pacman -Syu goes brrr
this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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There’s no point in digital hoarding; it just clutters the boot partition and makes future updates messier.
I feel personally attacked.
apt just quietly “keeps back” the package. It doesn’t fail, it doesn’t break the system, and it doesn’t trigger a rollback. It just waits for me to notice. Since I wasn’t looking at the list of upgradable packages
Depends on what quietly means. To me it means "with no indication". Any written warning is quiet, I guess, if one is not reading it.
I had a similar experience with this vulnerability. I had no idea another command was required to update the kernel. Kind of odd if you ask me, but i'm sure they did it so you're forced to realize you're updating the kernel.
I cross posted this to !selfhosted@lemmy.world, I hope that was ok! I figured it would be good to spread the knowledge
When a kernel update requires a change in dependencies, something Proxmox kernels do frequently, apt just quietly “keeps back” the package. It doesn’t fail, it doesn’t break the system, and it doesn’t trigger a rollback. It just waits for me to notice.
This should save a click for hopefully everyone.
Yes obviously, if you do not update the packages then they do not get updated.
If you do not read the output of a command then you will not notuce that.
The standard upgrade command has this behavior though, which is unexpected to people like me and the author. You need a specific flag to tell apt to actually upgrade everything which is not the behavior I expected.
But it is clearly stated in the output that it holds back packages.
Lol.
Let's not defend this behavior by apt.
I'll die on many "linux is fine for just about everyone" hills.
Getting apt to actually really honestly - I mean it this time - update everything - isn't for everyone.
Some of us just wait for our hardware to break down, and then reinstall the OS, fresh, instead.
Nothing of what you said is on topic. I never said linux is for everyone and so on....
First, its about server administration. Second, I am neither saying that this behavior is good or bad.
I am saying that the behavior is clearly stated in the output. Or what else does "packages were held back" mean.
Blaming ignorance in reading the output prompt on the tools is really childish.
apt dist-upgrade is a necessary change to your process in place of just upgrade.
I may be wrong but I think it's apt-get dist-upgrade. apt full-upgrade does the same too.
apt-get is now deprecated on Debian and Ubuntu. But otherwise, no notes.
So "apt-dist-upgrade" then? Sorry if obtuse.
apt dist-upgrade. No first dash.
Notice it's apt not apt-get. That's all they were saying.
I've been running Debian since 2007 and never understood the point of apt upgrade .
When I update, I want the updated version for everything on my system.
I don't want to arbitrarily hold back packages just because a dependency changed. I'll decide for myself if that's an issue in my deployment. And Debian is generally very good at keeping everything running exactly the same way between releases.
I pin the release by name (not "stable") and then apt dist-upgrade always.
I've always been doing apt dist-upgrade. What's the difference between dist-upgrade and full-upgrade?
none.
This is specific to Debian and Ubuntu so why not being more specific in the title?
Thanks for sharing this. I'm very confident with Linux, but I hadn't thought about this!
Your blog post was concise, too. I hate scrolling forever before finding the solution.
Glad you found it useful. I'm the same, I can't stand those long posts that make you read a life story before getting to the commands, even worse when a page is riddled by ads or behind a paywall!
I figured if I’d missed it, a few other people probably had too.
Shouldn't the upgrade also update the bootloader's default entry to a new kernel? The way I've been doing it was apt update && apt dist-upgrade. And then reboot once every 1 to 2 years if I feel like it, am bored, or there's all these news articles about a severe bug in the kernel.
Would apt-get images of apt have saved you?
No, apt isn’t just a rename. apt upgrade largely replaces apt-get upgrade, but it’s a bit more aggressive: it may install new packages if required as dependencies (it still won’t remove packages). If an upgrade needs to remove packages to resolve dependencies, use apt full-upgrade (same as apt-get dist-upgrade).
Uhm, you dont update the host OS??
Why?
Shouldnt an updater run on the host? And Debian should always update the kernel with apt?
I'm the same way. My Debian server is two versions out of date, but it's still getting security updates and works, so why in the world would I upgrade?
Because the kernel and packages are severely outdated, only getting urgent patches
This seems to me like a pretty urgent patch
Yes but there are tons of others that dont get CVEs lol
Yeah, apt is an unwieldy piece of shit.
is this specific to apt? dnf or pacman dont suffer from this?
I don't know about dnf, but pacman doesn't do this by default. The only way to hold back packages is by writing it in the configuration.
I don't know for certain but this seems pretty apt specific.
I've not come across this with my non Debian based systems. Only use Debian for servers because it's so stable, Arch and Fedora everywhere else!
I'd say Python is instead.
?
I'm sorry, wrong thread.
Yay!