Cylon: an excellent maintenance application for Arch Linux

cyclone archlinux

Cylon is a maintenance program for Arch Linux, although it also works very well on its derivatives.

This basically is a menu driven bash script that provides system updates, maintenance, backups and checks for Arch Linux and its derivatives, such as Antergos, Manjaro Linux, etc.

Cylon it is primarily a CLI program and also has a basic dialog GUI. Provides more than hundreds of useful tools and options, including the following:

  • Cower (outdated): AUR package for AUR work
  • gdrive: AUR package for Google Drive backup
  • Lost Files: AUR package to find lost files
  • Pacaur (outdated): aur's helper
  • Arch-audit: collect CVE data
  • rmlint: find fluff and other unwanted
  • rkhunter: find malware root kits
  • clamav: used to find malware
  • Bleachbit: used to clean the system
  • gnu-netcat: used to verify the network
  • ccrypt: used to encrypt
  • rsync: used for backup
  • inxi: system information viewer
  • htop: interactive process viewer
  • wavemon: wireless network monitor
  • speedtest-cli: internet bandwidth
  • lynis: system audit tool
  • openbsd-netcat: used to verify the network

How to install Cylon on Archu Linux and derivatives?

Cylon is available in the AURTherefore, they must have this repository enabled within their pacman.conf file. Likewise, they must have an AUR wizard that helps them install applications from this repository.

So, if you don't have it, I recommend you go over for the next post. Now simply We must open a terminal and type the following command to install the tool with:

yay -S cylon

Use

Note that Cylon it will not install all tools by default. Some features require multiple dependency packages to be installed.

There are two dependencies and the rest are optional dependencies, which you can install according to your needs.

When a function is performed, the missing packages will be displayed if there are any. All missing packages will show as n / a in the menus. You must install the missing packages yourself before using these features.

To launch Cylon, just type cylon in the terminal:

cylon

Doing this will give them an output, similar to the following image:

cyclone archlinux

Also, they can start the GUI application from the Menu. It is usually found in Applications> System Tools.

Let's see what each menu entry does.

Pacman

In the pacman section, various operations of pacman package manager can be performed, such as install, update, update, check, remove packages, etc.

Upgrade system

As the name implies, this section is dedicated to performing Arch Linux upgrade. Here you can update both the official and AUR packages. Cylon gives you the following four options in this section.

System maintenance

In this section, You can do the following maintenance tasks.

  • View failed Systemd services and status.
  • Check the Journalctl log for errors.
  • Check Journalctl for SSD fstrim trim.
  • Analyze the boot performance of the system.
  • Check for broken symbolic links.
  • Find files where no group or user matches the numeric ID of the file.
  • Starts the lostfiles utility to find orphaned files that do not belong to any Arch package.
  • View disk space usage.
  • Find 200 of the largest files.

Among others.

System backup

This section provides backup utilities like gdrive and rsync to back up your Arch Linux system.

Additionally, there is a custom backup option that allows you to manually backup files / folders to a user-specified location.

System security

Cylon provides various security tools and functions such as:

  • ccrypt
  • clamav
  • rkhunter
  • lynis
  • Password generator
  • And more

Network maintenance

This section is for network related functions. Here you can:

  • Start wavemon to monitor wireless network devices.
  • Test internet bandwidth using the speedtest-cli utility.
  • Check if website is up with netcat and ping
  • Shows all interfaces that are currently available.
  • Show kernal routing table.
  • Check UFW Status, Hassle-free Firewall.
  • Check the network time synchronization status.
  • See all open ports.
  • And many more

System information

This section provides information for your Arch Linux system, such as

  • Activity time
  • Kernel details
  • Operating system architecture
  • Username
  • UPC
  • RAM
  • Number of packages per repositories.
  • And more

As you can see, Cyclon facilitates Arch Linux maintenance, installation, monitoring and other tasks, making these tasks easier for the user with this excellent script.


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