• 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      671·
      4 months ago

      Exactly my thoughts as well.

      Why update on that little battery life left… the power will return sooner or later, going without updates even for a week or two is no real problem. Hell, I update like once every 3 weeks to a month, it’s not that big of a deal.

      • Petter1@lemm.ee
        4·
        4 months ago

        I update always after a session, meaning about once a month 😂I don’t really need my PC, lol

    • PlexSheep@infosec.pub
      222·
      4 months ago

      Wait if the power is out, how do they have Internet to load new packages? Something doesn’t make sense here

      • kolorafa@lemmy.world
        171·
        4 months ago

        It first downloads all packages from net, then it proceed totally offline starting by verifying downloaded files, signatures, extracting new packages and finally rebuilding initramfs.

        Because arch is replacing the kernel and inittamfs in-place there is a chance that it will not boot if interrupted.

        This issue was long resolved on other distro.

        One way to mitigate it is by having multiple kernels (like LTS or hardened) that you can always pick in grub if the main one fail.

        • superkret@feddit.org
          7·
          4 months ago

          This issue was solved on Slackware in 1993.
          It installs a “huge” kernel that contains all drivers to run on almost any hardware by default, alongside the “generic” kernel with only the modules you need. If the generic kernel fails to boot, you always have the backup, which is known to work, cause it’s the kernel you first boot into after installation.

          • lad@programming.devEnglish
            6·
            4 months ago

            I’m not familiar with slackware but why is specific kernel called generic, while generic one is not called generic? I’m puzzled

            • superkret@feddit.org
              3·
              4 months ago

              I have no idea either.

              Edit: Did some reading. “Linux-generic” is just the name of the linux kernel that is used in most computers (as opposed to Linux-realtime, which is the only other Linux kernel that’s still relevant).

          • kolorafa@lemmy.world
            1·
            4 months ago

            (No internet =} no download = no failure

            You can even host repo mirror locally, that will still work without internet ;)

            How to have internet without power?

            • Mobile hotspot
            • Router and AP using UPS
      • Artyom@lemm.ee
        121·
        4 months ago

        Cable internet tends to stay online even if your power is out. You’d need a battery backup for your modem/router, but it is possible to stay online. Houses can be clever like that, almost all of your utilities will partially work, even when service is interrupted.

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          7·
          4 months ago

          That depends on the ISP having backup batteries for their equipment. It will usually only last a couple of hours. 5G will usually stay up for a few days. For longer outages, you will need satellite internet and lots of fuel for your generator.

      • devfuuu@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 months ago

        My router has a 5G backup connection and a battery. Light could be out and I’d still have internet. So, yeah, it’s possible :P

          • Strykker@programming.dev
            3·
            4 months ago

            Nah, cell towers often have some kind of backup power good for a couple hours or more, at least in the city where I am. I think I once had an outage last 3 days when a tornado wrecked the local transformer station, and still had cell service the entire time.

      • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
        815·
        4 months ago

        Average Linux solution.

        “Got an emergency? It’s so EZ. Just open up the terminal and copy/paste [long string of unreadable text]. Btw fuck windows.”

        • felsiq@lemmy.zip
          35·
          4 months ago

          Yea as opposed to the windows method of “just open regedit and navigate 8 folders below HKEY_CURRENT_USER to change some ambiguous system variable in hex” lmao

          I’ll take editing a text file in /etc/ for my configuration any day

    • bitwaba@lemmy.world
      18·
      4 months ago

      I don’t think I’ve had a pacman update take longer than 10 minutes before. Sounds like OP was updating all their AUR packages too.

      Still absolutely a terrible thing to do on 10% battery life. I bet there’s an AUR package for “check battery level before update” out there somewhere though.

      OPs meme is "use distro whose model is ‘give users enough rope to hang themselves’ " and complaining he’s at the gallows

  • riodoro1@lemmy.world
    1292·
    4 months ago

    shutdown a computer when you shouldn’t computer breaks

    how could a computer do this

  • FQQD@lemmy.ohaa.xyzOPEnglish
    495·
    4 months ago

    I think I didn’t make it clear enough: My laptop was on the power during the update process, when the power randomly cut out - for the first time in about 6 years, it doesn’t happen often. Of course you can interpret it as user error - but I think it’s reasonable to update my system when plugged into, normally reliable power. The laptop battery is pretty much dead, so it would’ve shut itself down automatically anyway.

      • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
        311·
        4 months ago

        Just about any Linux I’ve ever used keeps the previous kernel version and initrd around. And nowadays snapper makes a new snapshot before and after every package installation or update.

        So, I’d think there are a lot.

      • gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world
        161·
        4 months ago

        Plus in Linux you can actually fix this with a live USB, while on Windows you can run startup repair and hope for the best.

      • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        141·
        4 months ago

        Windows doesn’t in my experience, it’s surprisingly robust.

