[arch-general] Re: pacman -Syu fails due to conflict with mtab?

[Nicolas Sebrecht]

The 22/12/11, Angel Velásquez wrote:

> The experts, normal people, and even noobs like me would say to you ..
> PLEASE READ THE NEWS DUDE, (its like the 5th time you write a mail
> asking questions, when the solution it's posted on the front page)..
> 
> Don't you think you're big enough to learn this amazing trick?

OTOH, news related to updates are *not* at the correct place on the home
web page. When I do admin tasks I would expect to read news in my
_shell_ just before the update.

Also, think that the packages updates might be later done offline after
a refresh & downloadonly.

People at Gentoo did a good tool exactly for this purpose:

  (shell prompt) # eselect news
  Usage: eselect news <action> <options>
  
  Standard actions:
    help                      Display help text
    usage                     Display usage information
    version                   Display version information
  
  Extra actions:
    count                     Display number of news items
      new                       Count unread news items (default)
      all                       Count all news items
    list                      List news items
    purge                     Purge read news
    read <item>...            Read news items
      --mbox                    Output in mbox format
      --quiet                   Suppress output, only change status
      --raw                     Output in raw format
      new                       Read unread news items (default)
      all                       Read all news items
      item                      Number of item (from 'list' action)
    unread <item>...          Mark read news items as unread again
      all                       Mark all news items as unread
      item                      Number of item (from 'list' action)
  #

News sample:

  (shell prompt) # eselect news read 2
  2010-03-25-python-3.1
    Title                     Python 3.1
    Author                    Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis <A... at ge...o.org>
    Posted                    2010-03-25
    Revision                  1
  
  Python 3 is a new major version of Python and is intentionally
  incompatible with Python 2. Many external modules have not been ported
  yet to Python 3, so Python 2 still needs to be installed. You can
  benefit from having Python 3 installed without setting Python 3.1 as
  main active version of Python.  Currently you should not set Python 3.1
  as main active version of Python.  When setting it becomes recommended,
  a separate news item will be created to notify users.
  
  Although Python 3.1 should not be set as main active version of Python,
  you should run python-updater after installation of Python 3.1. By
  default, modules that support both Python 2 and Python 3 are installed
  for both the active version of Python 2 and the active version of Python
  3 when both Python 2 and Python 3 are installed.
  
  It is recommended to use a UTF-8 locale to avoid potential problems.
  Especially C and POSIX locales are discouraged. If locale has not been
  explicitly set, then POSIX locale is used, so you should ensure that
  locale has been set.  Problems occurring only with non-UTF-8 locales
  should be reported directly to upstream developers of given packages.
  See http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/utf-8.xml for more information about
  UTF-8.
  

With 'eselect news read' you only get fresh news you didn't read yet.
This feature was a big success, very appreciated by users.

-- 
Nicolas Sebrecht