Would run an update in tty be safer?

[unisymp]

The last big update, i.e. 0719 stable update, is quite a hard time for me since I switched to manjaro.

As usual, I just ran sudo pacman -Syu in konsole to initiate an update. As first, everything ran as normal. Suddenly, the terminal got stuck at upgrading a package (seems to be gnome-grub if I remember correctly). Shortly after that, the whole system got frozen. I waited for a while and nothing changed. I had no choice but to cut off the power. Not surprised, the computer could not boot into the system.

Fortunately, I have learned a little so that I know how to deal this situation. I just used a usb image to boot in and tried to run pacman again to finish the update. But the awful things are there were many file conflicts which forces me to run pacman with the --overwrite option. Then I rebooted the computer and this time, I could log into the desktop. I thought that "Hi, although a bit trouble, nothing serious really." But I'm wrong. I found that I could not open any applications even the application launcher! It seems that my kde environment broke totally and I had no idea about how to amend it.

I must say I fell into panic in a certain degree. Especially, after searching the forum, I found no direct answer to the problem I met. At last, I decided to reinstall all the packages by
sudo pacman -Syu $(pacman -Qqen) --overwrite '*".
Luckily, this command saves my kde desktop. After reboot, everything seems working in a right way although I still suspect this broken update may leave some bad side effects I haven't notice yet.

This is not the first time I met that system gets frozed when updating in a terminal. I've heard it may be saver to log into a tty before the update and run the update in the tty. Is that true? Any more advices to avoid a broken update?

[dalto]

@unisymp

I've heard it may be saver to log into a tty before the update and run the update in the tty. Is that true?

Yes. Relatively speaking, it is safer to update in a TTY. It is mostly beneficial when you get a big update to your desktop environment.

As a side note, this doesn't re-install all your packages.

sudo pacman -Syu $(pacman -Qqen)

It only re-installs the explicitly installed packages.

[anon27588196]

@unisymp

Any more advices to avoid a broken update?

1. Read the announcements

[Stable Update] 2020-07-19 - Kernels, KDE, LibreOffice, Mesa, Cinnamon, Deepin, Pamac, Browsers

Hello community, Another stable branch update with some interesting updates for you! So far it is one of our biggest updates we prepared so far. [image] Feel your pulse ryzing! Soonish with Manjaro #Mikah by TUXEDO Computers #stayhome, #staysafe, #stayhealthy We updated all of our Kernels For Linux57 kernel series we added the FSync/Futex patches by Valve to speed up some processes, especially for Proton gaming. Renewed our Firmware for the kernels Worked on our ARM-tools Some Cinnamon …

@dalto

Yes. Relatively speaking, it is safer to update in a TTY. It is mostly beneficial when you get a big update to your desktop environment.

This. But to be really effective, you also need to totally terminate your X session as well.

sudo systemctl isolate multi-user.target

[Frog]

In the absolute, it is pretty much always safer to do it in TTY.

The question is more if it actually much of a necessity, because more often than not, it is completely overkill.

It is unfortunate, but as far as I know, it seems to be an isolated case. Manjaro Team did issue such recommendation in that regard.

[unisymp]

Thank you for pointing out my error. In fact, I must admit that I don't know the precise effect of this command and just copy from a reply in a thread which said it will reinstall all the packages. I still don't understand why this command solves my problem.

[cscs]

@unisymp

gnome-grub

I dont think such a package exists ... and you are on KDE, right ?

@unisymp

sudo pacman -Syu

If you have pamac-mirrorlist.service running you should probably use -Syyu

[kresimir]

As others have already said, updating in the TTY is generally safer, especially if there is an update to the desktop environment, to xorg, etc...

Updating from the TTY is not always necessary, but it never hurts, so, instead of thinking about it, I always do it from the TTY, knowing that 9 out of 10 times it's an overkill, but that 1 out of 10 times, it's necessary.

[unisymp]

You are right. After scanning the names of packages, I believe I'm trapped at grub-manjaro-theme, although I don't think that it's this package that causes the trouble.

@cscs

If you have pamac-mirrorlist.service running you should probably use -Syyu

How do I know whether I have this service running or not? I does use a mirror-site to update in pacman, but I never use pamac.

[kresimir]

You can check with

systemctl status pamac-mirrorlist.timer

If it says active (waiting), you are running it.

More info:

Should we be recommending people use -Syyu instead of -Syu

Historically, I have always recommended that unless you are switching mirrors there is no reason to use -Syyu and that -Syu is sufficient. However, since any Manjaro system with pamac installed ships with this enabled to run weekly:

pamac-mirrorlist.service

[Unit] Description=Generate mirrorlist Wants=network-online.target After=network-online.target [Service] Type=oneshot ExecStart=/usr/bin/pacman-mirrors -f8

it seems like using -Syu may not be a good recommendation on Manjaro because you nev…

If you want to disable this behaviour:

sudo systemctl disable pamac-mirrorlist.timer
sudo systemctl mask pamac-mirrorlist.timer

[unisymp]

Thank you.