Pacman -Syuu: dracut, hw-probe, v4l-utils-git — dependencies question

General system Applications
1

Today, I pondered about about downgrading my dracut 107-1 to dracut 106-1, because I might want to try something with the LTS kernel.

So far, so good, I gave yay -Syuu a go and it wanted to:

:: 2 Pakete zu upgraden/installieren.
2  endeavouros/dracut  107-1                   -> 106-1
1  aur/v4l-utils-git   1.28.1.r130.g2a91a869-1 -> 1.28.1.r52.g363495b6-2

All good for dracut, but I stumbled over the proposed v4l-utils-git downgrade. I remember I had to replace extra/v4l-utils 1.30.1-1 with aur/v4l-utils-git 1.28.1.r130.g2a91a869-1 when installing aur/hw-probe 1.6.6-1. (I contribute all my machines’ data to the Linux Hardware Database, so that’s why I installed hw-probe in the first place.)

Looks like I could easily get into dependency hell if keeping an old v4l-utils (which should really be taken from extra). I mean, it provides edid-decode and other stuff and is needed by ffmpeg and gst-plugins-good (besides others).

So my question is: Would you recommend what I think I should do?

Which is:

  • remove hw-probe again, since I’ve uploaded my data and produced one more entry showing EOS (although I typically like to have it on the machine)
  • replace aur/v4l-utils-git with extra/v4l-utils again (thus keeping it, ffmpeg and gst-plugins up-to-date, and have fresh edid-decode)

An additional benefit would be that, in a few weeks or months, I wouldn’t accidentally downgrade v4l-utils and get in trouble when using pacman -Syuu (or yay -Syuu) for other reasons.

So what do you think? Agree with me, or keep hw-probe?

2

To me the downgrade looks strange.
I would skip hw-probe because it satisfied it’s purpose und uninstall v4l-utils-git.

1 Like
3

Do this, and add a third action: Complain to the author of hw-probe about the dependency and ask for an updated hw-probe which is dependent on the current v4l-utils.

2 Likes
4

Someone beat me to it:

Copysiper commented on 2025-05-24 21:14 (UTC)

v4l-utils-git is likely not needed since v4l-utils exists. Also, is it really a hard requirement and not an optional dependency?

1 Like
5

So I cleaned all up a bit:

  • yay -Rns hw-probe (remove hw-probe & its data)
  • yay -Syu v4l-utils (replace aur/v4l-utils-git → extra/v4l-utils)
  • yay -Syuu (update, allow downgrade dracut 107-1 → dracut 106-1)
  • sudo pacman -Syu net-tools (reinstall net-tools, good for inxi and other uses)

All good.

1 Like
6

Actually, all comments from Dec 2024 and later bitch about this issue. So far, no reaction from the maintainer.

If you are really hung-up about hw-probe, you could use this PKGBUILD below to build it with makepkg -si:

# Maintainer: Martchus <martchus@gmx.net>
# Contributor: Eric Engestrom <aur [at] engestrom [dot] ch>

# All my PKGBUILDs are managed at https://github.com/Martchus/PKGBUILDs where
# you also find the URL of a binary repository.

pkgname=hw-probe
pkgver=1.6.6
pkgrel=2
pkgdesc="Probe for hardware, check its operability and upload result to https://linux-hardware.org"
arch=('any')
url="https://github.com/linuxhw/hw-probe"
license=('LGPL-2.1-or-later OR BSD-4-Clause')
source=("$url/archive/$pkgver.tar.gz")
sha256sums=('d8d31ed978095d0bd2ca7af51cfee8b97c97f7168ddb48a479a1632e1af84c7b')
depends=('perl' 'hwinfo' 'curl' 'dmidecode' 'pciutils' 'usbutils' 'net-tools' 'v4l-utils' 'ddcutil' 'acpica')
optdepends=('hdparm' 'smartmontools' 'inxi' 'pnputils-git' 'efibootmgr')

package() {
  cd "$srcdir"/hw-probe-$pkgver
  install -D "${srcdir}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}/LICENSES/BSD-4-Clause" -t "${pkgdir}/usr/share/licenses/${pkgname}/"
  install -D "${srcdir}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}/LICENSES/LGPL-2.1-or-later" -t "${pkgdir}/usr/share/licenses/${pkgname}/"
  install -dm755 "$pkgdir"/usr
  DESTDIR="$pkgdir" make install prefix=/usr
}
1 Like
7

Thanks, but I think removing it after having done its work is okay for me now. Who knows, when next I want it, it may be updated already? :grinning_face:

A little less clutter is always good to stay outta dependency hell…

8

Yes, I agree. I did install it now, here my results from their database. Interestingly, there might be support for the fingerprint reader now, which I already gave up on.

Worth the effort.

But I am uninstalling hw-probe as well, for the same reasons, Once done, where’s the need?

1 Like
9

You must have killed it, I get 504 GW Timeouts all the time! :rofl:

Re fingerprint: I only ever once tried, on a little Medion Akoya E2228T MD61900. It has an ELAN (?) reader integrated into the touchpad, you have to swipe your finger over it. It worked nicely with Mint, even for terminal sudo (using PAM).

But my fingers don’t harmonize with these small swipe thingies, it’s much better with those where you can just hold your finger onto it. So I eventually removed it again.

But Linux & PAM support is there indeed.