Not sure why gnu-netcat appeared on my system

Issues & Assistance Hyprland
1

After updating my system today, I noticed that gnu-netcat suddenly showed up in my installed AUR packages. I definitely didn’t install it myself, and I can’t figure out where it came from. On the AUR page it says:

Dropped this to the AUR from the official repos due to https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/gnu-netcat/-/issues/1, it is not considered maintainer and you should most likely be using openbsd-netcat instead :)

Does anyone know if this is something Garuda includes by default, or could it have been pulled in by another package?

2

Has always been core package. Is there an alternative (non-gnu netcat) ?

https://gitlab.com/garuda-linux/tools/iso-profiles/-/blob/master/shared/Packages-Root?ref_type=heads#L86

This definitely needs to be adjusted before building the next ISO.

3

i have since i use playonlinux for gaming :grinning_face:

sudo pacman -Qi gnu-netcat
[sudo] password for duke:
Name            : gnu-netcat
Version         : 0.7.1-12
Description     : GNU rewrite of netcat, the network piping application
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : http://netcat.sourceforge.net/
Licenses        : GPL-2.0-only
Groups          : None
Provides        : netcat
Depends On      : glibc
Optional Deps   : None
Required By     : playonlinux
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : netcat
Installed Size  : 66.42 KiB
Packager        : Christian Heusel <gromit@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Sun 31 Aug 2025 21:50:46
Install Date    : Mon 01 Sep 2025 17:24:40
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature
4

The AUR page says that it is not considered maintained and that you should probably use openbsd-netcat instead

5

Done.

Should there be an intervention on the garuda-update level for this? I’m guessing no, personally.

1 Like
6

Agreed!

7

or there:
Benötigt von : virt-manager-meta
sudo pacman -S openbsd-netcat and say yes if asked

: openbsd-netcat-1.229_1-2 and gnu-netcat-0.7.1-12 are in conflict. Remove gnu-netcat? [j/N] J

8

I think we should force the replacement, otherwise a lot of folks will unknowingly install the AUR package next time they update. It’s not going to break anything, but I think it is an undesirable outcome.

3 Likes
9

I am not entirely sure how that’s going to be applied only once Implementation wise. We don’t want to uninstall it every update after all.

10

The next garuda-update will automatically replace gnu-netcat with openbsd-netcat.

gnu-netcat can be manually installed afterward from the AUR again if needed.

6 Likes
11

I’m a bit curious — how does garuda-update ensure that gnu-netcat is only replaced with openbsd-netcat once, instead of doing the replacement on every update?

12

I’ve added a new “intervention sequence” that gets stored to disk at /etc/garuda/garuda-update/intervention_sequence. The intervention sequence is a number that starts at 0 and every time we add a new check it will be increased by one. (The current target intervention number is 1, but in the future it will be higher).

I’ve summed up all of garuda-update’s existing interventions (of which there are a lot, but none of them will ever trigger again because the issues they were designed to solve are already long gone on an updated system) plus this new intervention into intervention sequence number 0.

When a garuda-update finishes successfully, that means the interventions of intervention 0 were successfully applied. Then, garuda-update saves the number 1 to the intervention sequence file, meaning all interventions of number 0 are skipped automatically, reducing not only processing time, but also preventing the package from being replaced once again. Ancient installations of Garuda Linux will still benefit from the old interventions, while newer installations will not have to carry them around any longer.

This is very similar to how garuda-migrations handles non-package related migrations (usually for config files).

Garuda migrations for reference:

https://gitlab.com/garuda-linux/pkgbuilds/-/blob/main/garuda-migrations/garuda-migrations-runner

6 Likes
13

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