I've done the ill fated -Syu right before a project deadline. Something in the update broke mdraid and my system wouldn't boot until I booted from livecd to redo the -Syu. I think maybe my mirror was syncing when I was updating and my packages were mismatched. Never update when facing a deadline. On Mar 16, 2010 8:10 PM, "Isaac Dupree" <ml@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: On 03/16/10 14:12, David Rosenstrauch wrote: > On 03/16/2010 01:58 PM, Thayer Williams wrote: > >> Welcome aboard and glad you're getting things sorted out. Once you >> have used a rolling release distro, everything else just seems silly. >> Reinstall every six months? No thanks! >> > I enjoyed the 6-month reinstalls... for a while. They reminded me how my system was set up ; to make backups ; etc. When I hear about issues people run into when upgrading to, say, the > latest version of Ubuntu, my thinking is usually some combination of: > > 1) "What's an OS upgrade?" > > 2) "What's an OS version?" > true. and on the occasion that Ubuntu breaks something in a stable upgrade, it's awful (although I'm not sure this ever actually happened to me). I still reckon it's useful to reinstall Arch every few years, as "/" gets cluttered with old layouts, .pacnew files, miscellaneous stuff from de-installed packages, packages that are accidentally still installed due to upgrade sequences or forgetfulness, enabled daemons that are no longer part of the mainstream Linux stack (e.g. I hear HAL may be slowly going out of fashion), new advice in the Official Install Guide that you haven't checked in ages, new filesystem formats (or at least, making a new filesystem eliminates any fragmentation in the old one), decaying personal knowledge about how Linux works (due to complacency, if it's all still working, or just not having an all-in-one chance to get a "big picture")... Just don't delete your old "/" until a while after the new one is working, if you can manage it. 3) "If you were running Arch, you wouldn't be running into so many bugs > on upgrade ... because you'd never wind up upgrading so many packages > all at the same time." > yes and no. Workarounds are easier, but need to be done more often than once every six months. It was nice to be able to do upgrades during my school-vacation-time rather than when I have a paper due shortly (there's ALWAYS a paper due, or an e-mail to get back to, at my college..) 4) "You're still running into *that* bug? That was fixed in Arch > *months* ago!" > :) -Isaac
