Arch Linux

Arch Linux on the ThinkPad R32

Aliases
Gnome
GnomeTools
Keyring
MultiBoot
MultiMedia
Partitioning
Prompt
SSH
Sudo
VirtualBox
Xorg

Setting up SSH

All the info that I need is here.

Installing the Gnome desktop environment

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GNOME#How_to_install_the_GNOME_Desktop

Essentially

pacman -S gnome
pacman -S gnome-extra
pacman -S gnome-system-tools
pacman -S gdm

Installing Xorg

pacman -S libgl
pacman -S xorg
pacman -S xf86-input-evdev
pacman -S mesa
pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts ttf-dejavu ttf-bitstream-vera
pacman -S nvidia-173xx
pacman -S xf96-video-vesa xf86-video-nv

Booting the other installed OS's

In the file /boot/grub/menu.lst I've added a stanza

title Others
root (hd1,11)
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

This is where the previous boot loader is installed and was working well. So far, all this gets me is a menu of all the previously installed OS's. Trying to boot any one of them results in an error.

Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS

Press any key to continue...

Aliases

Set in the file /etc/bash.bashrc.

Color Bash Prompt

I set this in the file /etc/profile. Seems to have worked as expected. My user only, not root. No it didn't!

Gnome Tools

Why can't I use the administration tools that are offered in the menus and installed with the package gnome-system-tools?

Add myself to the stb-admin group.

sudo gpasswd -a glenn stb-admin

Add the stb-admin daemon to rc.conf by editing /etc/rc.conf and adding stb-admin to the list. Reboot. This seems to have worked. I am now able to use these tools.

Gnome Keyring

I'd like it if the default keyring is stored permanently so that I'm not prompted for it every time I try to get my e-mail. A couple of methods were suggested. The first is to install something called seahorse.

sudo pacman -S seahorse

Installed but don't see any way to configure automatic un-locking. Now to try the other way... Edit /etc/pam.d/gdm and add these two lines

auth            optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so
session         optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so  auto_start

Probably need to reboot to see if this works.

It didn't. I was still prompted, but maybe just this one more time and it will be stored. That did nothing. Still asking for password. Stupid.

The edits to the text file did nothing because those lines were already there.

VirtualBox

I downloaded and installed VirtualBox in the same fashion as in Fedora. Guest Additions was somewhat more of a challenge. What I ended up doing, since it refused to compile, was to insall gcc, automake and make.

sudo pacman -S gcc
sudo pacman -S automake
sudo pacman -S make

The installation of make made all the difference as the kernel finally compiled.

Partitioning Scheme

Arch Linux likes to use the whole disk during installation. I want to install Arch to a single existing partition. Tough to do, considering the installer uses cfdisk, a tool that I am extremely unfamiliar with. Scary if you don't want to risk losing everything on the disk. There is another option available in the partitioning menu. Can't remember what it was called but it's option 3 I believe.

That option, number 3, is Manually Configure block devices, filesystems and mountpoints. With this option I was able to tell the installer which partition I wanted to use.

Sudo

pacman -S sudo
EDITOR=nano visudo

Scroll to the bottom of the file and add

glenn ALL=(ALL) ALL

Save and exit. My user can now use sudo.

Multimedia plugins

Working with Rhythmbox.

pacman -S gstreamer0.10-ugly-plugins gstreamer0.10-bad-plugins gstreamer0.10-good-plugins gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

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