Hello, friends. My wife’s laptop doesn’t turn on often. I installed Manjaro Linux on it about a year ago. I turned it on for the last time about 4 months ago, I updated it too with problems, but I updated it anyway.
This time I can’t update either through pacman -Syyu or through the pacman GUI. I tried to update in parts. I selected several packages and updated them, but I encountered an error and a dependency conflict. For example, depending on which package I update, it tells me that one version (of the old package) breaks a dependency (of the new package).
Perhaps there are some other options, since everything is going to the point that I will have to reinstall the system.
Sometimes, when I try to update the system again, I encounter that the laptop freezes and then I have to restore the system from TimeShift due to an error.
The current theme cannot be loaded due to the errors below, please select another theme. file:///usr/share/sddm/themes/breath/Main.qml:26:1: plugin ...
This is probably the best way to go. And while you’re at it, I think a point release would be better than the rolling release of Manjaro, since Manjaro needs to be kept up to date constantly, or it will break, as you’re experiencing now. Perhaps Ubuntu LTS or Debian.
I can only add that (given such an infrequent use case) the suggestion from @Mirdarthos is more than valid. You realize that too, no doubt. This might be a good time to try the recently released Debian 12, which I also use; apart from Manjaro.
I use KDE Plasma on Debian, as with Manjaro, and find it practical for my needs; however, Xfce is also worth considering, if you need something a little more lightweight.
My friends. I’m not new to Linux. However, this is the second time I’ve encountered the difficulty of updating on my wife’s laptop. But my PC has the same OS and it works great (pah-pah), every time I update when there are messages about the release of new versions.
I’ll still try to update each package separately or find an alternative: remove as many programs as possible and try to update those that remain.
Thanks for the advice.
As stated above from others, Manjaro, Arch, or any rolling release is not suitable for machines sitting in the drawer that are turned on once a year. On a rolling release, there are breaking changes and manual interventions somethimes. Not very often, but couple of times a year. If you update every month, there is usually 1 thing you have to do. After a year, there are many manual things, depending on each other, that you have to do in a particular order, and it becomes complicated to the point of no return, at least for someone not very skilled with arch.
The solution in your case would be a LTS debian based distro, or at least reinstalling manjaro but after a couple of months it will break again.
Say I roll-back to a point where I was 3 months ago with everything then working okay. Then I update as Pamac tells me I need to. Will that update be expected to break the system or will Pamac take care of all changes/dependencies as needed?
Though if there are problems that arent fixed, and nothing changes, I would expect that if you perform the same operations under the same conditions you may encounter the same results.
No.
Yes, thats how package managers work.
(though your choice of one may vary - many of us prefer pacman, which is not the same as pamac)
So the OP says he hasn’t switched on his wife’s laptop for 4 months, but presumably it boots up okay, else he’d have mentioned that. But when he tries to update he then encounters problems.
So what’s the difference between that situation and the one I’ve mentioned about rolling-back a few months and updating, when you say that a package-manager (ie Pamac) should take care of the differences between the previous system state and now?
OP was attempting to commit a partial upgrade.
Which is unsupported, and if somehow successful, would be equal to broken.
Though due to a combination of factors they were unable to proceed.
(the answer is they were doing it wrong)
If I were to create a slightly more reasonable scenario …
Lets say OP was encountering issues due to an unsupported package they failed to maintain. Like xorg-git or similar. They update regular system packages, and are greeted with a black screen boot. If they roll back and do the same thing again the same thing will happen. If they change their methodology and either include a rebuild of xorg-git or replace it with the regular repo version then the update and resulting system should be fine.
Could you post the results of an attempt to upgrade using Pacman? This way we can (hopefully) see what the actual errors are.
I do agree however that a point release will likely be better for this use-case. It’s what I’ve done with one of my “reserve” machines. In this case, Mint Xfce.
Opinion:- I wouldn’t rely on Pamac (or Pamac-Manager) for much more than installiing the occasional application from the AUR, or containerized application that I couldn’t find elsewhere.
All system related updates, applications available from standard repos, and the like, are better served by using Pacman. But then, this stance has been repeated many times, often to deaf ears.
Instead of pointless discussions, the OP can just read the last 12 stable announcements threads to see all the stuff that potentially could not be updated automatically or could cause issues in some cases. Stuff like pacnews, shell settings, filesystem drivers, change in the kernel compression, kernels, python, locales, repos, gnome extensions to mention a few.
As a rule of thumb, the more gets customized, the more could go wrong.
