I can’t believe the installed kernel - albeit not being used for booting - could block the update process. I removed linux63 like you suggested and ran sudo pacman -Syu again, and this time no errors were thrown regarding nvidia-utils., and I could initiate the update process like normal. However I reached close to 1/4 of the packages, and the mirrors timed out throwing a different error, which I suspect I should deal with pacman-mirrors --country {name-of-other-country}
The error is this:
Total ( 67/283) 2,0 GiB 8,03 MiB/s 04:19 [#############################################################################] 100%
error: failed retrieving file 'graphicsmagick-1.3.40-4-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst.sig' from ftp.cc.uoc.gr : Operation too slow. Less than 1 bytes/sec transferred the last 10 seconds
warning: failed to retrieve some files
error: failed to commit transaction (download library error)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.```
I literally explained the reason why it WILL BLOCK the update. Kernel DOES NOT EXIST IN THE REPOSITORIES, so IT WILL FAIL for the update because of that.
PS: if you changed mirrors, you HAVE TO force full refresh of the mirror database.
I didn’t. I just insisted like you suggested I do. It all makes sense now, especially after re-reading your previous reply, and trying to install 6.5 later, which included the linux65-nvidia package. I am now installing the AUR updates with yay, and then I will try rebooting with 6.5 to see how it runs with that.
As you have Nvidia, make sure to follow kernel development so you remove kernels before they are removed from the repositories (Read your branch announcement threads it will tell you). Usually you want to just use the current latest LTS kernel and forget about it, unless you have reasons to run latest kernel updates on non LTS kernel.
I do have fiber, but it happened regardless. I also ran sudo pacman-mirrors -f 5 and I don’t think it changed much. This is the output:
::INFO => Mirror pool: https://repo.manjaro.org/mirrors.json
::INFO => Mirror status: https://repo.manjaro.org/status.json
::INFO Using custom mirror file
::INFO Querying mirrors - This may take some time
0.214 Greece : https://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/linux/manjaro/
::INFO Writing mirror list
::Greece : https://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/linux/manjaro/stable/$repo/$arch
::INFO Mirror list generated and saved to: /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
and I am confident I have remained at the same mirror as before, according to /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
I’ll keep an eye out for the newer LTS kernels, like @omano has suggested. How often do LTS kernels become a thing usually in Manjaro?
Well the oldest supported LTS kernel is 4.19 and it was released in Oct. 2018 and it is supposed to be supported until the end of 2024. But i don’t see 4.14 in manjaro which is supposed to be supported till the end of this year. So it seems manjaro cuts 1 kernel or one year.
This still makes 5 year support at most. The current LTS kernel 6.1 was released in December 2022.
Here is the official table with “projected” kernel life. I would substract a year just to be sure. https://kernel.org/releases.html
I think they stopped providing it because it has issues for many things in Manjaro if I recall correctly. May find more info in the Search. //EDIT: here is the Stable announcement thread where 4.14 kernel has been removed:
This old kernel is not compatible with SystemD which is a core component of Manjaro, so that’s why.
I meant I don’t have fiber and I notice it happens a lot, especially if you increase the concurrent connection in Pacman configuration file. With only one connection it seems to happen way less.
Regardless, if you run a pacman-mirrors command or if you manually change your mirror list, you need to force refresh the package database so the list of packages you have corresponds exactly to your current mirror state. Some mirror do not update at same time.
Most importantly is to consult the announcement thread as I said, because as seen a kernel can be LTS, but not be available in Manjaro, so the good place to know about kernels in Manjaro is the announcement thread for the branch you are using, most likely the Stable branch. Here is Stable branch threads, you can “subscribe” with the bell on top right corner and select Watching First Post so you have a notification when there is a new announcement. First post of the thread will always contain the current supported kernels, and will label kernels that will be dropped soon with the EOL tag (EOL= End Of Life) so you know when to remove them to avoid issues.
Manjaro Settings Manager should also provide an option to give a desktop notification when you use an unsupported kernel.
Just about never see it (unless I randomly hit a mirror downtime and then it gracefully switches to next in the mirror pool) … and I use many connections … like more than 10 on multiple systems.
I would think it has to do with the internet/region/network/service/etc in general.
Some mirrors are simply worse than others, while of course any other network oddity could cause an issue. (users in turkey, iran, china, and other regions have had their own particular problems, especially when there was no mirror within their jurisdiction … or just a university campus with certain network restrictions … there was a student on the forums once who was attending a school where the arch user repository was blocked by the IT department.)