Haunting update story (with Endless Sky)

[Handspuehler]

something very strange happened to me a few days ago. it’s so strange because i had never read about such a case, let alone experienced it.
It started out relatively normal, I was told that updates were available and that my system was out of date. There were exactly 742 updates to be done. I think it was three days ago when I updated them, but something strange happened. The update started normally with the listing of all packages to be updated according to the existing version and the new one. Below this was the following

Total download size: 4.6 GB
Total size installed: 471.7 MB
Total size removed: 207.1 MB

Apply transaction ? [Y/N] Download of endless-sky (0.10.10-1) started

The package of this Linux game (from the official repository) has been started.
But the download stopped (!) at the following point.
618.2 MB/4.6 GB 17 minutes remaining
This has never happened to me before, because I always check my mirrors beforehand. I have 8 mirrors with OK status, so the download should not have stopped. My Internet connection was OK, i checked it.
I was unable to carry out the update that evening, restarted the computer and postponed the update until the following day. But the next day it was exactly the same, the download of the updates started with Endless Sky and simply stopped. Again I cancelled the update and tried something. I uninstalled the Endless Sky game with its dependencies and restarted my Manjaro. And then, unbelievably, the game was gone as normal, but my system was suddenly up to date. No more updates were required. I checked some of the packages and all of them were indeed up to date.

Not that everything wasn’t in order, but I do find the story a bit scary.

How can a system be updated by removing a package, that’s not even possible, is it?

What do you think, has anyone (with or without Endless Sky) had similar experiences?

[Wollie]

@Handspuehler

But the download stopped (!) at the following point.
618.2 MB/4.6 GB 17 minutes remaining

Maybe your disk is full, no space to further download?

@Handspuehler

but my system was suddenly up to date.

Please post pacman log file (/var/log/pacman.log). There you can see if something has been installed/updated.

[Handspuehler]

OK, that was one of the first things I suspected and checked immediately, both my Linux discs are only half full.

So my home directory has 611.7GB free and my root disc has exactly 50.0GB free.
So that can’t be it, right?

[Wollie]

@Handspuehler

home directory

I guess you mean /home partition?

@Handspuehler

my root disc

Same here, you mean / partition, right?

Do you have mounted any other partition as part of your system?

---

What about /var/log/pacman.log?

[Nachlese]

@Handspuehler

This has never happened to me before, because I always check my mirrors beforehand. I have 8 mirrors with OK status, so the download should not have stopped.

I don’t want to interrupt, just a remark:

I never bother to check my mirrors - I go straight to updating them.
sudo pacman-mirrors -c Germany

It happens often that the one mirror that was chosen the last time is the slowest this time.
The performance changes over time.

… that was all I wanted to say

ps:

@Handspuehler

618.2 MB/4.6 GB 17 minutes remaining

this means:
of the 4.6 GB needed to be downloaded, 618 MB have already been received → under 15%

you can restart the download AFAIK
or you can use pacman -Syuw
so everything is only fetched at first
and the follow with pacman -Syu

[Wollie]

Ext4 in particular reserves some space on the filesystem which is not available to the user - 5% by default if it is not specified differently.

But again, key question is how the packages were updated after you removed endless-sky.

[Handspuehler]

I guess you mean /home partition?
Same here, you mean / partition, right?

Yes, i mean the partition, of course.

Do you have mounted any other partition as part of your system?

Apart from my unmounted backup hard drive, I still have the boot and swap area in separate partitions on one root hard drive and, as I said, the home partition on a second hard drive. So both had or have enough space for updates and more.

What about /var/log/pacman.log?

OK, that brings light into the darkness. I forgot that this file exists and that you can look up what Pacman (Pamac) did there.
Funnily enough, I find here that the updates must have happened last night from 1:33 to 1:39. Strange that I can’t remember this or that I have subconsciously suppressed it.
So the updates did happen and I just can’t remember them.
Anyway, thanks for mentioning this point, as you can look everything up there.
We can now consider this case to be resolved, even if I couldn’t quite categorise it or perceived it differently.

Ext4 in particular reserves some space on the filesystem which is not available to the user - 5% by default if it is not specified differently.

OK, this may be, but i have 50% on root and 46% on home as free.

But again, key question is how the packages were updated after you removed endless-sky.

I really cannot answer this question from my memories, but 1:49 yesterday night i removed endless sky, it seems that i waited long enough, that the update could work in background before i quit it, i think. This is still strange, but i have no better explanation for that.

[Wollie]

Good news.