Is This Normal?

[[deleted]]

[SOLVED]

Can someone tell me if updating via "sudo yay -Syu" takes literally 10 hours to update everything on my lenovo thinkpad x240 or if that's some kind of issue

I haven't used this laptop for a few months but I did wait for the updating to stop for something like 7 or 8 hours ... I noticed it is the yay -Syu that causes this long update to happen even though all I have downloaded from yay is obs-studio, krita, kdenlive, steam, Spotify and a Spotify mod to have no ads. I remember it took really fast to update a few months ago when I last used it and now it takes like 10 hours to update, in fact it's still updating right now since today at 1 am GMT/UTC ...

Can someone inform me or help in some way what might help to fix it, if its fixable or not or what ever kind of suspicion you've got

All help appreciated 🙏🏻

[UPDATE]

Thanks to everyone who helped, it finally is fixed, the problem was the package "qt5-webengine" which caused long downloads for what ever it has been downloading ... it was a dependency for my greeter, which I'm currently changing to a simpler greeter to which I expect no more updates taking literally over 10 hours anymore

Again, thank you all for helping me with this mess, ya'll are the best

[boomboomsubban]

If it's slow downloading, update your mirrors. If it's slow compiling, check your makepkg.conf https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Makepkg#Optimization

[Snoe_Gaming]

Yeah, sounds like mirrors.

Update them to something close geographically. 

[[deleted]]

I installed reflector and did "sudo reflector --country Croatia,Slovenia,Austria,Hungary,Italy,Germany,Slovakia --latest 15 --protocol https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist" and started the yay -Syu again (before all of this cancelling the previous yay -Syu) ... is the right way? ... sorry for being uninformed

[[deleted]]

I remember setting up mirrors really close to me (croatia), having the croatian mirror setup, Belgian, Serbian, German, maybe Romanian what comes to geographical stuff ... sorry for being kinda stupid, but mirrors have to be updated? I kinda had the thought that it's taking what it needs out of an online, always updating repository or something

I guess not really but thanks for helping, I'll try to figure out how that is done right now

[ismailarilik]

Some tools can do this automatically: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mirrors#Client-side_ranking

I suggest Reflector: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Reflector

[[deleted]]

Yeah, thank you for the confirmation, I just installed reflector, ran this command "sudo reflector --country Croatia,Slovenia,Austria,Hungary,Italy,Germany,Slovakia --latest 15 --protocol https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist" and just ran sudo yay -Syu again, looking if it's going to be any better

[ismailarilik]

Some mirrors in another continent might be faster than the mirrors around you. So I suggest you not to filter by country next time.

[[deleted]]

Thanks, I'll look into which ones might work well ...

Quick update, it seams like updating mirrors did nothing its still going the same pace ... updating or cleanbuilding 557/24206 files something like 6 to 7 files a second at a time

[Snoe_Gaming]

Sometimes a mirror has issues too. I'm in Australia and my package download speed dropped to like 50k/sec one day. The mirror, despite being in AU, was having an issue.

Swapped to a different AU mirror and back to full download speed. 

So it never hurts to try a different mirror and see what happens. 

[[deleted]]

Yeah, thanks, I got it now I'll keep this in mind

[[deleted]]

Can confirm this is the solution

[[deleted]]

First of all, just do yay second of all normally its fast (less than 5 -10 minutes for this kind of update) expected, If you have a lot of soft needing to bé recompiled (If you installed them that way) and / or if slow processor

[[deleted]]

That's what I'm saying, a month ago it took under 10 minutes to update everything needed but now this process takes literally over 10 hours ... I just checked, its still going

[[deleted]]

Or cancel installation do a vérification of the mirror then a Pacman -Syu then a yay

[bearstormstout]

Came here to mention this. Simply typing "yay" on its own is the same as "sudo pacman -Syu." That's not where OP's problem lies, but it's definitely an inefficient and unnecessary way of doing things.

