A fresh Arch installation - from VirtualBox?

Hey,
My dad's laptop is about 2-year old LG. It runs Vista, and it runs like shit..
I wanna install Arch on the laptop for him, for a much better user experience.
Since I am only gonna see him on the weekend for only several hours,
I wanna make a fresh Arch install, tweak everything for his convenience, on a VirtualBox
enviroment, and then dd the partition to a fresh partition on his harddrive.
Can anyone think of any "show stoppers" as to why not go that way?
Can anyone offer any tips?
Thanks a lot,
fiod

It should be fine, with one exception, the initial ramdisk. You'll need to ensure that the hard drive controller's kernel modules are installed in the MODULES= section of /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
You should be able to boot the arch installer on the desktop and install the hwdetect script
~]$ hwdetect --hostcontroller
MODULES="pata_acpi ata_generic ahci ata_piix ehci-hcd ohci-hcd"
This many is probably overkill, since it should figure out dependencies, but if you don't want to think too hard about it just put them all in there.
Add those modules into /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and then run:
mkinitcpio -p kernel26
Then it should be able to boot.

Similar Messages

[SOLVED] New arch install from Virtualbox cannot boot on real hardware

Hi,
I'm trying my luck with installing Arch on physical disk through Virtualbox. I followed Wiki and managed to install system on the disk. However, I am unable to boot it outside VM.
I have two physical disks - /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. I have installed Arch on /dev/sda1. It is there, I can see the files from my current OS and it does work in VM. /dev/sda1 is bootable.
However, when I boot my PC from /dev/sda rootfs fails to load kernel image - it says it can't be found. I tried specifing init path in Syslinux.cfg using /dev/sdxX and UUID and even PARTUUID but none worked. When in rootfs, I lsed /dev/disk/by-uuid and found that rootfs sees only one of my two disks, /dev/sdb. I find it really strange.
I followed below advise found on forums:
- Verify that mkinitcpio.conf lists "block" hook
- Create a new kernel image with mkinitcpio -p linux
- Refer to your partition by UUID
- If above doesn't work, try PARTUUID
None of these worked. I believe the reason for this is that the issue is not with how I reference the disk nor how the mkinitcpio works but with the disk not being available for rootfs at all. Alas, I have no experience with disks other than simple partitioning, so I'm not sure where to start.
Fdisk output:
Disk /dev/sda: 931,5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x99ea4d63
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 314779647 314777600 150,1G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 314779648 1153640447 838860800 400G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 1153640448 1157834751 4194304 2G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/sdb: 465,8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x75a6998e
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 616447 614400 300M 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 616448 210331647 209715200 100G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 210331648 241788927 31457280 15G 83 Linux
Any ideas? Suggestions and help will be appreciated!
Last edited by karm (2014-12-08 03:56:35)

Sleep is for the weak.
So I've read that article and found what the issue was.
Turns out I automatically followed previous advise without giving it some thought and run mkinitcpio from Virtualbox. Which does not make sense because the whole point of this is to prepare kernel image to run on other hardware than provided by VM. So what I did to fix this:
1. Installed arch-chroot on VM
2. Mounted /dev/sda1 on my host machine and chrooted into it using arch-chroot
3. Run mkinitpcio -p linux
4. Reinstalled boot loader just in case with syslinux-install_update -iam /dev/sda1
5. Adjusted /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg to work with new configuration:
5.1 set root=UUID=..... to be certain it picks the right partition
5.2 add proper systemd init path APPEND=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd
And it does work - I'm posting from my new shiny system. Thanks a lot ackt1c!

Installation of Arch (64) in VirtualBox, issues with Xorg

Hi friends,
I want to install Arch (64) in VirtualBox, recent versions both.
I did the main installation procedure.
But now I want to install X.
I did "pacman -S xorg", and "Xorg -configure", and copied the newly created xorg-file to /etc/X11. It correctly recognizes "vboxvideo" as the video driver.
Now the problem is this: the first time I do "xinit", it works, but after exiting, and commanding "xinit" again, I get a blank screen and a freeze.
After exiting X the first time, it tells me about problems with DRI and DRM.
(Sorry I can't insert the files here at the moment, because I don't have the Guest Additions installed yet.)
Hope to hear from you,
Daniel

Can you please post the error messages it gives you?

