TROMjaro 2023.03.31

TioLegacy · March 31, 2023, 4:03pm

The normal Manjaro Stable updates plus:

Docklike stuff

The apps panel, where the opened apps are displayed, got an update. One minor change for our default TROMjaro: right click on any app from Docklike then Properties. Then select all indicators to be “rectangles”.

If that’s what you also prefer.

Second, go to the file /.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css in your home directory and delete these lines:

  /* Brightly colored buttons */
  #docklike-plugin .open_group {
    background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);
  }
  #docklike-plugin .active_group {
    background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);
  }
  #docklike-plugin .hover_group {
    background-color:  rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);

  }

It is better to use the system’s theme for these colors rather than pre-defined ones.

Lastly, I noticed that this Docklike is a bit buggy since the latest updates. If you see it behaving weirdly, like displaying more apps on the panel or what not, press CTRL + ALT + 1. That refreshes your panels. Takes less than a second to fix.

Encryption stuff

GRUB got updated so if your entire boot drive is encrypted you’ll see an error when you boot: error: no such cryptodisk found. Your system boots fine but you should fix this error.

First go to the file /etc/default/grub - right click and “edit as root”. Find the line
GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES= and replace whatever value is there with "cryptodisk part_gpt part_msdos". So it looks like this: GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES="cryptodisk part_gpt part_msdos"

Next open the terminal and do: sudo update-grub then another one sudo mkinitcpio -P. Reboot your computer. If the error is still there open the terminal and do one more thing: sudo grub-install. Now it should all work.

Grab the ISO from here.

Brian · April 1, 2023, 9:13pm

I guess that means this release?? If so… that was quick!

I don’t use a dock style panel so I guess the other points don’t apply to me. But I did have some weird quirks with the update process…

After initially checking for updates it said there was 1.5 GB to download, but after clicking Apply, it got stuck with a message saying
Waiting for another package manager to quit...
even though there was nothing else running. After waiting a while I gave up and clicked Cancel. It then seemed to happily proceed to the next step where it asked me to
Choose a provider for libpipewire-0.3.so=0-64
with only one option given.
After doing that it would list all the packages to upgrade apart from the one downgrade at the top

To downgrade:
xfce4-docklike-plugin 0.4.1-1.1

But hitting Apply at this stage would just start the whole process again going back to
Waiting for another package manager to quit...
Except this time, saying only 994 MB to download… and on the next run of the loop 864 MB, and after a few more loops of this cycle it got down to ~500 MB, all without ever having downloaded anything (I would notice on my old slow ADSL connection!). At this point I gave up and rebooted.

After reboot I got an alert notification about their being updates available which I hadn’t seen the first time around (can it be whatever is in the background that runs this notification that can cause the conflict??). And no longer got the same “Waiting for…” error. It still only showed ~500 MB to download but seemed to proceed ok, although at one stage had the errors:

unable to lock database
Failed to synchronize databases

And during the install I noticed a big chunk of errors in the log:

Refreshing the chaotic-aur keyring…
==> Appending keys from chaotic.gpg…
==> Updating trust database…
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2023-04-21
Upgrading archlinux-keyring (20230130-1 → 20230320-1)…
==> Appending keys from archlinux.gpg…
==> Updating trust database…
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2023-06-15
==> Updating trust database…
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2023-06-15
Upgrading manjaro-keyring (20221028-4 → 20230318-1)…
==> Appending keys from manjaro.gpg…
gpg: error reading key: No public key
Error while configuring manjaro-keyring
gpg: error reading key: No public key
Error while configuring manjaro-keyring
gpg: error reading key: No public key
Error while configuring manjaro-keyring
gpg: error reading key: No public key
Error while configuring manjaro-keyring
gpg: error reading key: No public key
Error while configuring manjaro-keyring
gpg: error reading key: No public key
Error while configuring manjaro-keyring
gpg: error reading key: No public key
Error while configuring manjaro-keyring
gpg: error reading key: No public key
Error while configuring manjaro-keyring
==> Locally signing trusted keys in keyring…
→ Locally signed 2 keys.
==> Importing owner trust values…
==> Disabling revoked keys in keyring…
→ Disabled 8 keys.
==> Updating trust database…
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2023-06-15

And finally at the end of the install I had:

I also had trouble capturing this screenshot. If I tried using either the Active window or Select a region options in the screenshot tool, the warning notification window would be completely invisible, and it would only capture the log window behind it. But I managed to get this image in the end by using the Entire screen option and cropping it afterwards.

Anyway, after the reboot to complete the process everything seems to be working fine, and no further updates are shown as being available. I guess I just found a magic trick to knocking 1 GB off the download size so

TioLegacy · April 1, 2023, 9:26pm

Yup. I try to release very fast.

This rarely happens for some reasons. If you click on the bottom right arrow of the window you should see where it hangs. May be the internet speed, servers, idk…

But the way we setup TROMjaro for all users is to check for updates in the background and silently download them so that when you update it should be very fast.

Yes so maybe it canceled the process that was hanging. That option is normal that’s how Add/Remove Software works. At times some apps ask you if you want to install optional things.

Yes downgrades are part of the updates. At times we have to downgrade packages to fix errors.

Rarely, like for me happened maybe 4 times for the past 2 years, a process hangs as explained above, and clicking cancel won’t actually cancel it. It is not recommended to stop the process of updating. So in this case you either reboot or open the terminal and paste this sudo killall -9 -ir pamac . Very inconvenient but happens only if there are really weird issues with the update process and hangs and you click cancel and that doesn’t kill it.

As said we delayed updates for 2 weeks. You can change that via the hanburger menu in the Add/Remove Software.

You can ignore this error.

You got into a very weird situation there. Usually the updates go without any of these things happening. If this was how updates were normally I would not use Linux myself hahaha. But yeah the best is to wait for the updates to alert you and then update, because they are likely to be downloaded already and all set for installation.

Brian · April 1, 2023, 10:11pm

Thank you for the help!

So maybe it was conflicting because it was already trying to download the updates in the background? Or maybe it is just not designed to work with my internet bandwidth

This was the key tip for me thanks. I hadn’t checked the settings here before. I find the modern attitude to updates crazy tbh, as I would have thought “every week” would be more like the shortest interval option, rather than the longest
Anyway, I was happy to find here the option to disable automatic downloading of updates. I would be a little upset if all my little bandwidth was being used up by a background process without my knowledge, and particularly one that seems difficult or impossible to pause.

Thanks for the tip! From reading up on this, I get the impression that in general usage it might be a good idea to try the killall command without the more aggressive -9 flag first, if presumably required in this case. I also wasn’t sure why there is the -r option here for regular expression style matching. Is it some kind of fuzzy search to cover some differently named pamac processes?

P.S. I just noticed now that it is also worth checking the “Third party” tab in the update preferences, since it includes the option to clean up temporary files from AUR builds (which I thought I had only used once, but there was still 590 MB there).

TioLegacy · April 2, 2023, 1:30pm

Hard to say honestly…

Interesting ok. I am surprised there are still bandwidth limits out there. I haven’t seen such internet connections since a decade ago. Crazy. We should all have unlimited access to the internet.

Brian · April 9, 2023, 7:56am

There is no limit on the amount of data I can download – it is standard flat rate charge. Only my bandwidth, i.e. Mbps rate of download or “speed” is more limited on an ADSL connection. Though I might be upgrading to a fibre connection later this year as they are changing the pricing structures here to push people away from the old phone lines so that they can disband them. Apparently we are all required to sign up to that increasingly deluded and suicidal, hyper connected, frenetic and excessive, infinite growth lifestyle