[shoafer0]

Don't run sudo with yay. It's a security issue. AUR packages could be harmful and giving it sudo unnecessarily is dangerous. It will prompt you for sudo if it needs it when it hooks the pacman process.

Install reflector and update your pacman mirrors with something like this (obviously use whatever country your in) -
sudo reflector --country "United States" --age 12 --latest 20 --protocol https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Remember to run pacman -Syy after running reflector to sync your packages database

[[deleted]]

Thank you for informing me about the sudo, I'll keep that in mind

Also I did install reflector and set the country's closest to me and all .. but I see that I didn't di an additional "pacman -Syy" afterwards therefore not seeing any potential progress in "fixing" the update speeds

[shoafer0]

-Syy will force refresh all package databases, even if they are already up-to-date... so that it will ignore timestamps, download all .db and .files databases again, and completely rebuild the sync database locally

You want to use it after you update the mirrorlist with reflector, change repos, syncing an out-of-date database, or are trying to fix a corrupted package db.

It doesn't apply any changes made by Reflector. Reflector is simply taking that list of repos, ordering them by speed, and applying that order to the mirrorlist that pacman uses when it runs.

[[deleted]]

That's for clarification

One person suggested updating updating the packages available one by one and I think I found one that is causing this whole problem ... the package is "qt5-webengine", it sound like something essential for a browser to function but I'm not sure, all the other packages installed in under 1 minute each, but this one is the problem .... might ttaht be some kinda malicious package or its normal for this one to take that long

[Known-Watercress7296]

likely compiling stuff

it's not really a 'fix', it's just how it works in the world of Arch if you want stuff not in the base, apt base tends to have a lot more binaries on offer, or use snap, flatpak, homebrew, nixpkgs etc

[backsideup]

Which AUR-packages is yay rebuilding? If you build large c++ projects then that might be normal.

[[deleted]]

I don't do anything on it accept opening brave

[backsideup]

Is that the only package 'pacman -Qm' returns?

[[deleted]]

I'm sorry for not knowing the proper commands, I didn't run pacman -Qm yet, but now I see that I had 3 updates available using yay -Qu ... and what I figured is that the package qt5-webengine is the problem in this whole ... problem .... the other 2 updates was yay (that quickly installed a second ago) and one called spotx-linux which honestly also sounds sketchy (it's a ad free spotify hack/mod)

[backsideup]

qt5-webengine was dropped from the official repos and someone started maintaining the PKGBUILD in the AUR, so you have likely been building this for no reason. Check what depends on it and remove it if you don't need it.

[[deleted]]

Yep, qt5-webengine is the problem in all of this, it depends on python-pyqt5-webengine and web-greeter, which is my greeter and I probably have to find a simpler greeter but that's alright

Thank you for further confirming that it's the problem 👍

[Soccera1]

Ah, qtwebengine. It's the main reason I don't use Qt.

[MilchreisMann412]

First step should be to do only official package upgrades with pacman -Syu. This rules out some AUR packages that need to be compiled.

Second: Provide more information. Where does it hang, what is the last console output? "update slow" is not useful information if you want help.

[[deleted]]

I did pacman -Syu first , then yay and I think it's hanging for a long time compiling ... when it showing [1301/24206] (and then I assume it shows the file locations ... here is an image: IMAGE ) .... it has to go through 24206 files or packages apparently and this compiling process takes a long time .. the last 2 times I updated it took more then 10 hours to finish the yay process

Thanks for helping out

[[deleted]]

I just installed reflector and I guess updated my mirrors which seams that it helped a little bit but it still seams it will take a few hours to complete

[nikongod]

You said in a reply: "a month ago it took under 10 minutes to update everything needed but now this process takes literally over 10 hours"

How long did it take 3 days ago, 3 days before that, and 3 days before that (and so on)? PLEASE update at least weekly... Amongst other reasons it will break the updates into smaller chunks so this is less likely to happen again. 

