cachy-auto-update/README.md

cachy-auto-update

Unattended background updates for CachyOS.

Supports pacman, AUR, Flatpak and AppImages.

How to use | Install | Ko-Fi

Built for the machine you set up for somebody else and would rather not maintain. Stays out of the way while they are gaming or on battery, never touches the package database while pacman is already running, and only bothers you if something went wrong.

Install

paru -S cachy-auto-update
sudo cachy-auto-update enable

Updates are off until you enable them.

Usage

sudo cachy-auto-update

  CachyOS Auto-Update

  Automatic updates            ON
  Notifications                ON

  Last check                   3 hours ago
  Last successful update       Sat 08 Aug 2026 04:12:03 CEST (23 packages)
  Next scheduled run           Sat 08 Aug 2026 05:00:00 CEST

  [1] Toggle automatic updates
  [2] Toggle notifications
  [3] Update now
  [4] Show log
  [5] Show current conditions
  [6] Settings
  [q] Quit

Everything is configurable from [6] Settings. The interface is also translated to German (more langs coming soon (maybe)).

What it updates

Repository packages	pacman -Syu
AUR	paru or yay, whichever is installed
Flatpak	system and per-user installations
AppImages	via Gear Lever, if installed

When it doesn't update

A run is postponed (retried an hour later) when:

• battery is below 30 % (ignored on mains power),
• a game is running,
• pacman's database is locked or another package manager is running.

The machine will obviously never automatically restart (this is not windows)

Safety measures

• A progress bar shows which step is running and which package is being updated.
• Suspend and shutdown are blocked via systemd-inhibit during updates.
• A db.lck left by a crash is removed on the next run.
• On Btrfs with snapper/snap-pac (the CachyOS default), every transaction gets a pre/post snapshot.

Package conflicts

AutoResolveConflicts=yes (default) retries conflicting package replacements automatically.

File conflicts (exists in filesystem) are not force-overwritten. Signature failures trigger one keyring refresh and one retry.

Logs

cachy-auto-update log        # last run
cachy-auto-update log -a     # rolling log
journalctl -u cachy-auto-update

Building from source

make && sudo make install
sudo systemd-sysusers && sudo systemd-tmpfiles --create
sudo cachy-auto-update enable

make check runs shellcheck, syntax checks, and validates the sudoers drop-in.

Optional runtime dependencies (degrades gracefully without them): pacman-contrib, an AUR helper, flatpak, Gear Lever, libnotify, python-gobject.

Relationship to cachy-update

cachy-update is CachyOS's interactive updater which checks for updates and notifies, but that needs manual intervention. This is the unattended counterpart. The two can coexist; enable offers to switch off cachy-update's notification since it becomes obsolete.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later.