        But also I thought Linux distros normally keep the old Kernel around after an update so stuff like this doesn’t cause a boot failure?

        • 9point6@lemmy.world
          7·
          4 months ago

          Yeah windows “cumulative update” upgrades for the past couple of years basically duplicate the whole system directory and apply the update to that leaving the existing one to roll back to if anything fails

        • dan@upvote.au
          2·
          4 months ago

          Windows updates (and Windows Installer) are transactional. If the update or installation fails, it knows exactly how to revert back to the previous state.

          Windows Installer supports this across multiple packages too - for example, a game might need some version of DirectX libraries which needs some version of the Visual C++ runtime (probably showing my age because I doubt games come bundled with DirectX any more). If one of the packages fails to install, it can handle rolling everything back. Linux can sometimes leave your system in a broken state when this happens, requiring you to manually resolve the issue - for example, on a Debian-based system if the postinst script for a package fails.

      • superkret@feddit.org
        122·
        4 months ago

        Any immutable distro, Debian, Ubuntu, all their derivatives, Fedora, all its derivatives, OpenSUSE, Slackware, …
        Basically, 95+% of installed Linux systems would retain the old or a backup kernel during an upgrade.

      • zea@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        3·
        4 months ago

        If it was on something like BTRFS it’d probably be fine, though I imagine there’s still a small window where the FS could flush while the file is being written. renameat2 has the EXCHANGE flag to atomically switch 2 files, so if arch maintainers want to fix it they could do

        1. Write to temporary file
        2. Fsync temporary file
        3. Renameat2 EXCHANGE temporary and target
        4. Fsync directory (optional, since a background flush would still be atomic, just might take some time)
        • dan@upvote.au
          1·
          4 months ago

          renameat2

          I read this as “rena meat 2” and was very confused

          • kolorafa@lemmy.world
            8·
            4 months ago

            Just having btrfs is not enough, you need to have automatic snapshots (or do them manually) before doing updates and configured grub to allow you to rollback.

            Personally, I’m to lazy to configure stuff like that, I rather just pick my Vetroy USB from backpack, boot into live image and just fix it (while learning something/new interesting) than spend time preventing something that might never happen to me :)

    • badloop@discuss.online
      234·
      4 months ago

      I mean any which way you try to frame this, saying that you won’t use Arch anymore because you didn’t take the precautions necessary based on your situation is gonna take some heat here.

      • Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        51·
        4 months ago

        What precaution would you expect OP to would’ve done though? A fallback kernel would be my guess - that’s something many casual oriented distro do out of the box basically. . I read your post as “you’re right, don’t use arch” - something btw which I tend to agree with although I wouldn’t say that’s because of the precautions.

        I use arch because there’s no black box magic. For an end user who expects or wants that… Yes, arch might not be the right choice.

        • verdigris@lemmy.ml
          6·
          4 months ago

          I don’t think lack of precaution was the issue here given that it was an unexpected power failure, but it is a fairly easy fix with a chroot.

          • Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            2·
            4 months ago

            Oh agreed! That’s why I’m with OP actually that arch might not be the right distro to go for.

            The person I replied to basically said “that’s what you deserve for not doing it properly” if I understood it correctly - that’s what I’m confused about as well.

            • verdigris@lemmy.ml
              3·
              4 months ago

              Yeah it seems half the commenters missed OP’s clarifying comment and just think he started a kernel update with 2% battery life.

              • Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                1·
                4 months ago

                Hehe true. And even that happened to me after a couple of tired “Syu enter”. But then again I learned something new with nearly every repair!

          • badloop@discuss.online
            33·
            4 months ago

            If you know your battery is shot and you don’t have a way to save your install if the power goes out, then you just don’t update. There are plenty of ways to protect against this that have already been mentioned (battery backup, backup kernel, etc). OP was just playing with fire.

            • verdigris@lemmy.ml
              5·
              4 months ago

              That’s kind of overzealous. I would expect most desktop users to run kernel updates without being plugged into a UPS, this is functionally identical. It’s not like it’s an unrecoverable error, but yeah if you’re updating a critical system you should have redundancies in place.

          • Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            2·
            4 months ago

            I have set up an lts kernel in addition to the zen I use by default. See:

            https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel

            Disclaimer: this only works when something with image creation goes wrong with an update. Which didn’t happen to me ever - unless I did a mistake or tested some kernel stuff. I only had bootloader errors when I screwed up pacman though. The fallback kernel in that case is on a USB stick…

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      I don’t really get why you couldn’t pick one of your other installed kernels and boot that, but you seem pretty intent on blaming arch and I don’t feel like trying to troubleshoot it, so that’s that I guess.

    • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
      2·
      4 months ago

      How dead are we talking here? Even on an older laptop a kernel update doesn’t take that long. Should have just kept it going, hoping for the best.