Remove windows Installation from Old WD hard drive and Install Fresh Copy on the New One.

Hi Community! I just bought a new WD Blue 1 TB hard drive, my old hard drive is WD Blue caviar 500 GB, running on Windows 7 ultimate 32 bit.
There are two things I wish to do: 1. Firstly, if it's possible, I would like to copy some videos, images, music etc. from my OLD Drive to the new one.
Please note that, I don't have an external disk to do it, I know that would've been less complicated, but that's not an option at this point. 2. Secondly, once that is done, if possible, I want to remove windows 7 installation from my old hard drive, re-partition it to make it just the storage drive, and finally install
fresh copy of windows 7- 64 bit to the new Hard drive.
Please note that, my old Hard drive is installed on windows 7- 32 bit and now I want to install a fresh copy of Windows 7-64bit instead of 32bit, because I am upgrading my
configuration with better ones.
I am adding 4 GB corsair vengeance ram to my 2 GB corsair ram, so that is 6 GB in total.
I am adding 1 TB hard disk to my 500 GB Hard disk, so that is 1500 GB.
Both my processor and mother board supports 64 bit.
Intel® Pentium® Processor G2020 (3M Cache, 2.90 GHz) And this Mother board - "Biostar H61MGV3"I know that you could clone the partition and migrate the installation from one hard drive to another using the Acronis True Image WD Edition Software, but I don't want that.
In simple words, say I have a dos computer, I installed my 1TB WD hard drive, installed a fresh copy of windows 7-64bit. So my computer is up and running. Now, I have another hard
drive which I wish to use, that is 500GB WD, but it has Windows 7-32 bit installed in it.
So what I want to do is, make this old hard drive a complete 500 gb storage device and remove the windows installation from it, without loosing music, videos, etc. and then lastly
copying the music and other media to the new hard drive, and formatting it completely.
I am perhaps making this very complicated, I know you would have better easier solution for this.
I am frustrated, your help would be appreciated, thanks a lot. Sincerely, Abe

Since you don't want to clone the drive (I agree with you), you can just swap drives and install Windows on the new drive. Windows won't complain that you are installing on a different drive because it only cares if you change more than one piece of hardware at a time. The problem will arise when you copy the files from the old drive because you cannot just connect it via SATA. That would confuse Windows, as both installations were run on that hardware. You need to mount it in an external dock via USB 2.0/3.0 which will isolate the details of the OS. After you copy all necessary files, you can use WDC Lifeguard to write zeros to the entire disk and then create a new partition. After that you can mount it via SATA because it will be a new drive. Do NOT be in a hurry to wipe the drive however, as you don't want to forget something.

Grub from arch installer fails to install

Using the pre-release core (i686) iso 2011.03.23 because the standard iso doesn't have the drivers to support my wireless device (though neither seems to have a driver for the wired interface, interestingly)
When at the 'Install Bootloader' step, it attempts to build the GRUB device map, then the arch installer quits, printing this at the bottom along with a console prompt:
ERROR: device_is_raid needs a blockdevice as $1 ( given)
Attempted to then run 'grub-install' from said console as follows:
[root@archiso ~]# grub-install /dev/sda --root-directory=/mnt
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
The file /mnt/boot/grub/stage1 not read correctly/
[root@archiso ~]#
I found I had to pass the root-directory argument, as otherwise it couldn't find the stage1 file.
This hard disk is not using raid in any way, and for reference has a partition layout as follows
/dev/sda1 ntfs as PQSERVICE
/dev/sda2 ntfs as SYSTEM RESERVED
/dev/sda3 ntfs as Acer
/dev/sda4 extended partition containing:
/dev/sda5 ext3 as /
/dev/sda6 swap
The first three were already present on the disk with Windows 7, which incidentally continues to boot without issue. The only modification made was to shrink the Acer (aka C:\) partiton with GParted to make room for Arch.
Would rather use GRUB than other bootloaders unless unavoidable.
Thanks for any help offered.

