How stable is arch?

By that I mean two things:
1. how often will things break and when they do how hard are they to fix?
2. what are the chances of a getting a full system lockup?
thanks.

The last big upgrade problem I remember was the xorg upgrade in November last year. It was in [testing] for a long time and announced on the front page before it was moved to [extra] so I am not too sure what happened (I did not have a problem and was traveling at the time so my memory is sketchy). It was quite a big upgrade and somewhat expected anyway. Can't remember the previous "big" issue before that. Possibly that coreutils update that was broken upstream...
In general, I would proclaim Arch stable because I have never had a problem that cause my computer not to boot or X not to start. But with a rolling release system, you are bound to run into small problems on some upgrades. We have the testing repo to iron out the big updates before pushing them to users.
In general, if you read the front page news and output from pacman, you should be able to maintain a stable system even with joys of rolling releases.
Last edited by Allan (2008-05-08 14:32:05)

Similar Messages

How (un)stable is Arch-current?

I want to give Arch Linux a try, because it really seems a great concept to me: i686 optimized, cutting edge features, simplicity. However, I really like to have the latest software, so I was planning to try the current packages. I just want to know how stable it is compared to Debian Unstable(very stable here), in which I'm typing this post right now. If it's as stable as Debian unstable it's byebye Debian, welcome Arch Linux.
Thanks in advance
btw. sorry for my bad Englsih

Its stability is about the same. Every once in a while, a package will be broken (or deps messed up), but that isn't common.
So go for it. Arch is almost always more up to date then even Debian Unstable. Hell, Deb Unstable still uses Xfree86 4.2.1, and some other old stuff.

How Long Will Arch last?

Hi, my question here is not to ridicule (or otherwise designed to offend anyone) but one of concern. Many distributions have a viable economic model which helps ensure that the distro can survive (Fedora is one prime example). The fact that Fedora has the backing of Red Hat means that it is almost always asured funding. Ubuntu is also moving in this general direction (although their model does not seem as reliable as Red Hat's yet.) What gurrantee do we have that Arch can last for many decades to come? The Arch devs are real people with real jobs. As far as I know they do not actually get and money from Arch Linux. What sustains Arch ( pays for servers etc.) Is it simply donations? Can Arch survive soley off of donations?
What are your thoughts and ideas do you have on how to make Arch a self sustaining distro while also keeping it free? Finally if Arch falls apart what would you do?
THIS IS HYPOTHETICAL THIS IN NO MEANS IMPLIES THAT ARCH IS GOING UNDER ANY TIME SOON!
( I would also like to take this time to conragulate the Arch devs for coming this far and thank them for all their work it is much appreciated.)

Gullible Jones wrote:... There's also Unununium (no kernel, damned if I know how!) ...
Read the FAQ (Introduction page) for more info about Unununium:
http://unununium.org/introduction
Something interesting:
On what platforms does Unununium run?
The latest plan is to implement Unununium as a Linux userspace process. Linux is a stable, available, well documented program which eliminates most of the mundane, uncreative aspects of usual OS development such as writing hardware drivers. It also provides an easy mode of execution, with a developed debugger such as gdb, and fast boot times, since there is no need for a full hardware reboot. This makes development much easier.
Running on Linux has disadvantages as well. Probably most significantly, some things are slower. For a slower speed in execution, we get a faster speed in development. Some day it would be nice to reduce overhead, but that's something that will wait until there is something running.
For some reason or another, this choice of platform leads people to question if Unununium can really be an OS. Of course, it really depends on how "OS" is defined. Unununium is an environment and a design common to all programs which depend on it, and in this sense might be considered an OS.

How stable is iPhoto 6?

