However often you do it, you should definitely do it today to cover the serious backdoor that's been discovered: https://archlinux.org/news/the-xz-package-has-been-backdoored/
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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Thanks for the heads up! π
In case someone doesn't know it yet:
If you update your Arch Linux system with a kernel upgrade, the kernel modules will NOT be loaded again automatically by default and things like FUSE (used in AppImages for example or other FUSE based mounts) will not work without intervention
simple rebooting is the foolproof way or setting up kernel module reload hooks: https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/kernel-modules-hook/
And other smaller things tend to misbehave as well. For this reason I always upgrade right before shutting down my machnine anyway.
An unintended side-effect of this is that I tend to postpone upgrades because I'm just about to leave somewhere and wouldn't have to deal with any manual interventions.
Multiple times a day, basically whenever I'm bored. Sometimes I get so depressed when there are no updates, that I install some random package or build something from source, so I can look at some text flying across my terminal, and look at all the cool stuff happening on my PC. I also have a journalct -f and btop running all the time as it's interesting to see what's happening behind the scenes.
Can I recommend cbonsai and cmatrix?
Thanks for the cbonsai suggestion π
cbonsai is awesome. Whenever I open a new shell, I have it configured to first run cbonsai so that a bonsai tree is the first thing that I see when I open a terminal.
Every Sunday when I do my weekly backup routine
Im the same im daily checking for updates. However i do backup my system regularly too!
However i do backup my system regularly too!
What form do your backups take? For my desktop, I run Pika Backup every hour on my home directory.
I use timeshift and also do weekly clonezilla images. I'll check ouy pika.
Iβll check ouy pika.
Timeshift and Pika are similar β both are deduplicating backup solutions; Timeshift uses Rsync, and Pika uses Borg.
[...] and also do weekly clonezilla images.
I currently don't have any system in place to create system images. It's defintiely something I should look into, though. It would be nice to have a full restore point.
How many images do you keep at a time? Just one? Images can take up a huge amount of space, so I would imagine that having mulitple saved at a time is rather expensive.
Edit 2024-03-31T02:36Z:
Timeshift and Pika are similar β both are deduplicating backup solutions; Timeshift uses Rsync, and Pika uses Borg.
I looked into Timeshift a bit more to double check my statement, and it looks like timeshift does have a snapshot option that uses BTRFS.
On desktop, once or twice a week, if I think about it.
On my home server, every few weeks or once a month.
On my HTPC :), rarely, since its kind of fragile running Arch ARM on the Radxa Rock 5B. Only when I know there is time to rebuild some required AUR packages to make graphics work again.
I have a script that runs when I start my graphical environment that checks for updates and sends a notification if there are updates. Which prompts me to do a full system update if I get the notification. I shut my PC off at the end of the day and boot it up in the morning, so I update at least daily, occasionally more than daily if I turn my computer on and off multiple times in the day.
I have a script that runs when I start my graphical environment that checks for updates and sends a notification if there are updates.
Would you mind sharing that script?
Literally just
#!/bin/sh
if checkupdates || yay -Qu; then
notify-send "Package updates available" "To update, press MOD + SHIFT + U" -i "update-catppuccin-mocha"
fi
mod+shift+u was bound to spawn a terminal window running yay -Syu, obviously change the notification to say whatever you want. The icon is a custom icon, replace it with whatever icon you want for the notification or just remove the icon if you don't want one.
I've since moved to Artix so the test is now just yay -Qu as checkupdates doesn't seem to exist on Artix, but if you're on base Arch and use yay, the above should work. You can also remove the yay if you don't use yay and I think that just checks for updates from official arch repos, not from aur. (yay -Qu should check both but I have both commands in the script just in case)
This is so cool! Very clever solution to this issue. Thank you for sharing! π An interesting thing that I ran into when testing it was regarding the difference between [pacman|yay|paru] -Qu and checkupdates: checkupdates showed that an update was available, but the -Qu option did not reveal the update. It wasn't until I synced the database with -Sy that -Qu started showing the updates.
Update (2024-03-31T03:20Z): Ah, it looks like checkupdates essentially is just running pacman -Sy and pacman -Qu.
