archup (current version 1.3) 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.

archup on kde archup with notify-osd archup with urgency low archup with urgency normal archup with urgency high

Download&Installation Git Configuration Usage Bugs Contact Links

Download and Installation

In most cases you simply want to download and install archup with the AUR package.

But you can also manually download the sourcecode of the most recent version here: http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/archup/ . To install it, extract the archive and do:

$ autoconf
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

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

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Git

Web: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/archup.git/

Clone with:

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

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

and make it executable with

$ sudo chmod 755 /etc/cron.hourly/archup.sh

Finally open this file with a texteditor 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 notifiaction, 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 manpage of crond for more on this).

Some hints on this:

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)

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

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Usage

usage: archup [options]

Options:
          --command|-c [value]        Set the command which gives out the list of updates.
                                      The default is /usr/bin/pacman -Qu
          --maxentries|-m [value]     Set the maximum number of packages which shall be displayed in the notification.
                                      The default value is 30.
          --timeout|-t [value]        Set the timeout after which the notification disappers in seconds.
                                      The default value is 3600 seconds, which is 1 hour.
          --uid|-i [value]            Set the uid of the process.
                                      The default is to keep the uid of the user who started archup.
                                      !!You should change this if root is executing archup!!
          --urgency|-u [value]        Set the libnotify urgency-level. Possible values are: low, normal and critical.
                                      The default value is normal. With changing this value you can change the color of the notification.
          --help                      Prints this help.
          --version                   Shows the version.
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Bugs

Submit bugs to the savannah bugtracker.

Contact

You can contact me with r0rschach@lavabit.com (PGP: 0xD6DEB90A).

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Links