Everything you need to know about pacman

Pacman is
our package manager

We have applications like pamac, discover or gnome-software to install software but there are also commands to do the same.

We urge you to learn the commands that are behind all the GUIs.

Installing Firefox is super simple.

sudo pacman -S firefox

Removing Firefox is super simple including dependencies if possible.

sudo pacman -Rs firefox

But you can do so much more with pacman.

Pacman operation : sync

command	example	description
sudo pacman -S	sudo pacman -S firefox	Installs the package
sudo pacman -Sy	sudo pacman -Sy	Sync the pacman database
sudo pacman -Syy	sudo pacman -Syy	Sync the pacman database with force
sudo pacman -Syu	sudo pacman -Syu	Sync the pacman database and update
sudo pacman -Syyu	sudo pacman -Syyu	Sync the pacman database with force and update or update alias
sudo pacman -S … –noconfirm	sudo pacman -S –noconfirm firefox	Installs firefox – if confirmation is needed, always yes
sudo pacman -S … –needed	sudo pacman -S –needed firefox	Installs firefox if not yet installed – scripts
sudo pacman -Sc	sudo pacman -Sc	Cache clean – remove packages no longer installed
sudo pacman -Scc	sudo pacman -Scc	Cache clean – remove all files from cache
sudo pacman -Sg	sudo pacman -Sg xfce4	Show content of group package
sudo pacman -Si	sudo pacman -Si	Show info of package
sudo pacman -Sl	sudo pacman -Sl arcolinux_repo	Shows all packages in a repo
sudo pacman -Ss	sudo pacman -Ss awesome	Search in name and description anywhere

Pacman operation : query

To query means to ask.

There are more flags possible here but remember that the Q stands for query. You can try these commands out without any harm. Replace foobar with Firefox for example.

sudo pacman -Q foobar
sudo pacman -Qs foobar
sudo pacman -Qi foobar
sudo pacman -Ql foobar
sudo pacman -Si foobar

TIP

If you found a file and you wonder what package has actually delivered this file then type this

sudo pacman -Qo /path/to/file_name

Pacman operation : File

There are more flags possible here but remember that the F stands for file. You can try these commands out without any harm. Replace foobar with Firefox for example.

sudo pacman -F foobar
sudo pacman -Fl foobar

Pacman configuration

The settings for pacman are kept in

/etc/pacman.conf

We go in there to activate the test repositories for example.

There is an alias to change the content of this configuration file.

npacman

Your folder /etc/pacman.d/ holds two files.

Pacman needs to know where to get its files. These are the source files if you will.

where can I find the packages for Arch Linux aka mirrorlist
where can I find the packages for ArcoLinux aka arcolinux-mirrorlist

The content of arcolinux-mirrorlist is managed by ArcoLinux.

The content of mirrorlist is managed by our alias mirror and others.
It will get the fastest Arch Linux servers in your neighborhood.

Pacman management

Sometimes we run out of disk space. This mostly happens on dual boot systems.

You can clean out the cache folder and gain a few GB.

sudo pacman -Scc

Pacman stores the databases locally in /var/lib/pacman/sync/.

The pacman databases will occasionally get corrupted. Removing the files in this folder and updating your system will create new databases.

sudo rm /var/lib/pacman/sync/*
update

Type in the terminal this command

pacman -Suv

You will get all the important places pacman is going to use.

Root : /
Conf File : /etc/pacman.conf
DB Path : /var/lib/pacman/
Cache Dirs: /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ 
Hook Dirs : /usr/share/libalpm/hooks/ /etc/pacman.d/hooks/ 
Lock File : /var/lib/pacman/db.lck
Log File : /var/log/pacman.log
GPG Dir : /etc/pacman.d/gnupg/

Pacman and mirror

We have created several aliases to get the fastest Arch Linux servers in your neighborhood.

Pacman will download the packages from these servers.

mirror
mirrora
mirrord
mirrors
mirrox

They are all a little bit different and will result in a different mirrorlist in the /etc/pacman.d folder.

Then you can update your system and see if you are downloading faster than before.

Group and meta packages

In both cases the goal is to install a list of packages.

GROUP PACKAGES

There are actually several packages in one group.

Example:

sudo pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies

That is all that is needed to have a complete Xfce4 desktop.

Here you can find the list of all package groups.

https://www.archlinux.org/groups/

Many of the desktops will have a group package to install a list of packages.
Follow the link above and find mate, mate-extra, plasma, xfce4 and xfce4-goodies and so many more.

These are the ones we also use in our cheatsheet on ArcoLinux.

You can not uninstall a group package.

META PACKAGES

If you do an Arch Way installation one of the first meta packages you will install are

pacman -S base

Read on the Arch Wiki about the difference between group and meta package.

Simply put, meta-packages are packages that do nothing but depend on other packages. The result of this is that you can install a group of packages at once by installing a single meta-package. Now, Arch Linux has a similar concept: package groups, and while they serve a similar purpose they are suitably different. The difference is when you add or remove dependencies – groups will not install/remove additional dependencies whereas meta packages will. When a dependency is added our system will install it automatically.

You can uninstall a metapackage.

Following code may remove too much so reinstall what you need.