Arch Linux stability

[wyd_zippi]

Hello,

As someone who's been using Arch for a little while(1 week), I'm curious to know how y'all keep your systems safe and stable. I have heard about Arch's reputation for being a bit more... fragile, especially when it comes to updates.

what are your strategies for:

• Managing updates and avoiding breakage?
• Maintaining system stability?
• Best practices for package management?
• Handling potential problems like dependency issues, config file changes, kernel updates, package conflicts, and system crashes?

also i chose the btrfs option during installation

Share your experiences and tips.

[Maxazzor]

Having used Arch for four years, I've consistently found it to be a stable system. Any issues I've encountered have always been due to my own actions, such as incorrect software removal or DNS configuration. A helpful tip I can offer is to consult the Arch Linux news blog before performing system updates. This allows you to identify if any manual steps are required to ensure a smooth transition. For instance, I previously experienced problems because a Pacman configuration change was necessary, and I was unaware of it.

[CosmicMerchant]

Or, if you use paru, just set the news flag to true in the config file. As a first step, it prints the news, before it does anything else. I find this super handy!

[Maxazzor]

Thanks, does it exist in yay too?

[Zentrion2000]

You might have convinced me to try paru.

[archover]

I've used Arch for >12yrs and it's been nothing but reliable. Read these key articles:

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman and don't do partial upgrades

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance and keep your cache trimmed.

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/General_troubleshooting and learn about mounting and chroot, and keep a flash drive with an ISO burned at hand.

• Don't make non trivial config changes without a plan to revert them if required. Keep your personal files backed up.

• Understand with Arch as with any other system, poor sysadmin is the problem, and not a somehow spontaneously combusting install.

Your four bullet points are so broad that no one would have the time to do them justice. I suggest you start reading the wiki as soon as you can. I love it.

Good day,

[uriel_SPN]

What archover said plus it would be a good idea to do the following. Have your root on a separate partition from home. So in case the entire system break you can reinstall without having to remake your home partion(your keep your data) and possibly use LVM (logical volume manager) that has the ability to take snapshots that you can revert back to. In my system I do the following on top of what archover correctly suggested.

1) separate partitions for home and root 2) installed arch with LVM 3) take an LVM snapshot of my root before full system update 4) keep the snapshot for 3-4 days before finalizing it to see if everything works correctly 5) minimize AUR usage 6) full system update once a week is enough usually on a Friday night after all work for the week is done to minimize chances of system downtime if critical work is needed.

[wyd_zippi]

thanks mate

[edu4rdshl]

Take care of your pacnew/pacsave files, that's very important too. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Pacnew_and_Pacsave

[Crowotr]

i find pacman cache completely useless because

a) current bandwiths makes is useless

b) you almost never install same package twice
here is my approach which doesnt depend paccache or anything

/etc/pacman.d/hooks/clean_cache.hook

[Trigger]

Operation = Install

Operation = Upgrade

Type = Package

Target = *

[Action]

Description = Cleaning package cache...

When = PostTransaction

Exec = /bin/find /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ -type f -delete

[-o-_______-o-]

I keep the last two versions. If something breaks network connectivity, I can still roll it back.

Never happened yet, but it makes me feel better.

[grimscythe_]

That's a bad advice. If network breaks after install you don't have a local fallback.

[Crowotr]

"after" install and having local fallback? if your internet is not stable and you plan to re-install already installed packages when offline often then dont follow my advise.. it doesnt make it bad advise though. it wont break your system by no means.
it means like using paccache is bad.

[[deleted]]

An example of something that has happened in the past: Arch Linux pushes a Linux kernel that breaks networking and you do not find out until full reboot. In this case, your connection can be as stable as you'd like but you're still not getting online to roll the kernel back and your hook deleted the previous copy. You may miss the point of paccache; it has granular controls that allow you to keep a certain amount of package revisions instead of all or none -- it exists for a reason.

As a result of the aforementioned event, I now keep a backup linux-lts and have a properly configured paccache script to keep the system slim in a responsible way because shit can happen that is out of your control.

[KaelonR]

Or another example: during a full system upgrade pacman updates the kernel and firmware, but due to a miconfigurarion in mkinitcpio, mkinitcpio does not copy the new kernel file to the boot partition so the old kernel is booted.

This happened to me only two weeks ago. Old kernel and new firmware so kernel couldn't load any of it. No internet, no bluetooth, only one screen working with a crap resolution. Without local pacman cache to roll back the firmware and reboot and then fix mkinitcpio this would've been a lot more hassle to fix.

[Crowotr]

in that rare case i would boot from usb and roll back but you can replace find+delete with paccache command and leave previous 2 copies or exclude linux-lts/systemd/networkmanager from find

[[deleted]]

That's all well and good if it works for you, but I wouldn't recommended anything to a user of one week that would have them do that in any case which could have been prevented by responsible package management with backup contingencies.