Mostly everyday when I start my computer but I will avoid updating if I have a mission critical project to work on, because arch doesn't break often but when it does it's because you were trying to update right before working on a mission critical project.
I used to run sudo pacman -Syu like every 5 minutes (bleeding edge, more like bled out edge). I'd recommend once or twice a day to stay up-to-date.
Every time I boot my computer and then every two hour or so. I'm fucking addicted to running topgrade.
Whenever I feel like it tbh. Today I recently had to do so today because of the xz backdoor and before that, the new kde plasma 6 release. Before that, I basically didn't update unless I needed to.
my desktop, about every other month? i have moved signal-desktop to a flatpak so i don't have to do a full system update whenever it demands to be updated :D
Well for my laptop which I use 3-5 days a week (for a few hours at a time) I do it only when I'm at home so it doesn't get in the way when I need my machine. But I also reboot my laptop every use since with framework suspend just won't work properly (I'll look into it soonβ’).
My desktop I try to update every time I use it but with barely any time and my gaming now happening on my steam deck that's less and less. Also with the archzfs module I gotta wait for the right timing between module and kernel versions so these days I often miss a few updates.
Every time I install a package, or once a month.
I use a script that shows new Arch news messages, updates the mirrorlist with the fastest mirrors in my country, updates repo packages, updates aur packages, then prints created .pacnew and .pacsave files as well as orphaned and dropped packages.
I use a script that shows new Arch news messages, updates the mirrorlist with the fastest mirrors in my country, updates repo packages, updates aur packages, then prints created .pacnew and .pacsave files as well as orphaned and dropped packages.
Would you mind sharing that script?
It's not very sophisticated and has no error handling, but I only run it locally...
#!/bin/bash
echo -e "\n...READING NEWS...\n"
yay -Pw
echo -e "\n...UPDATING MIRRORS...\n"
sudo cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup
sudo reflector --country Germany --latest 5 --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
echo -e "\n...UPDATING REPO PACKAGES...\n"
sudo pacman -Syu
echo -e "\n...UPDATING AUR...\n"
yay -Syu
echo -e "\n...ORPHANED PACKAGES...\n"
pacman -Qtd
echo -e "\n...PACKAGES NOT IN ARCH REPO...\n"
pacman -Qm
echo -e "\n...NEW CONFIG FILES...\n"
sudo find /etc -name *.pac*
echo "DONE π"
#Dependencies: yay, reflector, rsync, noto-fonts-emoji
Exactly the same. My server gets updated whenever I ssh into it, too. And as it also runs on testing repos, it actually makes sense.
Everyday
Usually twice a day on whatever PC Iβm runnnig. That is unless I am really caught up in something I am working on then only when that task is complete which is rarely more than a week.
My server about every other day, but if I am traveling I purposefully try not to since I have to be home to debug the worst kinds of situations.
I just click the litte nag icon in my taskbar whenever I notice it.
Since I'm on Debian Testing that is often daily. But it varies. If I don't look at that part of my screen that day, w/e.
I thought I turned on auto update so it would just do it on its own. But it didn't work for whatever reason. Sigh... Linux moment. There is an answer, surely, but the cost of debugging it outweighs my patience. Typing in my password an extra once(ish) a day is fine, I guess.
Edit: Just realized this is the Arch community. D'oh.
Every time I see a post like this.
Once a week, usually on a Friday when I've finished work, usually with a beer
Normally when some software I use has a major update. Could be a month, could be a couple days.
Once a week. I have to use proprietary realtek ethernet drivers and they need to be rebuilt with each kernel upgrade. I haven't figured out a clean way to plug them into packman and rebuild on kernel updates so I just update, reboot, rebuild and install drivers when I notice I'm on WiFi instead of ethernet.
Pretty much every day, it's just part of my morning routine when I put the computer on. For reboots, basically whenever something important like the kernel, systemd or pipewire updates, just to avoid weird behavior.
Usually daily, when I boot up my PC. Unless there's whole lot of updates, then I tend to wait till the end of the day and my work is done for the day. I mean I can always roll back, but I am weary of issues creeping up over several hours.