[solved] update a dormant system - arch

When a system lies around, the Arch update will of course be large. Let's say a system isn't updated for 3 years. Pacman might indicate that, say 1.5G of updates are required. Usually it can be done, but the keyserver may be a bottleneck and failure point. This is a new development. There's probably a way to update Linux without checking package integrity, but I feel that's going to ultimately be a problem. I first try everything with keys. I covered most of this in an earlier post, but the post here focuses particularly on dormant systems.

first fail

Supposing the update fails based on keys, the nice first thing do is get rid of excess packages

# pacman -Sc
Packages to keep:
All locally installed packages

Cache directory: /var/cache/pacman/pkg/
:: Do you want to remove all other packages from cache? [Y/n] y
removing old packages from cache...

Database directory: /var/lib/pacman/
:: Do you want to remove unused repositories? [Y/n] y
removing unused sync repositories...
# du -sh /var/cache/pacman
1.5G /var/cache/pacman

That last command is just to see how large the current install is without the updates. Now go after the keys.

All the apps have PGP keys; sometimes pacman won't update due to key conflicts or expiry. Usual cure...

# pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring -

...after which try the more nuclear option

# pacman-key --refresh-keys