Updates available

On other versions of Arch I ran, there was always an applet that would tell me when there were updates available.

I’ve found that for Endeavour, I have to manually check, which I don’t always remember to do. Is there a program I can install on Plasma to auto check for me?

Thanks,
Chris

Is this what you’re looking for?
eos-update-notifier

But really, this is a rolling distro. So, if it’s been a few days since you ran an update there’s a good chance there’s updates available. A lot of people like to run their updates on Friday so they have the weekend to fix any bugs that might crop up.

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What’s the point? This is Arch, there are always updates available (except if you just updated).

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Nope, I updated last night and by the time it finished there where 5 more :rofl:

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Is it possible to make updates automatic? Which I realize could get me in trouble if one of the updates has a bug in it (which has happened to me before).

The point is, I run Arch so I don’t have an un updated system, why wouldn’t I want to know when their are updates available?

Arch is probably the worst distro for that. Updates require user intervention. If you make updates automatic, your system will break, sooner or later. It’s not worth it.

Now, I think you’re over-complicating things a bit. All you need to remember is to run yay once a week or so. You can do it more often than that, or even rarer (not updating for a month or two should still be perfectly fine, but I if you wait even more than that, some care might be required to update things properly). I sometimes update several times a day, and sometimes I go for several days without updating. It doesn’t really matter. You don’t need a notification telling you that updates are available, because they pretty much always are. You may as well add

echo There are probably updates available.

to your .bashrc, it will be about as effective as any update notifier (and use far less resources!). :rofl:

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This happens quite often. :slight_smile:

In an rolling release distribution, the unconditional automatic installation of available updates is much more dangerous than in a point release distribution, because the presence of any broken packages can destroy a system that has been working well until then. Therefore, a managed package update is more recommended.

I use Octopi for GUI package management. Octopi includes an update notifier. It does not install those automatically, but you are aware, if updates are available. You can then easily install them using pacman or yay.

I use both. An update-notifier and an auto-updater. But without the eos-update-notifier or other tools.
Every day when I turn on the computer the first thing I do is to open a terminal and run a pacman -Syyu or if packages from the AUR are included a yay -Syyu. If needed a reboot follows and the whole thing is done in a few minutes.

And that without any tools like octopi, pamac etc. which can mess up the system. In addition, it would take a few seconds longer than in the terminal. Honestly, I do not understand the problem to manually trigger an update once a week or month. I do it every day.

Fwiw, the double -yy will force a refresh of your package database. It is usually needed after a change to the mirrorlist. Like after a refreshing of the mirrors.

-y, --refresh
Download a fresh copy of the master package database from the server(s) defined in pacman.conf(5). This should typically be used each time you use --sysupgrade or -u. Passing two --refresh or -y
flags will force a refresh of all package databases, even if they appear to be up-to-date.

Also just yay is enough to run for updating packages from both the repos and the AUR.

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That’s one thing I’m always wondering but somehow never asked.
What I usually do is run sudo pacman -Syu and then yay -Syu for the AUR packages.
But, as it looks like, I can just run yay? No disadvantages here?

Yes.

Nothing that I am aware of or have seen being mentioned on the forum.

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You could probably write a script to run with cron job that would run a mirror update → pacman/yay that would run in the background and then send a message to the notifier you use depending on whether it received the “there is nothing to do” message or not.

There are updates every day, several times a day. This is Arch, it is a rolling distro. There are no LTS or Point releases in the aspect of you having to do an “upgrade”. A step down might be running Fedora, where it is updated several times during the week but not much on the weekends from my experience. However, you will surely miss the availability of packages. I ran Fedora for 7 or 8 months. I really liked it, BUT I missed the AUR. So now I am on EndeavourOS with no plans on going back.

Please don’t do this. Especially if you’re running pacman -Syyu, and then again yay -Syyu. Everytime you pass the double as noted by @pebcak you’re forcing a refresh. Which, doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot to you . . . But unless you’re paying the kind folks who generously donate the electric bill for the mirror you use. . . you’re actually wasting their money daily. If we all did this everyday, we would waste a LOT of other people’s money. Please for those who are kind enough to host, only pass that when you update your mirrors, or if you REALLY need to.

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Thank you for the hint @pebcak and @fbodymechanic . Just changed my aliases for updating.

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Isn’t there an update notifier in the welcome already?
Because I have it enabled but as some comments said its rather useless than helpful.

Well, the eos-update-notifier also provides Arch news. So, if they make a post about an emergency patch/update/info/etc you’ll get notified for that too. Could be helpful for people who update maybe only weekly. It also lets people know if a reboot is recommneded after a series of package updates. Like after kernel updates or things affecting the initramfs. That can be helpful to new users as well.

For those using Gnome extensions, this might be worth looking at:
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1010/archlinux-updates-indicator

I updated just yesterday, and today it shows me 176 updates. :confused: