Software Updates

English Applications
1

Is it safe to install all updates through GUI? Or should I still;


zypper dup

through terminal?

2

It’s probz safer to Ctrl + Alt + F1 all updates right?

3

Yes, from personal experience, for TW I’d go with zypper dup from a virtual terminal.

4

Actually I just updated to TW 20160307 using zypper dup.

It downgraded some “glibc” packages to v2.22… googling around afterwards it seems that there were a few problems caused by a recent update to v2.23

5

In my experience, it is reasonably safe to update through GUI UNLESS something related to Xorg is involved.
If that is the case, the old habit of switching to VT1 and “zypper dup” is safer, since even if the GUI crashes you are left with an updated system (and a bootable one, which is far more important!)

6

Coincidently, I just read this on the opensuse-kde mailing list:

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-kde/2016-03/msg00030.html

For the TW 20160307 update then “zypper dup” is the safer it would seem.

There was indeed an Xorg update:

==== xorg-x11-server ====
Subpackages: xorg-x11-server-extra xorg-x11-server-sdk

7

rotfl! I didn’t see that before writing, but that is exactly what I meant…

8

Yes, that happened to me this morning. Fortunately I was prepared.

I updated using “zypper dup” in a “screen -L” session.

So, after seeing the GUI login screen, I logged in again, did a “cd” to the appropriate directory, then ran

tail -f screenlog.0

and I could see the output of the update continuing until it finished. The “screen” command is great for adding an isolation barrier between the GUI desktop and the terminal command being run.

9

Thanks Neil, we never stop learning here…

10

I learned this the hard way, in June 2014, when Xorg was restarted in the middle of an update. And it left me with a broken system. See the mailing list thread that starts here

11

FYI while updating my laptop today I noticed that xorg-x11-server and xorg-x11-server-extra were going to be updated.
Accordingly, I went the “screen -L” then “zypper up” way as nrickert suggested in post #8
To my surprise, Xorg was not restarted automatically, the update process completed gracefully and I was able to carry on my work to the next planned reboot.

Anyway, better safe than sorry.