Pamac CLI terminated during update... update continued in backend

[scotty65]

@AwwsmGaurav

Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 40 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default) zswap: yes
    compressor: zstd max-pool: 20%
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 3.52 GiB used: 1.19 GiB (33.8%)
    priority: 100 comp: zstd avail: lzo-rle,lzo,lz4,lz4hc,deflate,842
    dev: /dev/zram0
  ID-2: swap-2 type: file size: 20 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -1
    file: /swap/swapfile

Something I just noticed is that you appear to be running zram & zswap at the same time. This is not advised:

Usage as swap - zram - ArchWiki

If the related zswap kernel feature remains enabled, it will prevent zram from being used effectively. This is because zswap functions as a swap cache in front of zram, intercepting and compressing evicted memory pages before they can reach zram. Despite the output of zramctl(8), most of zswap is unused in this circumstance. Therefore, it’s recommended to permanently disable zswap using the kernel parameter or sysfs setting before starting.

Toggling zswap - zswap - ArchWiki

zswap can be toggled at runtime, by writing either 1 (to enable) or 0 (to disable) to /sys/module/zswap/parameters/enabled. For example, to disable it at runtime:

# echo 0 > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/enabled

To disable zswap permanently on kernels where it is enabled by default, add zswap.enabled=0 to your kernel parameters.

However, as I’ve mentioned previously, my recommendation would be for you to keep zswap, and remove/disable zram instead. zswap uses the RAM just like zram, but as it is built into the kernel, it is much better than zram at removing stale pages from swap, and shifting old/inactive pages from RAM to the disk.

You could probably set your swappiness back to the default value of 60 too. Having a low swappiness value can result in inactive/old pages staying in RAM when they should be shifted to the disk so that RAM is freed up for current pages such as newly opened files.

What is Linux Swappiness? | Definition from TechTarget

• The higher the swappiness value, the more likely Linux is to swap the less active anonymous data from memory to the swap space, whether that space is a partition or file. This commonly includes application data that isn’t backed by files. A higher swappiness level tends to favor workloads that rely more heavily on file data because it preserves the page cache, thereby reducing input/output overhead. But it can also affect the performance of applications that rely heavily on memory.

• The lower the swappiness value, the more likely Linux is to reclaim memory from the page cache and use it for the anonymous data, thus minimizing the need to swap out inactive data. This approach can affect the performance of applications that rely heavily on file data. But it can also improve performance for applications that don’t, especially if they rely on dynamically allocated memory. This approach can also help users when switching between applications because less time is spent waiting for pages to be loaded back into memory.

The Linux platform doesn’t wait until all available memory is used before swapping pages to disk. Instead it swaps pages based on how long they’ve been inactive. Increasing the swappiness value causes the Linux kernel to swap inactive memory pages sooner than when the swappiness parameter is low.

Regarding your RAM being full:

@AwwsmGaurav

I opened another tab and ran btop the memory usage was at 90%,

An almost full RAM is usually a sign that your system is working well, as Linux uses the RAM as a cache. If you run the following command:

free -h

you will get an output something like this:

               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            28Gi       6.1Gi       3.5Gi       475Mi        17Gi        22Gi
Swap:          8.0Gi        12Mi       8.0Gi

Notice that mine says that I only have 3.5Gi of RAM free? However, I’m only using a little over 6Gi. Another 17Gi of RAM is being used as a cache. Items in the RAM cache will be discarded automatically if more RAM is required for a running application. This is why the last field: “available” is important. I only have 3.5Gi of empty RAM, but another 17Gi can be freed up immediately if and when required.

But you should also be aware that, as your system only has 4GB of RAM, most of the RAM will be taken up by running applications. This is also why zswap might be better for your system. You can’t really store a lot of swap in the RAM, so you want to be using the most efficient & effective swap manager to be moving pages between the RAM & disk, and deleting expired pages from swap.

[AwwsmGaurav]

@nikgnomic

Latest inxi data shows a different value for swappiness ( inxi -ja )

Oh yes I might have set swappiness to 40 prior to getting that output I remember doing that to test system smoothness. I have already made the config file and set the swappiness to 30, I did that on they day I set up zram.

@scotty65

you appear to be running zram & zswap at the same time. This is not advised:

But I never set up zswap…
I clearly remember the discussion of that day

Need help with Swap - Its disabled by default

Hi I was trying to set up fastfetch when I discovered Its already installed on the system, But in that output I discovered that - Memory: 3.08 GiB / 3.52 GiB (88%) Swap: Disabled And now I understand why my ‘system out of memory’ hangs just cannot recover. My thoughts with System Hangs Now I need to know how Swap is enabled I saw some articles on how to do it, but I don’t trust internet with commands I’m not familiar with, hence asking here. The part in articles I don't like Some system…

I chose to not set up zswap as someone said it’s better suited for more modern system and hardware.

