Checklist in a case an EndeavourOS update has issues

Hi, this is a trully newbie question, but I couldn’t figure it out myself.

So the problem is the last update (172 packages). After installing them one of my app stops open (the app is “bauh”).
I has been reading articles about EndeavourOS for quite a while, trying to increase my knowledge in Linux and related subjects, so I expeted such a problem, and I did a system backup using Timeshift before upgrade.
And I was able to restore the last point and everything works again.

But the question is:
What should I do next?
Now I have 172 updates and I should do something about it. But I don’t know how to localize the problem. How and where to report about it. Or how to test all environment after each update.

I would appreciate your help, maybe you can give me some sort of a checklist on how to update EndeavourOS properly, how to check system and apps after that and what to do in a case of some problems.
Please, share your experience on how you are dealing with updates in a case them broke something.

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See that, it’s important for this time:


But usually you should just do:

yay

Or separately upstream and than AUR packages if you prefer, like that:

sudo pacman -Syu
yay -Sua

If there are are no errors in the terminal output - you should be fine :upside_down_face:

If there were Kernel / video drivers update - you should reboot (but :enos: should notify you about that both in terminal and system notification)


Usually just go to TTY and try to update again / see if there are some errors and you can fix them.

If that fails and you can’t boot, go to live usb and chroot, then try to update / restore Timeshift, see bottom of that page:
https://discovery.endeavouros.com/applications/update-troubles-meet-timeshift/2019/11/

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Thanks! Just to clarify: I should do update, reboot (it is asking me), then
yay -S $(pacman -Qoq /usr/lib/python3.9) --answerclean All
Is that right?

I haven’t updated myself yet, but to my understanding it should be:

  1. Update
  2. Rebuilt Python stuff
  3. Reboot

Otherwise, according to some latest topics you potentially end up with unbootable or broken system, depending on your setup :upside_down_face:

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Oh, it’s great :slightly_smiling_face: So that is the best solution here? Where can I read about issues on last updates? How long should I wait before update? Is it safer strategy to newbie to wait for some time before update?

Here on main page of forum for instance, a lot of topics with keywords like borken / update / python, well…including your topic here :laughing:

It doesn’t matter really, you can update anytime you want, it’s just sometimes very rarely things like that can happen, which require some manual intervention, usually you’ll see heads up here on forum :upside_down_face:

or on main page of Arch news

https://archlinux.org/

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Yes.

Many packages are built on top of python, a major version change (ie 3.9 → 3.10) will require a lot of repo packages to be rebuilt. This is why the update is so large.

Any AUR python written packages you’ll have to rebuild yourself.

Best to wait a few days if you can, especially if you are new to Arch / EOS.

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I’m a chronic updater, so I went in with my yay guns blazing! Hopefully I can find any bugs/issues and report them upstream so other users won’t have to worry about too many headaches when they update :wink:

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Thanks everyone for your help.

Firstly, I created my checklist for updates:

  1. Make snapshot in Timeshift before each update.
  2. Enable grub-btrfs for seeing snapshots in a grub menu.
  3. Create a live USB with EndeavourOS on a USB-stick.
  4. Create disk images of main machine each 2 weeks using USB-stick. I use Gnome Disks software for it.

So, of course this is not for everyone. It is redundand for the purpose, but it do the job for newbie as me, as it is impossible to learn everything about Linux at once. And this checklist garanties me that I would have a working OS in any case.

Actually, the main idea of this setup is to have 2 OS for your computer: “main” on your disk and “spare” on your USB. With all needed software for work on both systems. So firstly you should update the main OS and wait for a couple of days before updating the spare OS. These couple of days you should use your updated system and assure yourself there are no any problems. After that you can update your spare OS.

In this way, you will have:

  • A snapshot before update, which can help you to restore your system. After restoring your main system you can experiment further with updates on your spare OS and update your main only after all problems would be solved.
  • A fully working spare OS in a case the snapshot wouldn’t help you to restore main OS.
  • An image of disk with a main OS in case nothing helps and you need to return to 1-2 week condition back.

As you can see, it is my solution for a safe experience with a rolling distribution for a newbie.

Secondly, but much more important.
I want to thank the whole Linux community for quick fixes of their packages. I was able to upgrade everything without rebuilding anything 3 days ago.

Everyone has their thing. I keep all files on a 4tb HD, which I have a 2nd 4tb HD and a sabrent HD cloner/dual HD dock I run every month roughly depending what I’m doing. Any photos/ wallpapers/EOS stuff/etc I just have on a USB drive as I’m working on them. Then I’ll update the HD’s again afterwards. My redundant backups are never worked off of. They are backup, copy, store again. Otherwise usually just have a USB with EOS on it. If my main machine tanks - It’s just pave and roll again. EOS is great, and we can have a clean fresh system up and rolling in 10 min or less. The only time I take timeshift anymore is before I do some major change - IE, when I went from fish back to bash for instance.

Eventually you’ll likely be proficient enough you won’t bother with redundant redundancies.

Welcome again!

I prefer to live dangerously. I don’t have timeshift or snapshot or system or disk images. I just backup important docs, photos, config files from my home directory. If the OS gets unrecoverably borked from an update I’ll just clean install. Gives me a good reason to try new software and configs :smiley:

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Here is my checklist:

  1. run yay whenever you remember to
  2. ???
  3. Profit.

That’s all I do when it comes to updating. I couldn’t imagine it being any simpler than that. I never use any GUI package managers, they are utter rubbish, in my opinion.

Especially newbies, but also experienced users, often mystify and overcomplicate the update process. Snapshots, reading the news, checking the forum, waiting before updating for a week or so… It’s all unnecessary in my opinion. I just do the “yolo update”, sometimes once a week, sometimes ten times a day.

If something breaks on update (which almost never happens – ever since I switched to AMD graphics, updating is quite boring actually), I fix it. If I can’t fix it, I RTFM and, sometimes, ask about it on the forum. If there are minor bugs introduced with an update, I just deal with them, they get typically get fixed within a day or two.

I also try to reboot my computer every day or two. Sometimes I forget.

I used to use Timeshift, but not because of any update anxiety, but because I sometimes like to break my system by experimenting with software and settings… But in time, I figured out that fixing things is often faster (not to mention more rewarding) than restoring snapshots. Also, whenever you restore a snapshot, you never learn what went wrong, how to fix it, and more importantly, how your OS works. You just remain ignorant of these things.

In the end, there is always the nuclear option of reinstalling the OS. I never had to do that, but the fact that I can always get a fully functioning OS in about 15 minutes if SHTF resolves me of any anxiety over things breaking.

And yes, always backup important stuff, multiple times, preferably on external storage. Snapshots are not backup.

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