I have approx. 9500 photos in my collection. I was having problems emptying my trash, crashing and receiving constant requests to rebuild my library, so I bought iPhoto Library Manager and it's Great. I've split my collection into separate, smaller libraries and am in the process of cleaning and streamlining them.
However, my rebuilt library of 6000 photos, cannot trash more than 20 items at a time without crashing and being rebuilt. So I'm attempting to somehow to reimport & rebuild it even smaller, BUT how stable is iPhoto 6? is this a common problem? I like the program but am I wasting my time and should I explore other photo archive applications? Will iLife 09 be more stable, or is it too early to tell. The only apps I would use are iPhoto and iDVD.
It's having issues at only 7000 photos when it's supposed capacity is 25,000
Is this normal?
Thank you for any opinions, advice or knowledge anyone can offer.

My HD has a 150 capacity with 80GB free space.
Two of my sets I created with iPhoto Manager are on an External Drive of 500 GB, 450GB free.
I did some more testing and the 2 libraries that are crashing are on the Hard Drive. They are also the biggest, one is the buggy default library, the other is the rebuild of the default library. In the rebuild library I can trash only 20 photos at a time etc. (see above post) the other cannot trash anything. I was hoping to use the Rebuilt library as my main library(once I've cleaned out the old photos), saving to the others as needed, but since that is unstable I may start a new clean one.
Will it harm the photos/movies/files to copy them, yet again, into a new clean library (I'm using Library Mgr)? I have had a few problems/errors copying photos due to "unrecognized file type or the files may not contain valid data" these photos did not transfer.
I've also rebuilt these libraries numerous times with the option+command options.
If my system is the problem, what would you recommend as a next step?
Thank you also for the capacity/stability confirmation, I like the app. and would like to continue using it, once I get rid of my bugs.

How stable and secure is iCloud?

Hi,
So I have recently started using iCloud a lot and I now rely on it for mostly everything online. I have a iMac and iPad and I want to use iCloud to save work at school so I can access it at home easily.
I have been doing some important work at school including 2000 word essays for Cambridge IGCSE and I am wondering how secure is iCloud and how stable is it? Because I'll be saving all, if not most of my work to iCloud in the future and I have changed my email to my @me.com for all services I use online.
Thanks.

This article discusses iCloud security: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5125. However, iCloud doesn't provide a general file storage capability. It only syncs data from specific apps such as iWork. This article discusses options for cloud-based file storage: http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/missing/inicloud3.html. I personally use Dropbox and find it extremely reliable.

How stable is Linux?

How stable is a stand-alone Linux server (RH30) for a production database server? The reason I am asking this is because I have had a production Oracle database running on a HP-UX (RISC, 4-CPU (440MHz), 8GB RAM) and have had no problems for 3 years. The CPUs are consistently 98%-99% idle. I have the same Oracle database installed on a Linux server (intel, 4-CPU (2.4GHz), 4GB RAM) and the CPU idle time is always fluctuating between 30%-50% idle. It seems like the Linux box is doing a lot of work all the time. Should I be concerned?

Hi
There's no denying that RAC and Linux are a good fit... but currently the majority of Oracle cutomers who implement RAC have done it on Solaris with HP and IBM very close behind (this is of course changing).
Oracle also has many customers who have chosen to implement standalone databases on Linux without RAC.
Linux stands on its own as stable, enterprise ready OS. Whilst customers migrating from other Unix's will be famililar with it, it still pays to search the web for best practices for administering Linux and Oracle on Linux.
Remember Oracle offers unbreakable support for Linux i.e. you can phone up Oracle for both support for Linux and Oracle for your database server.
Hope this helps
Dom

How stable is the mac mini as a server?

Hi List,
I am planning to get the mac mini with snow leopard server.
Has anyone tried it?
How stable is the mac mini as a server?
I'd be setting it up for 10 mac clients.
It will be used as a file/print/dhcp server.
thanks.
Dp