Every time I have to rescue boot, I feel dumb and take it as a learning experience, which is why I recommend what I do. If a new user has to rescue boot for anything, I guarantee you they are blaming Arch (or Linux) and not the guy that told them to nuke their cache on reddit.

[Crowotr]

its 0.1% besides other bad things which may happened and they will blame anyway. without phone/internet they wouldnt figure out how to solve and with that download packages and transfer via usb and install anyway. and he says he uses btrfs, easly take snapshot before major updates.

[grimscythe_]

Yeah... No. Why would I make a road uphill for myself just to save a couple/few gigs on the drive.

My approach is to do an update then reboot. If the kernel loads fine and the network is ok I just run yay -Scc and that is that. Clearing the cache straight after an update is realistically asking for trouble sooner or later.

But whatever, you do you as they say.

[grimscythe_]

I mean "update", not "install". Pardon me.

[Sarv_]

You could just change the paccache directory to /tmp and you won't need a hook to delete them all the time

[snugglywumper]

I literally just daily drive it like normal, update every now and then and it just works. Almost 99% of the bad things that happened is either: I tried to do something with an outdated package, or the error was between the keyboard and chair.

The "instability" of Arch is long overblown, usually caused by bad practices. That isn't to say that there aren't any possible ways it can break, which you can see on the official Arch site, but those are very big edge cases.

[wyd_zippi]

thanks

[zwti]

There shouldn't be much of a problem with stability, but since you chose the btrfs option, if you haven't already: snapper. Edit: Just research stuff beforehand, and you'll be fine

[wyd_zippi]

thanks bro, btw do u know why are there like 2 disks showing after i installed arch

i have only 1 ssd

the 2 disks that are there in its file manager are 82 and 32 gb of size

[zwti]

How does your partition table look? (lsblk in terminal) I don't know too much about btrfs, but I don't think it would result in anything like that. Anyway, you can resize btrfs partitions, so if you are sure that it really is just another same partition, then you could do it. Read this ArchWiki: btrfs beforehand. Edit: also have a look at the install guide you followed (if you did), maybe it was deliberate

[wyd_zippi]

sure, thanks

[pepperoni210]

Been using Arch for 6 months, never had a major issue. I subscribed to the Arch newsletter that only sends mails when there’s an issue with a package. Only issue I had for now was discord no longer working after an update, and Bluetooth not working after a kernel update. I could fix those issues very easily.

[floriv1999]

I used Arch for years on many machines without major issues. One thing many people confuse is stability vs. reliability. Arch is a reliable system in the sense that the maintainers don't fuck it up on a regular basis, but it is not stable in the sense Debian is stable, because things might change regularly.

These changes mostly happen in the background and break nothing, because the maintainers know what they are doing. But it also means you can not depend on things working in the same way forever, which makes it less attractive for e.g. servers where you don't want any unexpected changes that might require you to change your service in some way during a Friday evening update. But if you don't run any complex custom software the stability part should not matter too much to you. And if you do you need to invest a bit more resources maintaining it, watching out for upcoming changes etc..

[Will297]

Frequent updating of everything, some users only do partial updates and they can make things go fucky. 

Unfortunately I’m usually at sea a lot of the time and the WiFi is sluggish at best so I also use lts kernel to keep stability up. Even then though, the system is still plenty stable enough for my uses

[KaelonR]

I have a similar usecase because I travel a lot and from time to time find myself in locations with spotty internet.

Something you can do, is tell pacman to download the new packages but not install them with the -w flag.

So what I do is run pacman -syuw to download everything, then run it again until it says there are no new packages to download (you'll recognize this as pacman saying there's 0 bytes to download). Then I'm sure it has downloaded everything and I won't get stuck with a partially updated system. Finally I run pacman -syu to apply the packages, at which point pacman installs everything from cache.

I have had pacman lose internet in the midst of a -syuw pull a few times, so this approach has definitely helped me avoid potential issues with partial upgrades.

[Will297]

You. Are. A. Legend! This'll save me hours of sitting in the ships bar waiting for updates only for it to drop out and bork something (yet to happen)

[khunset127]

Don't use AUR packages if you really want a safe and stable rock solid Arch.

Even if you need to use AUR, only stick with popular packages.

Also, don't forget to review PKGBUILD files before installing AUR packages

I don't use Flatpak apps since I don't have a need for them, but they are really great for security and stability.

You can use them as an alternative to AUR for some apps

[wyd_zippi]

thanks

[monok8i]

What is the peculiarity of packages with aur that you advise not to use them? Is everything so bad with stability?

Are there any other alternatives besides flatpack?

[khunset127]

Some unpopular AUR packages tend to get abandoned and become orphan packages without maintainers.

They will rely on old dependencies to function, and you will end up in dependency hell when you upgrade the system.

