[arch-general] Request of printing warnings at the end of pacman upgrade
Hi, Every arch user may experience such a situation--after a system upgrade, the system is totally unusable. That is neither the problem of that upgrade, nor the user. In fact, during the upgrading process some important warnings (such as `please reinstall your bootloader', or `please reload the modules yourself') are printed but missed by the user. Especially when hundreds of packages are going to be upgraded, thousands of lines of information will wash away the important warnings. Although in the wiki, arch officially said that you should check every output line during system upgrade, most people will usually do the following things to upgrade the system: turn on the computer, type pacman -Syu, hit Y, then left the computer alone and check back half an hour later. Few will watch the whole upgrading process and see each line of the output. So, I recommend that, why don't we print a single message `Some critical packages have been upgraded and some operations needed to be done by yourself, please check back the /var/log/pacman.conf file for some important information.' AT THE END of a system upgrade which has some packages upgrade marked `important'? Packages itself can specify for a single upgrade related to a specific version whether this is an `important' upgrade, in its *.install file. And it is totally NOT against KISS rule, is it? -------------------- BTW, I suggest that add a character (I, W, or E, for 'info' 'warning' 'error') into every line of output to the log file. the old style is like this: [2012-06-25 20:34] The way fontconfig is configured has been changed. and the new one may be this: [2012-06-25 20:34 (W)] The way fontconfig is configured has been changed. So the advantage is that, user can use 'cat /var/log/pacman.log | grep (W)' to see all warning messages or 'grep (E)' to see all errors without any clutter. This can be very useful in diagnosing after the system becomes unusable. If you are disagree with me, just type 'cat /var/log/pacman.log' and try to find something useful in a short time. If you cannot do that, why don't you think this is a good suggestion?
On 07/01/2012 06:40 PM, BlissSam wrote:
Hi,
Every arch user may experience such a situation--after a system upgrade, the system is totally unusable. That is neither the problem of that upgrade, nor the user. In fact, during the upgrading process some important warnings (such as `please reinstall your bootloader', or `please reload the modules yourself') are printed but missed by the user. Especially when hundreds of packages are going to be upgraded, thousands of lines of information will wash away the important warnings.
Although in the wiki, arch officially said that you should check every output line during system upgrade, most people will usually do the following things to upgrade the system: turn on the computer, type pacman -Syu, hit Y, then left the computer alone and check back half an hour later. Few will watch the whole upgrading process and see each line of the output.
So, I recommend that, why don't we print a single message `Some critical packages have been upgraded and some operations needed to be done by yourself, please check back the /var/log/pacman.conf file for some important information.' AT THE END of a system upgrade which has some packages upgrade marked `important'? Packages itself can specify for a single upgrade related to a specific version whether this is an `important' upgrade, in its *.install file. And it is totally NOT against KISS rule, is it?
--------------------
BTW, I suggest that add a character (I, W, or E, for 'info' 'warning' 'error') into every line of output to the log file. the old style is like this: [2012-06-25 20:34] The way fontconfig is configured has been changed. and the new one may be this: [2012-06-25 20:34 (W)] The way fontconfig is configured has been changed. So the advantage is that, user can use 'cat /var/log/pacman.log | grep (W)' to see all warning messages or 'grep (E)' to see all errors without any clutter. This can be very useful in diagnosing after the system becomes unusable. If you are disagree with me, just type 'cat /var/log/pacman.log' and try to find something useful in a short time. If you cannot do that, why don't you think this is a good suggestion?
Not bad. I myself needed a small crash after an uprgade to since then taket he good habit to have sysmetically a look at the log file.
