I don’t know if this is a bug or a natural behavior, but I’ll describe it. On my desktop, the Welcome app is in the launchpad and starts when I log in. eos-update-notifier checks for available package updates. On average, I update every two days. I noticed two days ago that there are no new packages to update, it happened again yesterday. However, it found updates in the AUR. The eos-update-notifier also did not indicate any package updates today, but I also searched for updates manually using the Welcome app with the same result. I ran sudo pacman -Syu at the command line and it asked me to replace some packages, then when I selected the replacements it performed the actions. Is it possible that there was no update because I often update not only every two days, but also daily? Although this contradicts the fact that until now there was at least one package update every day during the time I used the machine. I haven’t experienced this on other devices, although I don’t update them as often as I do on a desktop computer.
● eos-update-notifier.timer - Run EOS update notifier periodically
Loaded: loaded (/home/zoli62/.config/systemd/user/eos-update-notifier.timer; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (waiting) since Tue 2022-11-29 09:17:22 CET; 1h 7min ago
Until: Tue 2022-11-29 09:17:22 CET; 1h 7min ago
Trigger: Wed 2022-11-30 00:00:00 CET; 13h left
Triggers: ● eos-update-notifier.service
nov 29 09:17:22 eosthinkst systemd[1075]: Started Run EOS update notifier periodically.
Welcome’s updater app UpdateInTerminal uses checkupdates which can fail.
To try to see the problem, you can run UpdateInTerminal directly in a terminal.
Now that you wrote it, I remember that a long time ago there was a discussion here on the forum about the operation of checkupdates. I have already run the command sudo pacman -Syu, it found some recommended packages for replacement.
Yeah, pacman is the most reliable way to update as it is (only) officially supported by the Arch devs.
And from the many AUR helpers, yay is a good one too (especially if you have AUR packages installed).
Also paru seems like a good alternative to yay.
Currently there are also other AUR helpers worth trying. I’ve been using them from time to time for various reasons, e.g. one helper can do a particular thing faster than the others.
But AUR helpers are a bit off-topic… so I stop here.
Perhaps this is the first time in three years that the Welcome app did not find a package to update, I think this is a good ratio. Even though parru is installed, I haven’t used it yet, but yay is even more so.
In the meantime, eos-update-notifier found only AUR package updates on my laptop, not a single package was updated from the official repositories. We’ll see what happens for say a couple of days, I’ll keep an eye out to see if there are any update notifications or if sudo -Syu remains. Maybe the package developers are already on winter break.
eos-update-notifier uses checkupdates and yay -Qua to see if there are updates available. For an unknown reason (to me) checkupdates sometimes fails, but yay -Qua does not (or I’ve never seen it fail).
Some folks (myself included) update their machines daily.
After some time, this may well become a habit. Just like going to the restroom, or (rarely now) having a meal…
This little inconvenience may become even more serious when you have to service more than one machine. After updating my three Linux puters today, I felt somewhat bored… and caught myself with the thought of setting up just another machine, which I’d have to update daily, too.
Yeah, out of sync or very slow mirrors easily cause problems when updating.
If I may suggest, some German mirrors (but not all!) are both fast and very well updated. So it may be a good idea to add a few of them into the mirrorlist.
Now that you wrote that the Hungarian mirror doesn’t even synchronize, I started trying. I set up German servers, worldwide, and American servers. I restarted the machine and after logging in it indicated the available package updates later than usual, so there is something wrong with the mirrors at the moment.
Even with German and then American mirrors set, there is some delay in signaling package updates compared to before with a gigabit connection, even though the measured speed values are good. Does the above-mentioned Hungarian mirror server have to be added to the list manually?
do NOT add worldwide also it looks like you want it but they are not working nicely most of the time.
The best Fallbacks are still US and Germany Mirrors.
you can review and edit the list manually if needed this will not be an issue.
So adding known to work mirror on top of your list… or try using only this mirror in your list to see if it works… is possible
I had a similar issue this week. I only had updates for third-party repos like endeavour and the AUR, but no updates for arch repos. Even when running pacman, I would get “there is nothing to do”. What I did to fix it was run reflector-simple to update my mirrors.
This supports ranking Arch mirrors (that are located in Europe). Also it can keep a longer time statistics about those mirrors, so eventually (within several days…) it will tell you which mirrors should work best for your location.
Note that it is not a fool proof tool, but having it running for a few weeks it clearly shows the best mirrors for my location.
If you are interested in changing it to rank using another area, and know some bash language, it should be easy to adjust for your location too by simply listing “nearby” countries.
Yes, you can add a mirror to the list manually, as long as it is tested first. Another solution is to use the Pacman Mirrorlist Generator for the list by country. https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/
The question is, if we select all mirrors, can we manually copy the resulting list into the mirrorlist.pacnew file and save it, overwriting its previous contents, after making a backup of course.
