately once every 1-2 months
1-2 months is quite a long time. (In my opinion.)
This is not necessary when using successfully syncing mirrors or checking timestamp of mirror’s lastsync file to ensure package lists are up to date.
Here Syyu works. (But I do not recommend)
But, if mirror is not successfully syncing = problem.
1 Like
No, all the tasks are there. It is before starting the tasks.
Do you drop to TTY (Ctrl+Alt+F?) before you do these maintenance tasks?
There is no need to do that. This is not windoze, you can update while using your computer normally. You can even upgrade programs that are currently running. Processes that are loaded in memory will continue to run, including the DE (the old version).
For DE, once you reboot, you’ll be running the new version. On the off chance that there are any problems with currently running processes, closing and relaunching them will typically fix that (in the case of a DE, the easiest way to do that is to reboot).
No. The only time I use the TTY is when stuff is so broken that I cannot run a graphical session (which hasn’t happened in years).
4 Likes
I used to. I rarely do anymore though honestly.
And
That makes a lot of sense. Looks like I’m still learning these days too. I will append the initial posting to pass the double uu flag after mirrorlist updates. Thanks @EOS and @moson
I definitely don’t do this any more frequently than once a month, and rarely bother less than 2 months intervals if we’re being honest, so I actually thought the recommendation was conservative. Is there some Arch recommendation I’ve somewhere missed?
Thanks everyone!
1 Like
Downgrading packages after refreshing the mirror list is almost always an overkill. It’s mostly just a waste of time and bandwidth (since you’re going to upgrade them in a very near future anyway). The situation where you update the mirrors and you are already using an newer package than on the current mirrors is exceptionally rare: the only time that could happen is if you’ve just updated, then changed your mirror list, and switched to an outdated mirror and immediately then synced your local package database again and upgraded.
And that it happens to cause problems on top of that is even more rare.
In any case, if it causes errors, you can just run an update again with the double u and downgrade. Or wait until the mirrors are upgraded and then run the update again.
I’ve never done it. But the suggestion in the wiki makes sense as by others. I update mirrors so rarely I’m not sure it will make much of a difference for me personally.
Besides, if that ever happens, you will always get a warning that the currently installed package is newer than the one in the repos. So pay attention to that and you’ll be fine. You definitely shouldn’t routinely use -Syyuu.
I don’t have time to look into it further. It does say it’s more of a rare case and should not be relevant if using sucessfully syncing mirrors:
From the wiki:
I would venture to believe that’s more rare than not. I’ll see what I can find more about it later. Thanks for input all.
1 Like
This is the lightest and best way of ensuring correct sync.
I know only one utility that does this.
Because I have created it. 
If anyone knows a program/utility that does this check, please tell us.
I have used milcheck for checking mirrors.
And just a web browser. https://archlinux.org/mirrors/status/#successful
4 Likes
Wow, milcheck is awesome! Thanks for this great and useful find! 10/10 would recommend 
1 Like