Gremnon wrote:Out of habit, I always use the Beginners Guide, and always use GParted to prepare the partitions in advance. Bad blood between me and Parted Magic writes it out of the book entirely.
Will try again with a boot partition included, but I don't see why it would make any difference.
Any particular reason for ext3 over ext2 for /boot?
I don't see why it would make a difference either, but my install failed until I did it. Ext3 is more robust than Ext2, so if your system crashes there's a better chance of it not being hosed. I don't think it's a big deal either way, but I feel safer with Ext3.

[Solved]Can't get past "Starting network" during installation from USB

I'm trying to do a fresh install of Archlinux on my laptop, following the Beginners Guide. However, I never get to the shell prompt because the installation gets stuck at "Starting network [Busy]".
These are steps I followed:
- I downloaded the latest Arch ISO.
- I wrote it to a usb stick ("Kingston Data Traveler") with "dd if=archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdb"
- I put the usb stick into my laptop (HP Pavilion dm1-4139sd), and booted it. I chose "x86_64". Everything seems to go fine, the only warning I get is: "microcode: failed to load file amd-ucode/microcode_amd.bin".
- I get the message "INIT: Entering runlevel: 3" and "Starting Syslog-NG [Done]", after that its endlessly (at least 20 minutes) stuck on "Starting network [Busy]".
I tried the following variations on the above:
- Wrote the ISO to a different USB, samen problem.
- Tried it with a different Arch version (from August), same problem.
- Turned kvm on and off, same problem.
- Pressed TAB at the "x86_64" line and added "acpi=off" to the end of it. I then get:
:: Triggering uevents....
[ 19.697932 ] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 2, error -110
:: Mounting '/dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201209' to '/run/archiso/bootmnt'
Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201209
[ 35.312165 ] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 3, error -110
[ 45.821422 ] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 4, error -110
[ 56.330681 ] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 5, error -110
[ 56.330681 ] hub 1-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB devices on port 1
ERROR: '/dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201209' device did not show up after 30 seconds....
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, log out when you are finished
sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
[rootfs /]#
I'm not sure what to do in this prompt. At least the network isn't working and none of the normal commands.
- I reset the DHCP leases on my modem, same problem.
- I turned off/on the hardware WLAN, same problem.
- I tried it with or without the LAN cable plugged in, same problem.
- I tried it with or without the battery plugged in, and with or without the power cable plugged in. Same problem.
I also performed the Arch memory test, and the bios hard disk test. They both report no errors.
I did an Arch installation a month ago on this laptop, and back then it didn't have this problem. I still have that arch installed from back then and it boots/works without problem (I have Starting NetworkingManager [Done]). I know I technically don't need to install arch again, as I still have the old one, but I wanted to clean the changes I made to some settings files and I if it turns out this is some kind of hardware problem I'd like to return it to the store.
Please help! I'm not really that familiar with Linux in general, so it might have been a very basic mistake from me as well. I have no idea what to do next, except for formatting my harddisk (which I don't think should influence the installer?), or trying to install a different Linux distro.
Edit: The solution that solved this problem for me in the end was resetting the BIOS to its defaults.
Last edited by dbakker (2012-09-15 11:28:14)