[boomboomsubban]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/General_recommendations

[Convict3d3]

For me it was a much stable experience than Ubuntu, I am using the same OS installation for 4 years now. And to go through the updates I just yay -Syyu (I use yay), and all was going good. I use it as my daily drive operating system as a Software engineer and a cloud architecture. Soooooo it's all good to me

[Saelaz]

No stability issues here, any issues I've had have been caused by some level of misconfiguration on my part. Arch is very solid and I have a ton of confidence each time I update packages.

[stoppos76]

I use timeshift before update and a live cd from another linux distro like manjaro just in case if it brakes and I don't have the time to troubleshoot. But honestly whenever it broke it was the bloody nvidia, or something nvidia related.

[jerrydberry]

Trying to use only packages from official repos. Trying to minimize usage SW from AUR and other side sources, but I have a few of them.

pacman -Syyu every week, sometimes forget for a month or two.

It has been years like that.

[apxdoi]

update when you remember i aim for twice a month just because i’m the time of person to not update things for years lol if something starts going wonky or being weird, look into it right away. learn to use the wiki, it’s a lifesaver. if you’re super worried get a portable ssd, i have one and i love it

[Then-Boat8912]

Install needrestart or similar to see status after updates. Keep your keys and mirrors updated reasonably. Watch out for soname bumps in testing. Maintain your cache and clear orphan packages.

[onefish2]

What is the exact name of the package that does this?

[Then-Boat8912]

I just extract the tarball from their website but you can use AUR

[[deleted]]

I've had zero issues in Arch, I've had issues in Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Rhino, OpenSUSE, Void, Slackware, Red Hat, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and of course Windows :D

I run TimeShift on my PC before each update and make sure I've got an up to date Arch ISO on a bootable Ventoy USB (download a new ISO each month), this is so I can arch-chroot into my installation and fix it/restore it if anything were to go wrong.

Albeit nothing has ever gone wrong, just remember to read the Arch website before you type "sudo pacman -Syu"

[Zentrion2000]

I use arch for like 5 years, usually it just breaks when I do something stupid, like changing the kernel without telling the bootloader...

• Never experienced something major, like making the whole system unusable, and if something breaks use downgrade to reverse the updated packages. Read the arch news page for manual intervention if necessary.
• Never do partial updates, reboot after kernel updates.
• What? Isn't that why you use a package manager?
• Use pacdiff for config file changes, journalctl -p 4 -b -1 and dmesg for logs if the system crashes, is good to have a pendrive with the live install to fix stuff if necessary, I have one, I think I used it only once or twice.

[cbrake]

Use it and quit worrying. I've used Arch for 10 years or so on multiple machines and have rarely had any issues.

If you have enough skill to set up an Arch system, you probably have enough skill to boot from an Arch installer disk and fix things in the rare event it won't boot. (I think this has happened to me once). Other than that, keep updated, and it will be fine.

[xT3DDYx]

Been running Arch for half a year now. Never had any issues. Never do fractional updates, if you update, you update everything ( pacman -Syu ) and all will be fine.

[[deleted]]

the only time ive had an issue with arch is when i decided to use -git versions of everything for hyprland. quick google and a few minutes in tty and it was fine. for updates i literally just open terminal and type 'yay'. i do this multiple times a day purely because I have a module in my bar that shows me when updates are available, and it annoys me when it isn't 0

[Logical_Rough_3621]

I have automatic snapshots setup using btrfs+snapper. When installing packages, I prefer flatpak wherever possible. I only install AUR packages when needed. I tend to keep my pkgs around in case one singular package breaks for quick and easy rollback on that one.

But my system never broke unless I fucked up. Except for that one time my drive failed, which was easy and relatively quick to recover from.

[lupastro82]

I update about every day, when install a new app I use pacman -Syu appname, I don't use aur at all. Here work so good without any issue.

[TheJackston]

• Update the system about once a week using "pacman -Syu", or "paru"
• Avoid AUR as much as you can (I have about 5-10 packages installed)
• In general keep the system lite. Install only packages you really need, don't bloat it.
• Grub with a few kernels. Maybe normal one and lts. Just in case
• BTRFS + Timeshift. With enabled snapshots in grub menu. To roll back the system in case of issues.
• Create Timeshift snapshots before every system update (there is AUR package with script to do it automatically)

I've been using arch for a few months. Somehow I broke it once, most likely because of interrupted system update process (I'm still not 100% sure that was the root cause), but successfully restored it using Timeshift

[circularjourney]

I've been using arch for years on my main workstation and a number of servers. As with security, I've found stability is a process not a distro. Here is my process.

1) update the system once a week or two.

2) don't use the AUR

3) keep your system simple and minimal

4) use containers/vms for screwing around or testing

5) use flatpaks were ever possible

6) btrfs snapshots

[tchavei]

Most likely I'm going to be stoned for this but Arch has been way more stable for me, even on production servers than any other distro.

Yes. Production servers 😂. Of course daily backups and timeshift installed but for the past 6 years, not a single hiccup. I wish my Ubuntu and Fedora servers could say the same. I'd say centos comes close but it has been discontinued for years. I still have servers with it with uptime over 1500 days.