      • Johanno@feddit.org
        2·
        4 months ago

        I am using an old laptop that gives me 3 minutes to run from one power plug to the other before just going out.

  • RootAccess@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    261·
    4 months ago

    Out of curiosity: Which operating system(s) can you shutdown while the kernel is being overwritten? I wouldn’t imagine that as a limitation of Arch Linux specifically.

      • TxzK@lemmy.zip
        101·
        4 months ago

        Also Fedora ships 3 kernels by default. If one breaks, maybe the others will keep working.

            • RootAccess@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
              1·
              4 months ago

              Yes. I have it set up this way. I forgot it wasn’t the default. For the amount of headache it would solve, I wonder if the Arch team has a specific reason for not keeping a number of previous kernels by default.

      • jonne@infosec.pub
        5·
        4 months ago

        Ubuntu (and probably Debian too) will keep an old kernel in your grub list so you can boot off that one if needed.

    • palordrolap@kbin.run
      11·
      4 months ago

      Mint definitely keeps a couple of previous kernels around, so that might be a Debian and Ubuntu thing too.

      That said, there’s always going to be a critical point of failure that a power loss could cause things to break, no matter your OS or distro.

      Writing the bootloader or updating a partition table for example.

    • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
      8·
      4 months ago

      Anything running on a copy-on-write filesystem can trivially rollback changes using a rescue partition.

      I also expect most immutable distros would be able to be especially good at tanking this.

    • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
      2·
      4 months ago

      I assume NixOs would just let you load a previous working configuration if the current one got corrupted (though in this case it probably could simply rebuild the current one).

      • RootAccess@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        I haven’t used Windows since Win7 - Is it possible nowadays to immediately cancel a kernel-level upgrade (say, Win7 to Win8) and have it gracefully stop and then boot into the pre-upgrade environment? If so, then Windows has come a long way. We use to be careful breathing-too-loudly around Windows computers during the upgrade process. Microsoft must be getting better.

  • Axum@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    121·
    4 months ago

    If you’re planning for this type of failure, what you probably want instead is Aurora from the Universal Blue project. Since it’s fedora silverblue underneath, your OS either updates all at once or doesn’t.

    • FQQD@lemmy.ohaa.xyzOPEnglish
      41·
      4 months ago

      I’m not sure - I had zen and the default kernel and both were inaccessible

    • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      4 months ago

      So I’m trying to understand if you think that shutting down an update during regenerating the initramfs indicates that Arch isn’t stable? Because that’s a FAFO move and would crater any non-atomic update distro.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        It doesn’t ruin Debian or Fedora as they do the bootloader last

        If it is interrupted it just boots the old kernel

    • dan@upvote.au
      8·
      4 months ago

      When talking about Linux, “stable” usually means “doesn’t have major changes often”, or in other words, “doesn’t have lots of updates that break stuff”. That’s why “Debian stable” is called that. Arch is not that.

    • sebsch@discuss.tchncs.de
      3·
      4 months ago

      Stable does not mean it’s for everybody. My installation runs since now 10 years.

      (The only other distribution this failsafe I know of is Debian)

  • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
    6·
    4 months ago

    When I used Arch I updated once and it removed the running kernel and its modules. So when I plugged in a webcam it didn’t work, since the module was gone.

    Not a catastrophe, but it was an off-putting user experience coming from Debian. Arch felt more like a desktop OS, Debian feels more like a server OS to me (updates generally warn/confirm when you need to restart services or the machine).

    To each their own! Having more up to date stuff was a nice perk of running Arch, certainly.

      • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
        11·
        4 months ago

        Oh I love Debian on the desktop! More a comment on the feeling of the OS being very concerned about downtime and stability, with minimal “surprises.” Not a bad thing at all!

  • Undearius@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    4 months ago

    This got me looking to see if there is any way to have a fallback as I have had something similar happen to me.

    The general advice is to have a liveboot USB around. I even saw that you can have GRUB simply boot from an .iso file on the internal drives, which eliminates the need to keep a USB stick around.

    I haven’t followed the steps yet but I’ll give this a shot because it intrigues me.

    https://www.linuxbabe.com/desktop-linux/boot-from-iso-files-using-grub2-boot-loader

  • f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    31·
    4 months ago

    I was installing Nobara 40 and discovered that the live session is allowed to suspend the PC during the install process. The system ended up having problems with some basic functions…

    • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.comEnglish
      13·
      4 months ago

      Image says “laptop”. op could have just charge the battery a but before running the update.

      • Ricky Rigatoni@lemm.ee
        3·
        4 months ago

        If the laptop is upgrading the kernel so slowly it shuts down in the middle of a power outage it’s probably old as hell and has barely any battery to charge.

      • verdigris@lemmy.ml
        2·
        4 months ago

        In a comment he clarified that the laptop was plugged in and there was a power failure. Regardless, chrooting in should be a fairly straightforward fix.