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It's probably because you run updates every couple of days that you don't have the issue. For me, I have a laptop that can go untouched for up to a month, and i

It's probably because you run updates every couple of days that you don't have the issue. For me, I have a laptop that can go untouched for up to a month, and it's not fun catching up on a month's worth of updates. Lots of packages have been replaced, I usually have to futz with the keyring, etc. Also worth pointing out - the fact that you can so easily perform a partial update with pacman and totally break your system is infuriating to me. If an upgrade fails, it should revert to a cached package database. Otherwise an update will fail, the user will go to install something else, and all of a sudden nothing can link to libcrypt because you installed ntpd, which upgraded all of your auth stuff after an openSSL vuln was discovered, and everything is hosed.

coldpie 4y ago
> If an upgrade fails, it should revert to a cached package database. I'm prettttty sure it does now? When did you run into this problem? It definitely used to be a problem, a long time ago (I ran into it once when I ran out of disk space mid-upgrade), but I think system updates are atomic now.
- jovial_cavalier 4y ago
  Happened to me a few months ago (whenever that big SSL 0-day was announced). I use a 3rd party repo for ZFS drivers, which gets checked for compatibility with each new kernel release by the maintainers, so ZFS frequently stops me from upgrading, and crucially it stops me after I've already fetched the new package databases. Running pacman -Sy and then installing an individual package isn't supported and it's understandable why. Running pacman -Syu and having it break sticks you into this limbo where if you install anything before finishing the upgrade, you risk shooting yourself in the foot.
  - coldpie 4y ago
    Interesting! How does the ZFS upgrade "stop" the package upgrade process, I wonder? Might be worth reporting a bug, maybe pacman can handle that kind of failure better, or maybe the ZFS package could be changed to fail more gracefully. I think the pacman devs would agree leaving the system in a partial-upgrade state is a bad thing to do.
    - jovial_cavalier 4y ago
      It's not a bug, it's intended behavior. The official release of ZFS on Linux I believe only supports kernel 5.x. Since arch is always on the cutting edge, the repo maintainers need to manually test the driver with each new kernel release before pushing it out to the world. They stop you from borking your system in the interim by having a strict version requirement for Linux on the zfs package. Pacman only does that check, though, once the -Sy operation has finished
      - coldpie 4y ago
        Ohhh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, that is a tricky corner case :-/
minimaul 4y ago
I do have a shell VM (accessed via SSH & xpra) that I update much less frequently and still don't have issues. I think the main reason I have fewer issues compared to other comments here is I try to minimise my use of the AUR, and don't install third-party repos.

coldpie 4y ago

> If an upgrade fails, it should revert to a cached package database. I'm prettttty sure it does now? When did you run into this problem? It definitely used to be a problem, a long time ago (I ran into it once when I ran out of disk space mid-upgrade), but I think system updates are atomic now.

jovial_cavalier 4y ago
Happened to me a few months ago (whenever that big SSL 0-day was announced). I use a 3rd party repo for ZFS drivers, which gets checked for compatibility with each new kernel release by the maintainers, so ZFS frequently stops me from upgrading, and crucially it stops me after I've already fetched the new package databases. Running pacman -Sy and then installing an individual package isn't supported and it's understandable why. Running pacman -Syu and having it break sticks you into this limbo where if you install anything before finishing the upgrade, you risk shooting yourself in the foot.
- coldpie 4y ago
  Interesting! How does the ZFS upgrade "stop" the package upgrade process, I wonder? Might be worth reporting a bug, maybe pacman can handle that kind of failure better, or maybe the ZFS package could be changed to fail more gracefully. I think the pacman devs would agree leaving the system in a partial-upgrade state is a bad thing to do.
  - jovial_cavalier 4y ago
    It's not a bug, it's intended behavior. The official release of ZFS on Linux I believe only supports kernel 5.x. Since arch is always on the cutting edge, the repo maintainers need to manually test the driver with each new kernel release before pushing it out to the world. They stop you from borking your system in the interim by having a strict version requirement for Linux on the zfs package. Pacman only does that check, though, once the -Sy operation has finished
    - coldpie 4y ago
      Ohhh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, that is a tricky corner case :-/

minimaul 4y ago

I do have a shell VM (accessed via SSH & xpra) that I update much less frequently and still don't have issues. I think the main reason I have fewer issues compared to other comments here is I try to minimise my use of the AUR, and don't install third-party repos.