New to Linux or not, as evident by yourself here, not updating Manjaro when there are updates is a Bad Idea and if it’s been a long time, it will cause breakage. Not irrecoverable breakage, but not for the faint-of-heart, either
Arch is famous for being a little bleeding edge and requiring a fair bit of maintenance.
Manjaro is a little more protected, but still requires regular maintenance. There’s a fine thread which we should be reading as and when we upgrade - and over 4 months I’m sure there are MANY pages in that fine thread which you skipped.
Pamac can’t read it for you.
KDE is wonderful, but it isn’t close to being as reliable/stable as XFCE. It’s for us folks who enjoy and prefer a little bling and bloat.
Debian is a rock - you tolerate slightly outdated repositories for a solid base - I used Mint for several years, but if I went back I think I’d try purer Debian and drop the 'buntu.
The good news is that, for most software, the config files will still be pretty useable from your snapshots - though there can be some issues trying to import it en-masse if you are changing desktop environments or distributions.
I preserved 80% of mine going from Linux Mint to Manjaro Cinnamon and then KDE.
No matter how long - you can always sync your system to the current package level.
How easy that is depends on the system at hand and if using Nvidia or not.
If using a kernel no longer in the repo and Nvidia GPU you will most likely need to apply some sync fu to be able to get through.
There may be packages which has changed name - thus you need to make decisions along the way.
If the system is using Plasma - there is a new major release ahead - scheduled for next year - and a huge amount of Plasma related packages has been renamed from -qt to -qt5 thus requiring a lot of pressing Y to acknowledge the replacing.
I have - personally - had my hand on systems which has not been updated for a very-very long time - one example is a system which wasn’t in use during corono outbreak and the isolation - thus almost two years went by until it could be synced.
Yes there was obstacles but no showstoppers …
Just FYI
As the mentioned system is no longer in use - I was gifted the system - and out of curiosity I have now booted it.
A rough indication of when it was last updated is the kernel image stored in /boot.
Dated 2023-03-26 on stable branch. Which makes it roughly 7.5 month since last sync.
Running pacman-mirrors to set an up-to-date mirror and syncing the system using pacman says
download size 1736MB (734 packages)
installed size 6262MB
The system is xfce and thus only a handful qt related packages.
The system synced everything without any issues at all.
Grub sync prints a message the grub needs to be reinstalled.
Initially I did this. I opened the Pamac manager and tried to update at least some packages through it. It removed old packages (this is very strange), so the system crashed and I had to restore it through timeshift. Although I tried to update only a couple of packages (at random), the system gave me an error and when I opened the console and continued updating through pacman -Syyu, the system crashed - it froze and stopped responding and I had to reboot as a result of which it crashed (from -for not being fully updated).
However. After the next recovery, I did not open Pamac and tried to update directly through the console: sudo pacman -Syyu
I got an error that the file /usr/lib/locale/.. already exists. as sudo I renamed this folder with the command sudo mv /usr/lib/locale /usr/lib/locale___
after which I tried to update the system again and to my surprise, it began to update normally from the console.
However, qt-webkit is the only package that I could not update, since it takes a very long time to update (it takes up to ± 30%) and breaks pamac (during the update process it is simply unloaded from memory). I hope that after the next update of this package, this error will be eliminated.
Initially, the system wrote in the tray that 920 packages were available for update. When I opened Pamac, I tried to select 1-3 packages from the entire list and update them one by one; if the attempt was successful, then I proceeded to the next ones.
However, in this way I was able to update only a couple of packages from randomly selected ones (2-5, I can’t say for sure). After which Pamac gave me a message that “The processing script could not be started.”
After this error was first shown, after successfully updating some random packages, further packages were no longer updated and this error occurred again and again. I described the solution to my problem below.
Yes, from the console, when I tried to update via pacman -Syyu, I was prompted to replace the packages. However, I had no idea what they were talking about and just intuitively pressed “y” on each of the questions about replacing a specific package. In general, I had to do this about 40-50 times, but it’s tolerable =)
It was the locales which temporarily stumped me on the other machine. I used a different fix which I’ll try to remember to post here later.
You can avoid the repeated pressing of “y” using the --noconfirm option with Pacman, at your own discretion of course. I’d just CTRL+C if there looks to be a lot (or if I know, from a failed update attempt) and add the option when I re-run it. I counted 64 on that machine, BTW.
is probably the best way to go. And while you’re at it, I think a point release would be better than the rolling release of Manjaro, since Manjaro needs to be kept up to date constantly, or it will break, as you’re experiencing now. Perhaps Ubuntu LTS or Debian.
and if it’s been a long time, it will cause breakage. Not irrecoverable breakage, but not for the faint-of-heart, either