Linux

47934 readers

1721 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Ran into an issue with the latest arch Linux update, how to prevent in the futur (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've been using Linux for the better part of 4 years so I'm not new to it, but I've always learned stuff on an as-needed basis. Today I ran into an issue that I want to prevent in the future since I had a mini heart attack thinking about how my last backup on this system was... Never since I'm an idiot who forgot to set it up like I have on my laptop. Here are my steps:

Ran sudo pacman -Syu; sudo pacman -Syy like I do every few days
packages updated
restarted computer
can only boot into emergency mode

The journal was really long so I moved past it and went to the pacman logs, linux had updated from 6.4.3.1-1 to 6.4.3.1-2. Nothing else was important enough to cause the system to only boot into emergency (gcc, vbox, some libs) so I did a quick pacman -U to the cached 6.4.3.1-1 version for both Linux and Linux headers and rebooted - hurrah it was fixed! But I have no idea why it happened, or how to prevent it.

Has anyone else ran into this issue when updating? Any advice for preventing future crashes or issues like this so I don't fear updating?

Edit: Thanks to everyone for your advice! I ended up following multiple bits of advice. I reinstalled arch to get btrfs as the filesystem (didn't have anything important other than some docked-compose files and books yet) and grabbed the linux-lts kernal as a backup as well. I haven't configured snapper yet, but it's on my list of things to do.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You could install the linux-lts kernel alongside the one you have already installed to have the option to just boot into that one when a kernel update seems to be the problem.

Another thing would be to look into backup solutions that execute automatically when updating your system. Personally I have my system on BTRFS subvolumes and a package called snapper to manage the snapshots (backups). Alternatively the package timeshift gets mentioned a lot when discussing backup solutions.

Otherwise you did exactly what I have done to fix almost every issue I ever had. Downgrading the likely culprit and updating again a bit later.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I second btrfs with snapper. With snapper, you can set it up so that it automatically makes snapshots at a timed interval and/or when you run your package manager. You can restore any of your saved snapshots from the snapper app or even from GRUB.

It's a bit hard to set up, but some distros come with it set up by default. You could install one if you don't want to figure btrfs setup out and are open to OS hopping. OP, you mentioned you're using arch, Garuda OS is an Arch based distro that comes with btrfs and the grub snapper configurations set up by default.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the info! I've tried garuda and didn't like it, but I'll try snapper!