Archup - ArchWiki

# Archup

Note: archup is a dead project, you can use aarchup instead, a fork of archup.

archup is a small C application which informs the user when system-updates for Archlinux are available. It's licenced under the GPLv3. In contrast to other update notifiers archup is intended to be lightweight and just do what it should: notify about possible updates.

archup uses GTk+ and libnotify to show a desktop notification if updates are available. It follows the unix-philosophy of "just doing one thing, but doing it well". It just notifies about new updates but the packagedatabase has to be updated by the user (better said a cronjob). With a cronjob archup can be used to regulary check for new updates and get a desktop notification if there are some.

## Installation

### From the AUR

Install archup from the AUR.

### Manually

Get a working-copy of archup:

    git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/archup.git

Change to the directory of the downloaded source and then follow the commands below:

    $ autoconf
    $ ./configure
    $ make
    $ make install

This installs the binary to `/usr/bin/archup` and the other files to `/usr/share/doc/archup`.

## Configuration

archup can simply be invoked by executing it from the commandline. But you surely want to automate this task and let archup continouisly be run with a cronjob.

### Hourly

The most simple setup is for a single user system where you want to check once an hour for updates. In this case just copy the `/usr/share/doc/archup/cronhourly.example` to `/etc/cron.hourly/archup.sh`

    # cp /usr/share/doc/archup/cronhourly.example /etc/cron.hourly/archup.sh

and make it executable with

    # chmod 755 /etc/cron.hourly/archup.sh

Do not forget to open this file with a text editor of your choice and change the username of the arch_user value with your username.

Now every hour your package database will get updated and after that archup will be executed. If there are updates archup shows a desktop notification, if there are no updates nothing will happen. The desktop notification will automatically disappear after 60min or if you simply click on it.

### Other intervals

If you want to execute archup at other intervals than hourly you are free to do so simply by setting up a custom cronjob (read `man cron` for more on this).

Some hints on this:

- you can adjust the timeout value, before the notification will disappear with the --timeout option of archup.
- you should take care that the packagedatabase gets updated by executing `/usr/bin/pacman -Sy` before archup gets executed.
- if you wanna start a graphical application from a cronjob you propably have to set the `DISPLAY` and `XAUTHORITY` values. The best is taking a look at `/usr/share/doc/archup/cronhourly.example` and get your inspiration there.

    cronhourly.example

    #!/bin/bash

    arch_user=rorschach

    if [ -z "$(pgrep pacman)" ];then
            /usr/bin/pacman -Sy > /dev/null
    fi

    XAUTHORITY=/home/$arch_user/.Xauthority DISPLAY=:0.0 /usr/bin/archup --uid $(id -u $arch_user)

Note: Make sure to replace "arch_user" with the specific user.

## Troubleshooting

If you want to use notify-osd, be aware that notify-osd doesn't respect libnotify timeouts and thus the notifications will disappear in the regular notify-osd interval and not in the one you tell archup. But there's a patch for notify-osd which fixes this.

## See also

- archup homepage
- aarchup a fork of archup
- Thread in archlinux forum about archup
- Screenshots: KDE, Gnome (with notify-osd), Gnome (low urgency), Gnome (normal urgency), Gnome (critical urgency)

Category:

- Package management