DSpider wrote:Did you check the MD5 checksum? If you downloaded it using a BitTorrent client, then you don't need to (its hash is checked during downloading).
Yes, I downloaded it using BitTorrent and the MD5 matches.
DSpider wrote:Try a different stick?
Yes, I tried it with 2 different USB sticks. They are both from the same brand ("Kingston DataTraveler"), so I might try different brands as well, but I don't think it is the problem.
DSpider wrote:Or at least a different method from that wiki page. For example, "dd"-ing it should work just fine.
The methods for writing the ISO that I tried so far:
The base method:
dd if=archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdb
(from an Arch install)
The method without overwriting your USB drive (created a FAT32 drive with an VFAT filesystem, from an arch install)
Using Imagewriter (from Windows)
Each method gives the same result: the laptop gets stuck at "Starting network [Busy]" when booted from one of the USB sticks. My modem indicates that it "sees" the laptop, but that the laptop has no established connection. When the laptop is stuck at the "Starting network [Busy]", all the activity on the USB stick stops (the light stops flashing).
The thing I find most strange is that the OS currently installed on the laptop has no problems booting or accessing the internet (both wired and wireless) at all.

No internet/DNS connection with Arch guest on Virtualbox

I am trying to run Archlinux as a guest OS in Virtualbox on an Ubuntu 7.10 host system, and I cannot connect to anything but my router. So far, I have only installed the base system (Arch Linux core 2007.08-2) from a CD.
I can ping the localhost (both on 127.0.0.1 and 10.0.2.15) and my gateway (10.0.2.2), but not my DNS server (10.0.2.3) or anything else (like www.google.com). So far, I went through the "Beginners Guide", the "Official Arch Linux Install Guide", the configuring network section of the ArchWiki, and tried to find some solution on the internet. Still no luck.
I have set up networking to use dhcp. The networking section in my /etc/rc.conf file looks like:
HOSTNAME="arch"
lo="lo 127.0.0.1"
eth0="dhcp"
INTERFACES=(lo eth0)
ROUTES=(!gateway)
The daemons that run during startup are:
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network netfs crond)
I have put the hostname in the /etc/hosts file like:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost arch
The nameserver that shows up in my /etc/resolv.conf file is:
nameserver 10.0.2.3
I am a bit puzzled and I don't know what to do. I do think it is an Arch issue, since I also have Windows XP running in a Virtualbox with Ubuntu as host, and that works fine with the same Virtualbox settings and network settings within the guest OS.
I would appreciate any help here.
Last edited by Average Joe (2008-04-19 12:41:29)

Try reading the VirtualBox manuals.
I specifically remember that ping doesn't work at all, although you DO have internet connection.
Try running some sort of web browser (firefox or links), and then decide if you have internet access or not.
And, of course, make sure you do have dhcp running ("dhcpcd eth0").
One last thing:
I have an Arch guest (on VirtualBox), running on an Arch host.
Everything works fine..
Simply installed it from the installation CD, didn't have to do nothing special for it to work..
Last edited by fiod (2008-04-19 13:41:19)

[SOLVED] Larch Installation from LiveCD

Hej!
Today I finally succesfully created a LiveCD from a running Arch System. Because I want to migrate my installation to another partition and of course to check out whether the livecd is functional I tried to install my customized archlinux to hdd. Using larchin for that, I get the following error message after pressing the ok button:
This error couldn't be handled
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/mt/larch/larch5.3/larchin/pkg/opt/larchin/modules/gtk/guimain.py", line 252, in changed_cb
mainWindow.setStage(s)
File "/home/mt/larch/larch5.3/larchin/pkg/opt/larchin/modules/gtk/guimain.py", line 161, in setStage
self.mainWidget = stages[stagename].Widget()
File "/home/mt/larch/larch5.3/larchin/pkg/opt/larchin/modules/stages/finddevices.py", line 57, in __init__
File "/home/mt/larch/larch5.3/larchin/pkg/opt/larchin/modules/stages/finddevices.py", line 79, in getDevices
ValueError: need more than 1 value to unpack
Having found a bug report on http://www.bugs.maryanlinux.com/showreport.php?bugid=3 and having seen it mentioned once here in the forum I don't see a fast solution for this issue. So I'm wondering if there is another way to install the system? What about the installer used for the official installation-images of archlinux? Or maybe some other trick or something I don't see?
thanks in advance
Last edited by calle (2009-03-27 00:16:44)

