[SOLVED] Displaying updated packages

Question

I know that when I'm on the shell I can use pacman or yaourt to update my system, I can see if there is any new packages and update them. What I would like is a way to receive a daily email showing updated packages so I can remotely log on the server and update the system if I judge the updates important enough.
I already do a similar thing on my FreeBSD boxes (I'm more of a BSD guy than a Linux one, but I digress).
While thinking more about it, would something like this work:
pacman -Syy >/dev/null | yaourt --query --upgrades --aur
EDIT: Solution: see my last post in this thread.
Last edited by lebel (2012-03-16 01:07:36)

Answer 1

lebel wrote:
keenerd wrote:There is also no reason to use -Sy at all, because it makes it too easy to break your system.
Why?  With yaourt (or pacman) -Sy, only the database of the packages are updated, if need be. Two "y" would download the database for each repo even tho they weren't modified.
When you run "pacman -Sy", you download the latest database files. After that point, any packages that you install will be the latest versions. If you don't run "pacman -Su" first, then you may install a new package without updating one of the libraries that it depends on, which may break the package. That is why it is recommended to always run "pacman -Syu". It makes sure that you always have consistent dependencies.
Or course, if you know for sure that you will never install a package without running "pacman -u" first, then it doesn't matter. If that is not the case, it would be better to create a separate directory, symlink "/var/lib/pacman/local" into that directory, and then use that directory as the database directory in your scripts (pacman -Syb /path/to/dir). That way, the system database is not affected. To save further bandwidth, you can just copy the downloaded databases in the alternative database directory into the default database directory when you want to update the system databases.
Last edited by Xyne (2012-03-15 20:50:16)