Need guidance about update and problems after. (picom, polkit, replace kernel?)

[Aragorn]

Welcome to the forum!

@DataXL

I did read that it is no longer recommended to use pamac and do the update with command line, right? Do you recommend yay -Syu ?

Absolutely not. yay is an AUR helper, and it is strongly advised to not use any AUR helpers for updating your system packages, due to the possibility that they will pull in an AUR package with the same title as a repository package when both exist at the same time.

Update your system with pacman instead, and you can update the AUR packages afterwards — I use the command-line version of pamac for that. Also, always refresh your mirrors before running a major update.

sudo pacman-mirrors -f && sudo pacman -Syu && pamac update --aur --devel

Recommended reading…

• [HowTo] Updating Manjaro as safely as possible

@DataXL

I quickly ran out of disk space in my 32 GB partition, which was large at beginning, but after every update the system gets a lot bigger.

If you use btrfs with snapshots, then you may need to delete some of the older snapshots.

@DataXL

There is no check of the update process to calculate required disk space upfront. Why?

There is if you use pacman.

@DataXL

Can I use another partition of my disc as a temporary space?

If you have an empty partition with a Linux-native filesystem, then you can mount this volume to /var/cache/pacman/pkg before updating, and then this will be where your downloaded packages will be stored. You could even make this permanent by adding the empty partition to /etc/fstab with /var/cache/pacman/pkg as the mountpoint.

Some recommended literature to help you on your way…

• [Tutorial] Working with additional 'drives'

• [Tip] Root filesystem full but got a spare partition sitting around? Split off some stuff!

@DataXL

Is there any log I can look into to see why after update now I need 1.4GB more space? ( After sudo pacman -Scc )

No, but — again — if you are on btrfs, then it may pay to check the usage of your filesystem, and if necessary, run a balance operation.

Balance - Btrfs - ArchWiki

@DataXL

a) graphics problem with windows not updating. I remembered that this was also an issue last time and my picom setting was xrender, now I need to disable picom compositor with Super+P

It is advisable to completely log out of the graphical environment and log into a tty for updating the system — see my HowTo higher up this post.

@DataXL

What is the configuration for this AMD Ryzen graphics? I hope I am not the only one out with this.

AMD graphics commonly don’t require any additional configuration. They should work out-of-the-box, because the driver is in the kernel.

@DataXL

I use kernel 6.1.176-1-MANJARO x86_64. This is now called an old kernel. What is the recommendation for an update for my system?

The recommended kernel is 6.18, which is an LTS kernel — it will be supported until (at least) December 2028.

@DataXL

Is it risky to try a new one?

Not if you stick to LTS kernels.

@DataXL

Now with 6.1 I ran into polkit issues. The only thing that worked was to do
sudo systemctl mask polkit-agent-helper.socket

That is a very bad strategy. I would advise you to unmask it again and use a newer kernel.

The other solution, if you were to want to stick to 6.1, would be to set the SUID bit on /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkit-agent-helper-1.

sudo chmod 4755 /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkit-agent-helper-1

Note that this is only needed if you stick with the older kernel. On newer kernels it is advised to not have the SUID bit set on that file, because doing so is a security risk. That’s why the change was implemented in the first place.

@DataXL

No idea what is behind this, but now I get the password prompt when running gparted or other system tools. Do I need to do something else? Do I have a big security risk?

See my reply here-above.

@DataXL

Is there a better sorted database (maybe even AI bot) to find known problems ?

The forum has a built-in search function, albeit that — admittedly — it’s not exactly a good one.