Tips for `eos-update`

eos-update updates the software packages of your system using programs pacman and optionally yay or paru.
This document gives a few tips about some lesser known features of eos-update.

Some more or less obvious notes:

The bash command completion feature is supported to help writing a command.
The options explained below can be combined with other options as usual.

Show available options

eos-update --help

There are many more options available than explained here.
And the help output is the most up-to-date documentation.

Update AUR packages too

eos-update --aur

This assumes either yay or paru is installed.

User defined updates (e.g. flatpak) and other commands

Option --other-updates gives user the opportunity to expand what eos-update does.
Edit file /etc/eos-update-other.bash and add proper commands to update other than native or AUR packages. Then run eos-update with option --other-updates, and your commands will be executed after native (and optionally AUR) updates.

Note that the template file /etc/eos-update-other.bash supports eos-update to call other apps in both phases:

beginning
end

Then, in between those two phases, eos-update does what it normally would do.

For example, you could (in the beginning) update mirrors and later (in the end) call pacman -Fy to update the database of the package contents.

Example:

eos-update --aur --other-updates

Prevent accidental reboot, shutdown, suspend, etc.

Use option --keep-system-running to prevent setting system down before eos-update is finished.
Tip: consider creating the following definition in your ~/.bashrc:

alias eos-update='eos-update --keep-system-running'

Unlock locked privilege elevation

Giving a wrong password to sudo three times in a row may lock sudo from doing its job.
This can be fixed with option --faillock-check:

eos-update --faillock-check

See the descriptions of the updated packages

eos-update --descriptions

Note: only descriptions of the native packages will be listed.

Use the fast mode

eos-update --fast

Note: this option saves the latest update level each time you run with it, which may cause undetected updates.
For example:

Run eos-update --fast and decline updating.
Immediately run eos-update --fast the second time, the fast mode thinks there are no updates. In that case run eos-update without option --fast.

Check the validity of the lists of mirrors

eos-update --check-mirrors

Nvidia GPU drivers

eos-update --nvidia

This will check that the updates of the kernel (linux or linux-lts) and the non-dkms Nvidia driver are in proper sync. A warning is displayed if not.

This warning means it is better not to update until the updates for the mentioned packages are in sync, and eos-update --nvidia gives no warning. Usually the wait is not long.

Note that there have been cases they weren't in sync, causing a problem at system restart.

Manage package cache

With option --cache-limit, eos-update will remove older packages in the package cache (usually in /var/cache/pacman/pkg) after each update.

Tip: option --cache-limit can be useful when sharing the package cache with other installations (that use Arch and/or EndeavourOS repos).

Example

eos-update --cache-limit 2

will call
paccache -rk2

so it keeps only two of the latest versions of each package in the cache and removes older package versions.
See also options -k and -r in man paccache.

Colors in eos-update's output

eos-update by default shows slightly colored output, in addition to what pacman and the AUR helpers may show.
Option --colors can enable or disable the usage of the additional colors added by eos-update.
Example:

eos-update --colors yes       # enable additional colors in output
eos-update --colors no        # disable additional colors in output

Aliases

Here's some potentially useful aliases for eos-update:

alias eos-update='eos-update --keep-system-running'

alias u='eos-update --fast --descriptions'           # "fast" update check; also show the descriptions of updated packages
alias u='eos-update --fast --descriptions --nvidia'  # the same when Nvidia GPU is installed
alias u='eos-update --cache-limit 1'                 # limits the growth of the package cache

Note that option --nvidia does nothing if the system has no Nvidia GPU.

Tips for eos-update