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How to update your arch linux without the kernel

If you are using archzfs and the zfsonlinux, you know that it can happen from time to time that you have to wait until packages are updated to the newest kernel (or lts kernel). Whenever you want to upgrade your system, you get an error like the following.

:: Starting full system upgrade...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: spl-linux-lts: installing linux-lts (4.9.32-1) breaks dependency 'linux-lts=4.9.30'
:: zfs-linux-lts: installing linux-lts (4.9.32-1) breaks dependency 'linux-lts=4.9.30'
:: zfs-utils-linux-lts: installing linux-lts (4.9.32-1) breaks dependency 'linux-lts=4.9.30'

To update your system without the kernel (and its dependencies), you can use the following trick.

#example if you use the lts kernel
#if you use plain pacman
pacman -Syyu --ignore=linux-lts,linux-lts-headers
#if you use pacaur
pacaur pacman -Syyu --ignore=linux-lts,linux-lts-headers

Thats it :-).

X11 freezes and system total hang up on an Lenovo X250 i7-5600U since kernel 4.6.2 (arch linux)

Hey folks, since kernel 4.6.2 I got a lot of X11 freezes as well as unusable gui tools (delayed inputs, scrolling and broken display rendering). Also all the virtual box clients are behaving the same. Only the chromium gui and xterm were usable (well, xterm only on my host, not on the virtual box clients).
I tried my best and here are the changes I made that stopped the system from a total freeze since four days:


#run as root
cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel-graphics.conf < DELIM
Section "Device"
    Identifier      "Intel Graphics"
    Driver          "intel"
    Option          "AccelMethod"   "uxa"
    Option          "NoAccel"       "True"
EndSection
DELIM

I am crossing fingers it is working on your machine also.

web - zfsonlinux 0.6.4. released - zfs-announce mailing list

The Linux team is happy to announce a new release of OpenZFS on Linux. The 0.6 4 release adds support for 6 new feature flags, multiple new properties, asynchronous IO, support for Linux kernels up to 4.0 and more.
NEW FUNCTIONALITY
* Compatible with kernels up to Linux 4.0.
* New feature flags (additional details below):
- spacemap_histogram
- extensible_dataset
- bookmarks
- enabled_txg
- hole_birth
- embedded_data
* New asynchronous I/O (AIO) support.
* New fallocate() FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE support.
* New fragmentation metric in 'zpool list'.
* New LZ4 compression of meta data.
* New "redundant_metadata" property controls desired redundancy level.
* New "overlay" property controls behavior for non-empty mount points.
* New 'zpool list -v' shows individual disk capacity.
* New 'zpool get -H' (scripted mode) support.
* New 'zpool create -t' creates a pool with a temporary name.
* New arc_summary.py script from FreeNAS.
* New bash completion support.
* New DTRACE_PROBES integrated with Linux tracepoints.
* New compressed block histograms with zdb.
* New verbatim pool imports with zdb.

What a release, thank you very much for the work and the damn long list of new features, improvements and bug fixes!

Take a look how linux kernel hackers have arranged their home offices

I found a great article on phoronix called "The Tour Of Linus Torvalds' Home Office". Inside are a few videos. Just take a few minutes and watch them. Their are two cool things to learn.
First
A treadmill desk for regular browsing in the web.
Second
My office is looking still normal (not that much pc's, cables etc. :-D).