A dirty word - "Updates"

[909mjolnir]

Working on Manjaro (rolling release) is almost therapy for my latent fear of updates that I got from my Windows years. I don't like automatic updates but I don't mind if I initiate them manually. It's been working out okay lately except for a few minor things getting shoved downstream against my will. I'm happy that I know the syntax of how to delete/remove them. And usually it's not too much, and i'm always trimming my system down so that i don't get updates for junk that I'm never going to use. So it all works out.

 

[Condobloke]

my latent fear of updates

Understandable. There are a vast number of people who have fear where updates are concerned.

It is real. Anything that has the capacity to "bomb" your system, your pathway to the internet, is to be feared. A great deal of time and money is invested in the system that connects you to the outside world.

Hence my exodus from Windows. Completely.

I love Linux, with all its foibles and weirdness......but with an outstanding Update System.

 

[bob466]

Condobloke,

I think you hit the nail right on the head...Linux beginners think they're still back in windoze where some updates will kill their system and others are just spyware.

I remember what it was like running windoze 7...checking every update for spyware and other bad things..till m$ stopped people doing this.

As we say Linux isn't windoze for a very good reason...the only time I had problems with Linux updates was about 8 years ago...a new Kernel would sometimes upon re-boot give me the black screen of death which resulted in rolling back the Kernel but those are long gone.

So beginners install all updates as they are there for a reason and you'll never have problems.

 

[KGIII]

I guess I rely on backups and skill.

Hmm... I hesitate to use the word 'skill' as I don't want to appear to be gatekeeping. However, I've broken my system so many times that I can troubleshoot and fix it in short order.

But, that's why I also have backups. I back up the data that's important to me, the data that's important for a system recovery, and generally call it good.

At the same time, I tend to automate updates. I do prefer a LTS release over a rolling release but that's because I like software stability (which isn't the same as system stability). That may help a bit as updates are often vetted a bit more before being pushed out to the public.

I just automate the process and still sometimes run manual updates just to see if things are running properly. I actually enjoy watching the text scroll by, so doing it manually is also fun. In my defense, I quite like watching text scroll by in the terminal. I'll sometimes compile my own stuff just to see it work and to see what's going on behind the curtain.

But, the important bit of this is 'backups'. I can not stress this enough. If you value your data, back it up. If you value your time, make sure your backups work.

 

[Condobloke]

A backup that doesn't work or Restore....is like breasts on a bull.....useless.

There is no wiorse feeling, than having destroyed your system or part of it.......than accessing your beloved backup-----only to find that it will NOT restore.

What do you do then? Screaming in the toilet may help...or berating yourself in the mirror ...??....whatever rocks your boat !......BUT, get used tio the fact really quickly....you are about to do a REINSTALL.
(or you may look around desperately for a data recovery method, because a whole pile of important stuff was on the drive that just went south/toes up...)
Good Luck with that (sarcasm)

Enter TIMESHIFT. At least it will bring your SYSTEM back to life in most cases. Forget the pics/music/data etc you may have lost. You did have them stored on an external drive, didn't you ?.....DIDN"T YOU ???? hmm ?

A full backup. I use Rescuezilla. Tried and tested. Yes, I have destroyed my system to the extent that it was necessary to access the backup.....stored on an External drive!
Did it work?...Seamlessly ?.....YES.

Heart attack and screaming in the toilet avoided.

 

[KGIII]

A backup that doesn't work or Restore....is like breasts on a bull.....useless.

A backup without verification is not a backup.

You don't have to restore the backup every time you back up. You just need to make sure your process works and that the backed up data is valid. This can be as simple as ensuring the file sizes are equivalent.

I don't do full disk images and haven't for a long time. Well, I haven't ever disabled Timeshift on my Mint system. That drops some files on some networked storage. I don't think it preserves my data. I didn't change it to do that. I preserve my own ~/ directory on my own.

 

[Condobloke]

In the case of rescuezilla, the Verification is done for you, after you click on Verify and nominate the backup file which you wish to Verify

At the end of the process, if all is ok, it will say "SF DISC is present" (or words to that effect)

At the and of Verifying, if all is ok, it will say "SF DISC is present" (or words to that effect)

 

[KGIII]

At the end of the process, if all is ok, it will say "SF DISC is present" (or words to that effect)

I wouldn't trust that without verifying it. I'd make a backup and verify that it's good (according to it). I'd then put a different drive in the system and restore to that. I wouldn't do that every time, but I'd do it now and then and I'd certainly do it the first time around.

It probably is just fine. I'm going to guess that it uses CRC to verify the data's integrity. I'd still verify it myself - at least once - before depending on it.

I really don't like losing important data. LOL

 

[Condobloke]

I too dont like losing data. I did lose quite a chunk of it early in the piece. That hurt. I swore it would never happen again.

For that reason, from time to time, I shift anything important to the external, and then Restore that mornings backup.
In the Restore process, of course, it wipes whatever is in the drive and replaces it with the Restore data.
Perfect result to date.

My habit is to keep anything of importance in a few places. Fail safes if you will. After a period of time/practise, it becomes second nature to flick the important stuff to the few locations....sometimes I will print them.

 

[KGIII]

My habit is to keep anything of importance in a few places.

You're doing it right, as far as I'm concerned. For ease of memory/understanding, I advocate the 3 - 2 - 1 backup process. I'm a fan of it.

I lost some very important data back in the 90s due to the house being hit by lightning. It erased magnetic data that wasn't even powered on. It didn't fry any of the electronics, which was nice of it. However, it nuked floppy drives and HDDs and no recovery of the data was possible - even with the best recovery service I could find working on it.

It was very expensive data. It was months worth of work that I brought home from the office. I was able to recover some of the data from what was left at the office, but it took months to recreate the data that was lost. It was many person-hours worth of data, and not just my own work was lost.

So, that was a lesson that was learned...

I did write this a while back, though it has been shared before:

How To: Have A Proper Backup Of Your Data • Linux Tips

In today's article, we're going to show you how to have a proper backup of your data. I've wanted to write this article for a while.

linux-tips.us

I'll add that good backups mean you can do all the updates and upgrades you want. You can even trash your entire operating system by mistake and still recover your system. You can write entirely new OSes to disk and still reset your system to where it was before.

With good backups, updating isn't a dirty word so much as it is a fresh frontier. You can experiment and learn, learning by breaking, and still restore your system to where it was. You can restore it as though nothing happened.

 

[Condobloke]

It didn't fry any of the electronics, which was nice of it.

LOL

 

[Deleted member 197709]

My experience, for whats it's worth. I got relativity good with Linux back in the day playing with Mandrake and Redhat. My learning curve was learning how to not break stuff. Then came Arch Linux. It was new at the time and I took the plunge. I use to keep 2 clones of my working system and wrote simple bash scripts to automate the process of cloning periodically.

Eventually I got so busy I was unable to perform updates in a timely manor and the rolling release would break so often and be unstable due this. Ubuntu became fairly popular and I needed a fairly maintenance free system. Turned out, even with updates months apart, It surprisingly remained stable.

Over a decade went by without messing with Linux at all. Got a new computer recently, and decided to throw Ubuntu 24.04 on it to get started. My God, have I missed out on so much. I broke the install so many times! I finally got it right and modified it to such an extreme, I would barely call it Ubuntu anymore, or some kind of half breed, or inbreed, haha.

If I had to do it all over again, I'll probably just start with a minimal Debain release, and build it as I did the Ubuntu install. I learned a lot, but wow, what a ton of headaches. I hate the Snap, Fatpak stuff, and disabling / riding Ubuntu completely of its dedication to snap was not so simple!