Running pacman -Syu from a fresh Linode image results in .pacnew conflicts on six files:

/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
/etc/rc.conf
/etc/inittab
/etc/bash.bashrc
/etc/securetty
/etc/hosts

What should be kept and what should be changed in these files?

There are a few important settings in rc.conf (like HARDWARECLOCK) and inittab (like hvc0). Compare the files (diff -u) to find out the differences.

The mirrorlist, bash.bashrc, securetty and hosts files don't contain any Linode-specific settings, but it's worth checking out the differences here as well.

/etc/securetty could contain something related to the virtual serial console, no?

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Matt Nordhoff (aka Peng on IRC)

I haven't created a new Arch Linode recently, but I believe the updated securetty does include hvc0. But double check to be sure!