Hi guys, If I run sudo pikaur -Syu then it has to do a full system upgrade so therefore it makes sense for timeshift to get in and do a backup.
But everytime I want to simply update an application sudo pikaur -Sy <packagename> then it always has to do a backup of the system before it updates that one individual package. That is annoying and slow. I am not too sure where would I go to change this kind of setting, if anyone knows please let me know.
timeshift sucks imo… it never works for me ever… that program is nothing but a curse imo… i wouldn’t use it lol
do you know any better alternatives?
no not really tbh 
i wish i did…
Just a little note:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/system_maintenance#Avoid_certain_pacman_commands
3.2 Avoid certain pacman commands
Avoid doing partial upgrades. In other words, never run
pacman -Sy; instead, always usepacman -Syu.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/system_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported
3.3 Partial upgrades are unsupported
Arch Linux is a rolling release distribution. That means when new library versions are pushed to the repositories, the developers and Trusted Users rebuild all the packages in the repositories that need to be rebuilt against the libraries. For example, if two packages depend on the same library, upgrading only one package might also upgrade the library (as a dependency), which might then break the other package which depends on an older version of the library.
That is why partial upgrades are not supported. Do not use:
pacman -Sy package
pacman -Syfollowed bypacman -S package(Note the absence of-Suin the installation of the package.)
Isn’t doing pacman -Sy package the same as pacman -Sy && package -S package?
I mean doesn’t the y flag first updates the local repository before installing the desired package, which would be the same as pacman -Sy && package -S package?
Yes. Which is why you should not do either one, as noted above. See how it says “Do not use” either one?
Partial upgrades are a bad idea. Yes, many packages can be updated “on their own” but updating a package that has one or more other packages using it as a dependency can bring trouble.
Best practices exist for a reason. You should follow them. You’ll have fewer problems that way.
Just don’t do partial updates, which means: never run pacman -S -y without -u.
-S -y refreshes your local package database. After that, you should always do a full upgrade before installing any other package – otherwise you’re installing newer packages on a system that has outdated dependencies, and stuff will break.
Also, this could be a semantic point or it could be a real issue, but in any case, don’t use timeshift for backups, it is not designed for that, it is designed for taking system snapshots. This means you should not include your home directory and personal files in the snapshots, otherwise you will lose data when you restore a snapshot.
I’ve stopped using timeshift years ago, when I realised that there is never really an update problem so bad I couldn’t fix it myself without restoring a snapshot, so keeping all those snapshots is just a waste of storage space. But that is just my opinion.
Even though the ability is there to update individual apps it shouldn’t be used. One should always do a full update. I install and use Topgrade so everything is updated in one go.
You may want to put in a bug report cause for the vast majority of us Timeshift works just fine.
I call bs ESPICIALLY when one has added a new repo. All -Sy does is update the repos and add the mirrors for new ones.
The problem is not doing pacman -Sy in and by itself.
The problem is doing pacman -S X afterwards since the package X is pulled from updated repos on a system with outdated packages.
This might cause the issues warned against above.
I’ll take your word even though I’ve never seen an issue.
It worked every time I tried to rollback an update… What are you trying to do with it?
@whitewolfAK47 should create a help request thread of their own and include their inxi, what file system they’re using.
You are taking this out of context. The response was to someone who was running the equivalent of pacman -Sy packagename. This updates the local databases and then installs a package creating an instant partial update scenario.
Hi!
Check if you have installed timeshift-autosnap. If yes, uninstall it.
You don’t even know if auto-snap is the issue.
It updates the local package database, but without actually upgrading the installed packages on the system. Can you not see how this is a problem? Now the versions of packages in the local package database are up to date, but the system is outdated. So far, you’re fine, but if you now install a new package, you will install the version that is in your local package database, which is the up-to-date version, on a system where everything else is potentially out of date. That is what a partial upgrade situation is – some packages are up to date (in this case, specifically, the new one installed), while some are outdated. The problem with that is that some packages depend on other packages, so now you can have a package whose runtime dependencies are of different version than what that package was built with, causing it to not work properly (which can manifest in anything from an application crashing to the system being unbootable, depending on specific packages).
This is a somewhat common problem with the AUR on Manjaro, where the repo updates are delayed. So you often upgrade an AUR package and it breaks (or won’t even build), because it has outdated dependencies.
Your post was and is unnecessary. That said I’ll give that under certain circumstances -Sy is a bad idea. Like running it and updating a single package. In my case I use it to update the databases when I’ve added a new repo, but I don’t update single packages ever, I use topgrade to update everything at one time, and in something like Garuda I use their garuda-update and then Topgrade right after it.
How about if he creates his own help request thread abd actually tries to get to the bottom of what’s going on with time shift?