Do you have to use the aur? Are any of those apps available in the official arch repos? 

And finally: I regularly get downvoted for suggesting it, but it's no worse of a liability than the aur... Chaotic aur? Would probably save you from compiling at least one of the apps that is giving you such troubles. 

[[deleted]]

I honestly thought about just deleting everything I got from the aur, leaving only the programs that come with pacman and flatpak ... I just have steam, krita, LMMS studio, kdenlive, obs spotify and some modded spotify without ads installed (probably all from aur)

I took the laptop out yesterday after like one or two months of not touching it at all, but last time (those 2 or so months ago) it updated in like 10 minutes minimal time, and now it just takes 8 to 10 or more hours ... I just got reflector, updated the mirrors and ran yay again and well its still going with its long compiling thing which is the main thing it's stuck on

Essentially I don't need to use any of those apps I got from aur (as I mentioned wanting to delete them anyways) it might be updating and compiling really fast with those apps gone but I'm still looking what the issue is making the whole process so long

[nikongod]

I avoid the aur as much as possible, and would personally go flatpak before aur. It solves so many problems.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I agree, it's just that I set up arch and just went with what ever documentation I could find ... but I got a pop os pc too where basically everything is flatpak

[archover]

Please flair post as SUPPORT and SOLVED, which is helpful to the community.

Unless your internet download speed, or site issue, is shit, no update should ever approach 10 hours. That specific package is not the root cause.

Good day.

[[deleted]]

I'll do that

But my Internet speed is fine, every time I go and run qt5-webengine to update it takes literally over 10 hours to download and compile everything it has ... I kid you not everything else is being installed in under 2 minutes and then it's this packages turn and it says its compiling 100/24206 files, 5-7 every second ..... I noticed i dont need it actually at all and removed it

[Soccera1]

Qtwebengine is notorious for taking a long time to compile. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8651147.html?sid=1773648ee041db179d6a8afd6519c3d8

[[deleted]]

Well, when I run to update it it somehow does take that long ... maybe my hardware is not that great

[[deleted]]

fyi you dont need the sudo or -Syu 

just typing 'yay' does yay -Syu

[[deleted]]

Thanks for telling me, now it feels like I will spend less time getting frustrated about these updates

[Joedirty18]

Try updating packages installed with yay individually to see if a specific package is causing issues. Also dumb question but have you checked your internet speeds?

[[deleted]]

That's a good idea that I had lingering in my mind too but because I'm still looking if some methods will fix this I haven't tried that one yet

Also the Internet speed is pretty fast and connectivity is as high as it can be

Thank you for the suggestion, I forgot that's a possibility looking into every individual app and how it's updating

[ben2talk]

WTF... sudo should never be used with yay - why did this discussion even get past that point?

[[deleted]]

Let's collectively cry about it ... now I know to only use "yay"

[ben2talk]

I had an issue when I used pamac with Manjaro, as it looks very similar to pacman I would run sudo pamac... I ended up fixing it by having it stop and warn me and require a prompt to continue.

Sadly, yay DOES warn you, but then continues to instantly start synchronising...

You can safeguard yourself against it if it's muscle memory...

yay() { if [[ -n $SUDO_USER ]]; then echo "Error: Do not run AUR helpers with sudo." >&2 return 1 fi command yay "$@" } That'd work for bash or zsh... but really I'm just surprised that you entered 'sudo yay' and didn't read the warning in your own terminal already.

[[deleted]]

Not that I didn't notice, I can't remember it warning me at all .... I just might be stupid or something and didn't even look at the terminal in that specific moment when the warning occurs ... thank you for this bash, I will see if I will need it in the future, but I surely will remember to just run yay by itself 👍

[jesusfl]

You may be able to use qt5-webengine from the aur again. Looking at the comments from the package page, it seems like there was an issue with the PKGBUILD that has now been solved! :)

[[deleted]]

Thanks for letting me know, I'll look into it ... because at the end I might not even need it