max out the memory to reduce / eliminate paging. although you might not need to in your situation. I think printing is a light use of memory. Inkjet printers are heavy on the cpu.
electronics don't usually fail. It's the moving parts. Doesn't the mini take the 2.5 inch drives that are not as reliable as the 3.5? An external drive will get past this.
You could get an external bootable harddrive.
You need an external Firewire drive to boot a PowerPC Mac computer.
I recommend you do a google search on any external harddrive you are looking at.
I bought a low cost external drive enclosure. When I started having trouble with it, I did a google search and found a lot of complaints about the drive enclosure. I ended up buying a new drive enclosure. On my second go around, I decided to buy a drive enclosure with a good history of working with Macs. The chip set seems to be the key ingredient. The Oxford line of chips seems to be good. I got the Oxford 911.
The latest the hard drive enclosures support the newer serial ata drives. The drive and closure that I list supports only older parallel ata.
Has everything interface:
FireWire 800/400 + USB2, + eSATA 'Quad Interface'
save a little money interface:
FireWire 400 + USB 2.0
This web page lists both external harddrive types. You may need to scroll to the right to see both.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATAFW800_FW400USB
Here is an external hd enclosure.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW91UAL1K/
Here is what one contributor recommended:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10452917#10452917
Folks in these Mac forums recommend LaCie, OWC or G-Tech.
Here is a list of recommended drives:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5564509#5564509
FireWire compared to USB. You will find that FireWire 400 is faster than USB 2.0 when used for a external harddrive connection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UniversalSerial_Bus#USB_compared_toFireWire
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storageexternal.html
Here are two utilities for making a complete backup of your internal hard drive. I've recommend using one of these so that you can create a bootable system on your external hard drive. ( PPC require a firewire connected drive. ) Once created, you can run your system from the external drive. Hold down the option key on your keyboard then power on your machine. This will bring you in startup manager click on the drive image you wish to boot then click on the arrow key to the right.
"Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it."
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
"SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless."
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Robert

How stable Bangla-অঙ্কুর Phonetic Keyboard is in OS X?

I am wondering how stable Bangla-অঙ্কুর Phonetic Keyboard is in OS X? I am using OS X version 10.6.7.
Kindly share your experiences...

অন্য কি-বোর্ড থেকে অঙ্কুর একারণেই আলাদা। আমি এখন অঙ্কুরের ২য় version-এর উপর কাজ করছি। খুব তাড়াতাড়িই আমি v2 release করতে পারবো বলে আশা করছি। v3-তে ব্যবহারকারীদের এই Logical পদ্ধতি সেখানোর জন্য বেশ কিছু ব্যবস্থা নিবো বলে ঠিক করেছি। কিন্তু তার জন্য এই নতুন পদ্ধতির একজন ব্যবহার কারী দরকার যে কিনা আমাকে beta testing-এ সহায়তা করবে। সমস্যা হলো এমন লোক পাওয়া কঠিন। কারণ হলো অভ্র। আপনি যদি নতুন পদ্ধতি ব্যবহার করেন তবে আমাকে সহায়তা করলে উপকৃত হবো। এখন অবশ্য আমি কাজই শুরু করিনি।
ধন্যবাদ
রাইয়ান

How stable is Firefox 3 on the intel iMac ?

OK, the new iMac has arrived to replace the G4 that died !
My wife likes Firefox as a browser rather than Safari but how stable is Firefox 3 on the intel iMac, as my older macbook did not like it and I reverted back to Firefox 2 ?
Cheers
4jbl7

There are no issues whatsoever with Firefox on the new Intel iMac. I have had mine about a year without one issue... in fact... I have had Safari freeze up twice and never any issue with Firefox. That was one of the first apps I loaded when I got mine.
Enjoy!!!
Cheers,
Ronnie

How to install Arch from hard drive?

Hello
I have an old laptop - Pentium II 266 MHz, 128Mb RAM and I want to install Arch on it.
The problem is that there is no way to boot from this laptop -> floppy is broken, CD drive is not bootable, no available boot options from BIOS to boot from PXE or USB.
So, I found this link useful (but not enough).
I have done everything as described on the upper link, but on the final step 7 I don't know how to proceed.
What I have got is:
Arch installation CD is in the CD drive.
After loading vmlinuz26 and archiso.img (which is RAM Disk or initrd) it shows this message: "waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/"
And another message: "ERROR: boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds" and after that it put me in the ramfs prompt.
I try this in ramfs prompt, but without success:
1. ln -s /dev/sr0 /dev/archiso
2. exit (and try again)
What I want is to tell the installer that it must proceed with the installation files on my CD drive.
But how to do that?
If it is not possible, then how could I install Arch on this old laptop? Is there any other methods to try?
PS: There is Windows 2000 and Windows 98 installed on this laptop, but I want to install Arch on it. The whole hard drive is one partition.
Last edited by clovenhoof (2011-08-09 06:49:48)