Yes, that is true. I had a bad experience half a year ago, so I wrote this mail here. And what I also want to say, the message should not be printed too often unless a really really important package is upgraded (such a bootloader or something else). Or if the message is printed EVERY time upgrading the system, no one will check the log. The package itself should mark itself that the upgrade is important, and pacman should be able detect it. And how do you think of my second advice in the previous mail, that is adding a character to indicate the level of a line in the log file--my explain may be not good and you just check back my previous mail, the content below the horizontal line. Sam ----------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2012 18:49:01 +0200 From: arnaud.gaboury@gmail.com To: arch-general@archlinux.org Subject: Re: [arch-general] Request of printing warnings at the end of pacman upgrade
Not bad. I myself needed a small crash after an uprgade to since then taket he good habit to have sysmetically a look at the log file.
On Mon, 2 Jul 2012 00:56:24 +0800 BlissSam <m13253@hotmail.com> wrote:
And what I also want to say, the message should not be printed too often unless a really really important package is upgraded (such a bootloader or something else). Or if the message is printed EVERY time upgrading the system, no one will check the log.
Isn't this taken care of by just checking the news before upgrading, which you should do anyway? -- John K Pate http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/s0930006/ The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
Not every thing news will report! For example every time that virtualbox-modules upgrades it will say, 'please reload all the modules or reboot to take the changes'. Will this be in the news? Also, if some packages upgrades and require you to add yourself into a certain group (I mean the older version does not require but the newer requires). You know, during an upgrade of libgphoto, it says 'now you no longer need to be in group photo', and the former situation is the reverse of the libphoto example. I know that checking the news before upgrading is a good habit. However, checking the news do not mean you are safe! And why not just wait and see other users comments? Before the posting here, I asked several users on the IRC, and get positive reactions. I believe that MOST (I do not mean ALL, just MOST) users will like it. ----------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2012 18:09:35 +0100 From: j.k.pate@sms.ed.ac.uk To: arch-general@archlinux.org Subject: Re: [arch-general] Request of printing warnings at the end of pacman upgrade
On Mon, 2 Jul 2012 00:56:24 +0800 BlissSam <m13253@hotmail.com> wrote:
And what I also want to say, the message should not be printed too often unless a really really important package is upgraded (such a bootloader or something else). Or if the message is printed EVERY time upgrading the system, no one will check the log.
Isn't this taken care of by just checking the news before upgrading, which you should do anyway?
-- John K Pate http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/s0930006/
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 12:15 PM, BlissSam <m13253@hotmail.com> wrote:
Not every thing news will report!
For example every time that virtualbox-modules upgrades it will say, 'please reload all the modules or reboot to take the changes'. Will this be in the news?
Also, if some packages upgrades and require you to add yourself into a certain group (I mean the older version does not require but the newer requires). You know, during an upgrade of libgphoto, it says 'now you no longer need to be in group photo', and the former situation is the reverse of the libphoto example.
I know that checking the news before upgrading is a good habit. However, checking the news do not mean you are safe! And why not just wait and see other users comments? Before the posting here, I asked several users on the IRC, and get positive reactions. I believe that MOST (I do not mean ALL, just MOST) users will like it. ----------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2012 18:09:35 +0100 From: j.k.pate@sms.ed.ac.uk To: arch-general@archlinux.org Subject: Re: [arch-general] Request of printing warnings at the end of pacman upgrade
On Mon, 2 Jul 2012 00:56:24 +0800 BlissSam <m13253@hotmail.com> wrote:
And what I also want to say, the message should not be printed too often unless a really really important package is upgraded (such a bootloader or something else). Or if the message is printed EVERY time upgrading the system, no one will check the log.
Isn't this taken care of by just checking the news before upgrading, which you should do anyway?
-- John K Pate http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/s0930006/
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
It's best to follow the arch-projects, dev-public, and arch-general mailing lists as well as arch news. Following dev-public will keep you informed of upcoming changes before they happen. Rather than cat /var/log/pacman.log | grep (W)', you can install lnav from the aur repository then sudo lnav /var/log/pacman.log and scroll through the log quickly and find any messages. I'm not as advanced as most Arch users, but this works for me while running testing repos. It really does follow the KISS principle of Arch. Myra -- Life's fun when your sick and psychotic!
participants (4)
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Arno Gaboury
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BlissSam
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John K Pate
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Myra Nelson