How do you track updates?

Question

I would be interested to see the problems resulting from actually running an -Syu after not running one for such a long period of time. I've seen multiple threads started here that resulted from not ever running it and then suddenly doing so
re: running it every hour to see if there's an update, I just have cron check hourly and conky tell me if there's Arch or AUR updates
# Split off from a TGN'ed thread...
Last edited by jasonwryan (2014-07-08 22:58:50)

Answer 1

HiImTye wrote:no, I use a custom script because when I wrote it I couldn't find any built-in mechanism to check it and it works without any problems so I haven't changed it
I slapped together pretty much the same thing a couple weeks ago, but with the reasons jakobcreutzfeldt mentioned in mind:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Run '/usr/bin/checkupdates' to get a count of the number of pending package
# updates. If the number is 20 or greater, or a kernel update is pending, print
# the number of updates to the statusbar and send a pop-up notification.
# Otherwise, exit silently.
pkg=$(checkupdates | wc -l)
kernel=$(checkupdates | grep -c ^linux$)
if [ "$pkg" -lt 20 ] && [ "$kernel" -eq 0 ]; then
exit 0
elif [ "$pkg" -ge 20 ] || [ "$kernel" -ge 1 ]; then
notify-send "Pending updates:" "$(checkupdates)";
echo "PACKAGES: [ $pkg ]"
fi
'grep -oc linux' would obviously catch any package with "linux" in the name, but since the kernel and headers are updated more often than all the rest I got lazy.
EDIT: I also use "alias pacin=sudo pacman -Syu", so if I install a package from the official repos the system just gets updated as a matter of course.
EDIT2: Updated with slithery's recommendation.
Last edited by ANOKNUSA (2014-07-08 21:42:58)