Reading Pamac log I see important notices like this in the middle of the update messages:
[2026-09-07T07:39:16+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==> NOTICE: tar backup/restore scripts have been moved
[2026-09-07T07:39:16+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==>
[2026-09-07T07:39:16+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==> The 'tar' package no longer ships the helper scripts
[2026-09-07T07:39:16+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==> /usr/bin/backup and /usr/bin/restore.
[2026-09-07T07:39:16+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==>
[2026-09-07T07:39:16+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==> If you rely on these tools, install them separately with:
[2026-09-07T07:39:16+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==>
[2026-09-07T07:39:16+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==> $ pacman -S tar-scripts
[2026-09-07T07:39:16+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==>
[2026-09-07T07:39:16+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==> The core 'tar' archiving utility itself is unaffected.
[2026-09-07T07:39:43+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] >>> NOTE, 7.1.13 is the last maintenance release of the 7.1 kernel series.
[2026-09-07T07:39:43+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] This kernel is now marked 'End Of Life' (EOL).
[2026-09-07T07:39:43+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET]
[2026-09-07T07:39:43+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] It is recommend to switch to the newer linux72 series:
[2026-09-07T07:39:43+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] 'sudo mhwd-kernel -i linux72'
[2026-09-07T07:39:43+0100] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET]
May be this kind of messages worth a pop-up window, because among all the update messages they will go unnoticed and I don’t think many people will review pacman.log.
For the kernel it is up to the user to use LTS or not, if you do not run LTS kernels, then it is up to you to keep up with kernel release which are announced in update threads.
For the other message I don’t think it is critical at all. I don’t think we use that here.
Would be nice to have. But i am not sure it will be technically possible to automatically filter those. Not sure there is a specification for such infos, i think every package developer does what he wants.
From the stdoutput definitely not, i have seen different formats, with =, =>, INFO and many other forms, so grepping will be buggy.
This should come from the pkgbuild side. In this example it was in post_install, but this is also used for other things, just echoing postinstall to the user will also be buggy.
At the end of the day, arch is hands on distro. But it is a nice idea for the future. Maybe suggest it to arch for the next alpm version - a section postinstall_message in the pkgbuilds or something like this.
This is a primary reason I copy and paste the entire transaction (in my case pacman rather than pamac) and save it to a date-stamped log file for later review/attention.
This also provides an easy reference for when I performed updates; the filenaame will also have other programs I may have installed (or removed) during the transaction for reference.
Note: it’s advised to set the Terminal scrollback to “Unlimited” so as to avoid losing the “top” end.
Everything the user needs to know… If the user wants to know. The million dollar question is how to make the user know if he doesn’t want to, or do not like to, well, read.
A Tik Tok channel will be the future i guess. Or just flashing lights. We have to admit in regard of not bothering the user the utmost perfection is winboze - it updates, crashes and spies completely without user interaction. I just read the monthly update of win 11 breaks sound, virtual machines, file manager, backups and what not. But the user was not bothered to read anything
Indeed, at least it is supposed to work like that but for many months maybe years now, I don’t keep track anymore, there is an issue the log button disappears randomly after finishing operations (even sometimes being inside the log output window, and it brings you back to Pamac home at the end and you can’t go back to logs), you can’t see the Pacman output. This is one of the many reason I stopped using Pamac (besides build AUR package fails, things like that).
I mentioned this because I find odd that messages intended to inform the user end up buried in a log that doesn’t even appear on screen once the update is finished.
It doesn’t worry me personally, since I know where to look and check it occasionally, but the average user—who doesn’t check the Pamac log or visit this forum—will miss those notices entirely.
In short: I think if there are messages the user should see, something should be made to ensure they see them.
I was pretty pissed off the first time i rebooted and wanted to check those and didn’t find them in the log… Well the alpm / pacman can certainly be improved and perfected even more.
But if we leave the theory and speak from practical point of view: many of those are purely informational (like “check the changelog” from systemd, or “reinstall grub” from grub, which was solved with the special manjaro script).
In very rare cases, if those messages are relevant for the ordinary user like the case with tar, it is our job to put them in the announcement. But i honestly think this is the first time in years that happens.
99% of what i saw in this messages in my experience (except as mentioned grub and systemd) are server packages. In that case, those are not something to be found in an average user desktop machine. If it is a server package or specialized service, it is to be expected that the server administrator is above the average Joe competence level and follows the damn logs and acts accordingly. And should probably inform himself from the upstream changelog beforehand anyway, before backing up and upgrading a live server.
Reading this rechecked pacman.log and I realized that there are four of these messages in four years… and this should have been the first thing to check.
I didn’t say anything. Forget the thread. Forget it all. Sorry…
Years ago I ran into an issue that caused weeks of an issue that prevented me using my Arch system all because I missed something in pacman output that was never logged. I did submit a feature request to have an extra option to log ALL the screen output but it was never implemented. Since then I have always run pacman piped to tee (output to screen and file).
pacman -Syu | tee -a /var/log/pacman-terminal.log
You could add it as an alias so it happens automatically, but I prefer typing it so I remember exactly what I’m running.
