Pacman

Historical bug tracker for the Pacman package manager.

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This tracker remains open for interaction with historical bugs during the transition period. Any new bugs reports will be closed without further action.
Tasklist

FS#12200 - pacman: aware of required reboot etc after update

Attached to Project: Pacman
Opened by Erwin Van de Velde (evdvelde) - Friday, 21 November 2008, 14:41 GMT
Last edited by Allan McRae (Allan) - Monday, 24 November 2008, 05:30 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Packages: Core
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version None
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:
At this moment, the user has to inspect the package list on an upgrade to check if a reboot will be necessary/advised afterwards. It would be handy if a package was aware of the action required after updating it and do one of the following:
- restart a service that was updated if it was running before the update (e.g. apache). Can come together with a warning to the user that configuration options (may) have changed
- warn the user that a reboot is advised (e.g. for kernel26 package)
- warn if a restart of the graphical environment is required (e.g. xorg, kde, gnome packages)
- ...

The user could add options to the configuration file, configuring in which cases he wants to get a warning, an error, ... In case he was sure, he could use the force option to force the update anyway (e.g. normally he does not want kernel26 to be updated when a reboot is required, but he is about to reboot anyway).

Just another idea :)
This task depends upon

Closed by  Allan McRae (Allan)
Monday, 24 November 2008, 05:30 GMT
Reason for closing:  Won't implement
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Friday, 21 November 2008, 23:54 GMT
My opinion on this is that pacman is a package manager not a distribution administrator.
Comment by Erwin Van de Velde (evdvelde) - Saturday, 22 November 2008, 00:13 GMT
It is clear that pacman stands for PACkage MANager, but where else would you put this functionality? Apple puts it in their system updater, Windows... well, they should have put it in there :)
I think this is the only reasonable place to put this functionality.
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Saturday, 22 November 2008, 05:11 GMT
All this could be done in the .install files currently. However, with Arch the user is expected to administer their system so the functionality is not used.
Comment by Erwin Van de Velde (evdvelde) - Saturday, 22 November 2008, 11:09 GMT
I know the philosophy, however when I want to run Arch on a server, I do not want to reboot because I have a new kernel. On the other hand, if I do not reboot, I cannot use the external USB hard disk anymore for backups because the module cannot be loaded (e.g. 2.6.26 -> 2.6.27 kernel).
All I can do is create an ignore list for pacman, which can grow rather big, not only for the kernel but also for e.g. glibc, another package I do not like updating when I have to keep the server running for another month or so.
Of course, you could say: "well, update once every month". But I think also desktop users experience this problem. I think there are a lot of users that boot Arch in the morning, do the updates, but do not want to reboot again right away. Being warned without having to know every package by name and functionality makes life a lot easier.
Considering the "restart a service when updated" is rather similar to updating module dependencies after installation of certain packages anyway. Arch users probably know all this, but who can say he never forgot to restart a service or so till users came complaining?
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Monday, 24 November 2008, 05:30 GMT
We don't hold hands around here. As I said, this can be done with pacman currently. we just choose not to.

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