Try either of the following:
* Add archisolabel=LABEL to the kernel line in menu.lst, where LABEL is the filesystem label of the partition where the ISO resides.
* Add archisodevice=/dev/sdaX to the kernel line in menu.lst, where sdaX should be replaced with the partition where the ISO resides.
[Edit]
Hmmm, sorry I think I was wrong. With the above, you need also extract the ISO, put the arch/ directory at the root of the partition.
Alternatively, you can put the ISO to the root of that partition, and add img_dev=/dev/sdaX and img_loop=foo-bar.iso. For details, see:
https://projects.archlinux.org/archiso.git/tree/README
BUT even if it loads, I don't think you will be able to install Arch on the same partition since it's mounted readonly to /bootmnt, (unless, you explicitly add copytoram to the kernel line, in which case, everything is copied to RAM, but since the machine has got only 128MB of RAM, this is not gonna happen). So, you need to put the ISO (or the extracted squashfs images) to a different partition than your target installation partition...
There probably are other things I'm missing... Gotta say this sounds quite challenging.
[Edit2]
Bah! Try archisodevice=/dev/sr0 then!
Last edited by lolilolicon (2011-08-09 07:48:17)

How to install Arch for dual-boot with Win 7 (on 2 hard drives)?

Hello,
the TLDR first: how exactly should I proceed when setting up GRUB for 2 hard drives to dual-boot Arch (64 bit)and Win 7 (64 bit)?
Long version: So, I have the following hard drive & partition layout:
On my first hard drive (250 GB big) I have: Win 7 64 bit, all the programs for Windows and of course the EFI partition
My second hard drive is 1 TB big and formatted in NTFS and it only contains data. It has 2 partitions, one is about 750 GB big and used for simple storage.
Sidenote 1: sometimes my disk management (Windows' own gparted) shows either the little disk or the big one as disk 0. Don't know what exactly this means, but I have never ever experienced any problems whatsoever during use.
Sidenote 2: the UEFI motherboard (ASRock H67M) cannot boot into Legacy mode.
I want to install Arch on a ~200 GB partition on the second hard drive (the one with 1 TB). (click here if you want to see a screenshot) I am posting this because I am confused with how exactly I should deal with the whole "2 hdds & UEFI" thing.
So how exactly should I proceed when setting up GRUB for this setup?
For partitioning I suppose I would have to use fdisk or cgdisk. I used cgdisk before and found it to be straightforward. Then, because I have experienced my fair share of problems with rEFInd, I'd like to use GRUB.
Last edited by jones (2013-06-29 14:36:56)

First thing you should do is become familiar with your motherboard.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/manual.asp?Model=H67M
This will probably help you out in understanding the sidenote 1 thingie (hdd's on sata3 and/or sata2 connectors)
As on sidenote 2, according to the manual it seems to be possible to boot legacy mode, see Storage Configuration.

How to install arch 2009.08 from hard drive? Please enlighten me

OK, I admit I am impatient for the installation from the CD drive. Whenever possible and whatever distro I wanna try, I head first to try to install it from the hard drive. I don't remember how many times and how many distros I have done the same to, ubuntu, zenwalk, sidux, fedora, opensuse and of course arch. It rarely failed as long as I followed someone's guide, sth like "install any OS from hard drive", I do not exactly remember. And I did the same in the past with arch. But after 2009.08, it simply didn't work. I've read the article "fast install arch from existing linux system" in the wiki, it didn't work either (by the way, if someone can solve my problem, I think the article should be updated). After it boots, at some stage, it says "Use Hook [archiso]", then tell me "waiting for /dev/archiso for 30 seconds ..." then when the time due, it throws me into a ramfs shell. I've hacked for a long time, but no luck. Then I went back to download the 2009.02 iso, however, it works flawlessly.
I did find some differences in the menu.lst/isolinux.cfg between two version.
In 2009.02, we have
title Boot Arch Linux Live CD
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 lang=en locale=en_US.UTF-8 usbdelay=5 ramdisk_size=75%
initrd /boot/archiso_pata.img
While in 2009.08, it is
title Boot Arch Linux Live CD
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 lang=en locale=en_US.UTF-8 archisolabel=ARCHISO_AHCOHH6O ramdisk_size=75%
initrd /boot/archiso_pata.img
I know I can install arch from usb, but I simply wanna know what's wrong here, so guys, if you have any idea, don't hesitate to enlighten me.