I set up swapfile as instructed on Arch wiki (btrfs swapfile) and later zram. I never touched zswap, you can even see my reply about getting framework laptop and my thought of giving zswap a try on that later…

It’s a little bit confusing why it says zswap is enable then…

[scotty65]

zswap is enabled by default in the kernel.

The moment you set up & activate a swapfile or partition, zswap will automatically start swapping out compressed pages between the RAM & the disk, unless you disable zswap.

The easiest way to do this is to open /etc/default/grub, scroll down about 40 lines to:

# Uncomment to disable zswap if zram is being used
# GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="zswap.enabled=0"

And remove the # sign from before GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=, so that it looks like:

# Uncomment to disable zswap if zram is being used
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="zswap.enabled=0"

Then run:

sudo update-grub

and reboot your system.

However, as I have mentioned several times in this & the other thread, with the small amount of memory your system has, you would be much better off removing zram and leaving zswap active so that it can work in conjunction with your swapfile.

zswap is more modern than zram, is managed by the kernel, still compresses pages in the RAM, but has the added benefit of properly utilising the physical swap partition or file.

zram can actually cause system slowdowns, especially on low-memory systems, because it doesn’t swap out old pages to the swapfile. It can end up filling the RAM with old pages, and then the system has to start swapping new pages to the swapfile while the old, unused pages remain compressed in RAM’s swap. zswap removes old pages from the RAM - zram doesn’t.

When I was using zram, my system monitor widget always showed the swap memory percentage increasing as time went on. It rarely (never?) went back down. Since I switched to zswap, my system monitor shows the swap memory percentage going up AND down. After a big job my mini-PC might be using 3% of swap memory - half an hour later it might be back down to 0.5%. That is the way it should be.

zswap — The Linux Kernel documentation

Nowadays, the only time I would recommend zram over zswap for a Manjaro user would be if they had plenty of memory (at least 32GB), and specifically wanted to run their system with some swap but no writing to a swapfile or swap partition. For example, they may have a very slow HDD, or just not want to write too many times to their SSD. But, for everyone else, zswap is definitely the way to go.

[AwwsmGaurav]

Okay if it’s part the kernel system then that makes much more sense. I’ll look into how to disable zram…

[AwwsmGaurav]

I have repeated the same steps that I did when the pamac cli got terminated…

The Steps

1. Open konsole
2. pamac checkupdates
3. pamac update
4. open a new tab in konsole
5. btop in new tab
6. open another tab
7. sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=30

pamac cli didn’t terminate this time…
since last time that happened, I have only changed one thing - disabled zram and removed it form the system.

[nikgnomic]

@AwwsmGaurav

pamac cli didn’t terminate this time

Pacman log should confirm update completed:

grep 2026-05-09 /var/log/pacman.log

[AwwsmGaurav]

@nikgnomic

Pacman log should confirm update completed:

Yes the update was completed successfully both the times…

I always use this command to see if it’s completed or not in case GUI crashes or terminal is closed accidentally or I started the update via ssh :

@AwwsmGaurav

tail -f /var/log/pacman.log

When it says this and stops:

@AwwsmGaurav

Generating EFI bundles…

I consider that the update is completed, wait a min or two and the restart system.

Because this time the cli was actually running, that must be the reason why the logs has few more details logged after that efi bundles line.

Logs

[2026-05-09T15:10:50+0530] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] Generating EFI bundles....
[2026-05-09T15:34:42+0530] [ALPM] running '00-timeshift-autosnap.hook'...
[2026-05-09T15:34:45+0530] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==> Skipping timeshift-autosnap because only 0 hours have passed since the last snapshot.
[2026-05-09T15:34:45+0530] [ALPM] transaction started
[2026-05-09T15:34:45+0530] [ALPM] upgraded fresh-editor-bin (0.3.2-1 -> 0.3.5-1)
[2026-05-09T15:34:45+0530] [ALPM] upgraded shelly-bin (2.2.2-1 -> 2.2.3.2-1)
[2026-05-09T15:34:48+0530] [ALPM] transaction completed
[2026-05-09T15:34:48+0530] [ALPM] running '35-systemd-update.hook'...
[2026-05-09T15:34:48+0530] [ALPM] running 'gtk-update-icon-cache.hook'...
[2026-05-09T15:34:48+0530] [ALPM] running 'update-desktop-database.hook'...

I don’t know what to do with this topic now, I’ll still try few more times to recreate what I experienced before, but I’ll leave it to the moderators to close the topic or not

[nikgnomic]

Using btop during previous update might have caused problems since it was due to be updated

Manjaro 2026-05-02 Stable Update · Snippets · GitLab

:: Different sync package(s) in repository extra x86_64

                             PACKAGE           2026-03-23           2026-05-02

                                btop              1.4.6-1              1.4.6-2

[AwwsmGaurav]

@nikgnomic

Using btop during previous update might have caused problems since it was due to be updated

Maybe, but the pamac cli terminated during download, not during upgrading… But yes it is possible…