In regards to this https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=89484 One issue with pacman is that its one of the few package managers that can't check if you have updates based on a pacman mirror (defined by the mirrorlist file) without altering the current pacman database and not requiring root permissions. Even with using sudo, its only possible to do the above with pacman -Sy --dbpath /tmp/somedir/ pacman -Qu --dbpath /tmp/somedir/ with pacman -Sy requiring sudo. The premise for such a change is basically pacman update checker scripts/widgets etc etc. I am not aware of how a lot of the pacman widgets check if the system is udpated, however a lot of them use pacman -Qu which only checks if you need updates with the local database (not with the mirrors which you have designated in the mirrorlist file). This is an issue with scripts that run on systems that use dwm/awesome/xmonad/conky etc etc because such widgets only work if the user did a pacman -Syu just before the widget checks for updates (or even worse a pacman -Sy, which if done periodically using crond or some other script can lead to breaks in the system) The patch provided allows you to use pacman -Sy --dbpath without having to use root (you still require root for a pacman -Syu --dbpath or a pacman -Sy --dbpath <somepath> <package/s>). This makes technical sense as well, since root isn't actually require if you create a database copy to some file on the your system (root would only be required if you specify a folder which you cant access due to permissions, however pacman should forcefully quit in such an instance as I believe it does currently in other similar circumstances) The final premise however is that a user should be able to run a command like pacman -Qyu which will check if any updates exist according to the mirror without doing any changes to the pacman database. This means implementing such update checking programs "properly" (as in check for updates against mirror) is completely trivial. With this patch its a lot less trivial (you have to run check if a folder exists in /tmp/, if it does delete it incase of a broken sync, if not create one, run pacman -Syu --dbpath onto that folder and then run pacman -Qu --dbpath) but at least its possible to check if the arch system requires updates without needing root (if needed I have time next week to create a patch implementing pacman -Qyu or such a flag) Note that I have only done fairly basic testing with this patch so don't be surprised if I missed some cases (or some options). There might be some other options which when combined with --dbpath actually requires root (I took the cases of using the -u flag and adding targets on the end). Adding more of such cases is trivial if you check line 91 of util.c (you guys know pacman options a lot better then I) Thanks