Hi, vacant, thanks for the reply. I did not notice you are the author of the article. Actually I missed the head of the article which directs me to another (the amalgamated one you mentioned). I take a look at it, it seems to make things complicated. I still miss the old days: you simply download the iso, mount it and copy all the contents into a separate partition, edit your current grub, then reboot and everything works. I don't understand how Arch could be so evolved to exclude this simple installation scheme. I am not complaining the development of Arch. In my opinion, a distro as flexible as Arch should provide as much installation strategy as possible. In this respect, I think we can learn from Ubuntu or sidux (in sidux, it provides a very convenient kernel parameter called "fromiso" which allows you to install sidux from the plain iso, that means, you even don't have to mount it and copy the contents out of it to a separate partition).
Last edited by plmday (2009-10-25 06:25:44)

How to Restore Arch's grub after Ubuntu install to 2nd disk

I installed Ubuntu to sdb after installing Arch to sda. Ubuntu was installed with LVM, though Arch does not use LVM.
I want to wipe out ubuntu now, but it seems to be in control of my boot process, and as a newb, I'm not quite sure how that process transpires. I have read the Grub article on Arch's Wiki site, but that doensn't help me.
After booting into Arch and running:
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
and then rebooting, I still have the Ubuntu Grub menu on the next boot. My Arch /etc/default/grub is the same one that I used before installing Ubuntu - I'm not concerned about adding Ubuntu to the menu, so that's not an issue.
What do I need to do to get Arch back in control of the boot process?
Thanks in advance!

Kilz wrote:Here is an option in case you cant figure it out. Rename the /boot directory in the ubuntu install and copy the /boot directory from Arch in its place. Reboot, if everything works fine delete everything in the Ubuntu partition but /boot. Rename the /boot directory in the Arch install then shrink the ubuntu partition and mount it in the arch install as /boot. in the end you will just have a separate boot partition that will take up little space.
Thanks again. I finally got it working, but via a different, somewhat convoluted route.
I screwed things up and ended up with only a grub prompt at boot. Following instructions found online, I was able to boot my arch disk (sda), then ran grub-install and grub-mkconfig. The install ran without errors (as before) but grub-mkconfig reported errors. I had been disregarding these errors, because I thought they were related to the custom font and background in my /etc/default/grub file, and another source explained that I could ignore errors when setting fonts and background there (not sure if that source was reliable). But one of the errors on grub-mkinstall reported it couldn't find device.map. There was no device.map in /boot/grub.
Also of note, I had renamed the old /boot/grub/grub.cfg and left the /boot/grub directory without a proper grub.cfg file - probably why I got a grub menu at boot!
In the end, I created a device.map in /boot/grub/ and re-ran grub-mkconfig, but still got an error. So I commented out the font and background lines in /etc/default/grub and also renamed my old backup /boot/grub/grub.cfg-backup to the proper "grub.cfg", then re-ran grub-mkconfig. This time there were not errors reported from grub-mkconfig and with a quick glance at the contents, I was able to figure out that the menu entries looked good.
I was able to reboot with the appropriate arch menu at this point! While I'm not sure which step "fixed" my problem, I wanted to at least record my steps here for future users - perhaps one of the options above will help someone else. Worth mentioning is that the ubuntu (sdb) drive was LVM, and I think that might have played into some of my difficulties, but I'm not sure about that.
The device.map that I created looked like this, where sda is my arch disk and sdb is the ubuntu installation (still not sure if it is needed, though):
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb
Last edited by stringchopper (2013-02-14 08:38:52)

[archppc] How stable is it ?

