Is it ok to install driver packages not relevant to system?

[kokochu]

Is it possible/ok to install for example Nvidia driver packages on a system that doesn’t have Nvidia hardware?

I want to do this so they are in my main PCs pacman cache so my other PC can get all it’s updates from here.

[ArchieLinux]

@kokochu

I want to do this so they are in my main PCs pacman cache so my other PC can get all it’s updates from here.

Interesting. I didn’t know this sort of thing was an option.

[manuel]

Should be OK.

[kokochu]

Package Proxy Cache - ArchWiki

I use option 1.1

[cactux]

@kokochu

to install for example Nvidia driver packages on a system that doesn’t have Nvidia hardware

@kokochu

I want to do this so they are in my main PCs pacman cache so my other PC can get all it’s updates from here.

You don’t need to install the packages you don’t want in your system.

You could just pass -w to pacman to only download the package into package cache.

sudo pacman -Syu to update your system.

sudo pacman -Sw PACKAGE to download PACKAGE into cache.

[kokochu]

Will this keep updating the package as I do system updates though?

[cactux]

Yes, it will download the latest available of the package from the repositories. Make sure to run the first command to have an updated system and that your local package database is in sync with the mirrors.

[kokochu]

[jason@darkforest ~]$ sudo pacman -Sw nvidia-dkms nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils nvidia-settings vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader
resolving dependencies...
warning: dependency cycle detected:
warning: eglexternalplatform will be installed before its nvidia-utils dependency
warning: dependency cycle detected:
warning: lib32-libglvnd will be installed before its lib32-nvidia-utils dependency
warning: dependency cycle detected:
warning: lib32-mesa will be installed before its lib32-libglvnd dependency
warning: dependency cycle detected:
warning: lib32-keyutils will be installed before its lib32-krb5 dependency

Will it actually install these dependencies or just download them?

Just checking the -w command gets passed to dependencies.

[cactux]

-w, --downloadonly

Retrieve all packages from the server, but do not install/upgrade anything.

[kokochu]

Just double checking Thanks. You’ve been very helpful. This is a lot better than installing them.

Update : It doesn’t work how I wanted it to. It only downloads the package once and because it isn’t installed the system doesn’t see it and doesn’t keep it updated.

I will have to install the packages.