I have a MacMini (G4 processor) currently running Debian. I use it as a home server (http, ftp, svn). The thing is... I can't stand Debian anymore. I really love Arch but I don't know if the ppc version is stable enough to be installed on a little server, and I can't find linux ppc equivalents to arch.
So, what do you think ? Should I go for ArchPPC or should I really avoid it ? If so, what distro do you recommand ?

Ok, here's my installation report
I used Installation on newworld machines document. Evrything went great before this part :
4) Create a chrooted archlinuxppc
- Mount chroot
mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs none /mnt/sys
mount /mnt /bin/bash
source /etc/profile
udevstart
The line mount /mnt /bin/bash should be chroot /mnt /bin/bach. Then udevstart doesn't exists anymore, it's /etc/start_udev
The problem is : I can't start udev unless the kernel is installed. So I jumped to the next step :
5) Edit configuration files
file /etc/fstab; /etc/rc.conf, /etc/yaboot.conf, /etc/hosts
You should add file /etc/resolv.conf else pacman runs in trouble when trying to download packages (can't resolve host).
I stopped to this step because I'm lost :
6) Install kernel & openssh
pacman -Sy kernel26-pmac openssh
Pacman works, except that it can't generate initrd image :
[root@arch-ppc /]# mkinitrd auto
Checking Input...
Making image for standard Arch kernel (2.6.16-ARCH)...
Setting up Parameters...
/lib/modules/2.6.16-ARCH found
ERROR: All of your loopback devices are in use!
If you any idea of what I could do to fix it, I would be pleased to try it.
Thanks in advance !

How stable is LR2 for you?

I've been a regular user of LR1. I am attracted to some of the new features in LR2 and have already purchased (but not installed) the upgrade.
I was burned a bit with the LR 1.4 upgrade and I have read a fair amount about various problems in LR2. I do not like it when software I'm using crashes and causes me to lose work. I am trying to decide whether to install LR2 now or wait until 2.1 comes out from Adobe.
So, for all you LR2 users, can you tell me which of the following is most true for you:
1) LR 2 is at least as stable as LR 1 and I'm happy with it.
2) LR 2 has some stability issues that I hope Adobe fixes, but it's still worth upgrading as I haven't lost any significant work.
3) LR 2 has worse stability issues than LR 1 and I wish I had waited until 2.1 comes out.
FYI. I have a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel processor so hopefully I won't be bit by performance issues in LR 2.

> Every bodies mileage is going to be different. Not everybody has had problems. Instead of inflaming the ongoing problems that exist, why don't you go download the trial and make your own subjective decision instead. Come on back when you have had a chance to do your own objective analysis and ask important questions related to the actual use of the product.
Why so defensive? It's a fact that a significant number of people have had problems. Just read the posts on this board or others. I'm not trying to inflame anything, just find out how other people think this release compares to LR 1.4.
If Adobe didn't make the LR 2 catalog incompatible with LR 1, I'd install it and figure I'll just go back if it has problems. But, I've learned that the only way I can really find out how well it works is to do real work with the new release. That means putting my new work in a LR 2 catalog which can't be used by LR 1. While I could go back to my original LR 1 catalog if LR 2 had too many problems, I'd then lose all the work I'd done in LR 2 and I don't want to do that. When I spend hours on my work, I don't want to lose it.
If you'd read my initial message, you'd see I don't need a trial version - I've already purchased the upgrade and I will go with it at some point because I'm a LR supporter. I'm just trying to decide whether to wait for 2.1 to install or not. I hate wasting time or losing work with buggy or poor performing software products so I'm interested in avoiding that fiasco with LR.
I asked for other people's experiences compared with LR 1.4 so I can gauge how people think it compares to their 1.4 experience. That's all. No inflaming intended, just soliciting some other people's experiences.

How stable is arch?

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