cat /proc/partitions delivers:
8 0 40146624 sda
8 1 248976 sda1
8 2 17382330 sda2
8 3 2000092 sda3
8 4 20515005 sda4
8 16 244198584 sdb
8 17 167405301 sdb1
8 18 34186320 sdb2
8 19 26852647 sdb3
8 20 15751732 sdb4
7 0 534840 loop0
7 1 4 loop1
fdisk -l gives:
Platte /dev/sda: 41.1 GByte, 41110142976 Byte
255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 4998 Zylinder
Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb267b1ca
Gerät boot. Anfang Ende Blöcke Id System
/dev/sda1 1 31 248976 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 32 2195 17382330 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 2196 2444 2000092+ 82 Linux Swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4 * 2445 4998 20515005 7 HPFS/NTFS
Platte /dev/sdb: 250.0 GByte, 250059350016 Byte
255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 30401 Zylinder
Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000f2f85
Gerät boot. Anfang Ende Blöcke Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 20841 167405301 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 26146 30401 34186320 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 22803 26145 26852647+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdb4 20842 22802 15751732+ 83 Linux
Partitionstabelleneinträge sind nicht in Platten-Reihenfolge
and parted -l gives me:
Modell: ATA Maxtor 6E040L0 (scsi)
Festplatte /dev/sda: 41,1GB
Sektorgröße (logisch/physisch): 512B/512B
Partitionstabelle: msdos
Nummer Anfang Ende Größe Typ Dateisystem Flags
1 32,3kB 255MB 255MB primary ext2
2 255MB 18,1GB 17,8GB primary ext3
3 18,1GB 20,1GB 2048MB primary linux-swap
4 20,1GB 41,1GB 21,0GB primary ntfs boot
Modell: ATA SAMSUNG HD250HJ (scsi)
Festplatte /dev/sdb: 250GB
Sektorgröße (logisch/physisch): 512B/512B
Partitionstabelle: msdos
Nummer Anfang Ende Größe Typ Dateisystem Flags
1 32,3kB 171GB 171GB primary ext3
4 171GB 188GB 16,1GB primary ext3
3 188GB 215GB 27,5GB primary fat32
2 215GB 250GB 35,0GB primary ext3
Warnung: Kann /dev/sr0 nicht zum Schreiben öffnen (Das Dateisystem ist nur
lesbar). /dev/sr0 wurde nur lesbar geöffnet.
Fehler: /dev/sr0: unrecognised disk label
I hope you can deal with the german pidgin inbetween, sorry.
I'm not trying to install on a fresh disk though. /dev/sda2 is the partition I want to install to.
I will mind posting future larch-questions in the above mentioned post, thanks for the hint.
another question:
I alternatively created another livecd using the archiso scripts, which perfectly worked too. But now I'm looking for a way to modify the archlinux-installer scripts to fit my needs; that is creating config-files fitting for me (e.g. rc.conf with german locales, proper hostname, daemons etc.) and especially for installing the packages i'd like to have installed (like xorg, a desktop environment, whatever programs i like) with predefined configurations (e.g. xorg.conf, desktop-settings, firefox-extensions and so on), so that i can simply run /arch/setup from the livecd as usual but end up with a properly configured system i can start working with right away. Does perhaps anyone know of any further resources i might refer to?
thanks for your help so far

Install windows 8 on an existing arch installation

Hi Friends, I don't know if this is the correct place to ask but after many hours of googling, I am asking this question. I had two operating systems installed on my computer which I dual booted with grub: Windows 7 and Arch linux (Archlinux is still intact on my computer). Windows 7 got corrupted with virus and now it has become unusable. so, I decided to install Windows 8 in place of it. so, Friends, can Windows 8 be installed keeping the arch installtion safe ? Has anyone tried this method in which is linux is pre-installed and you have to install a new version of windows. I dont want to lose my arch linux installtion. If you want more information about my system partitions , I am willing to give it to you.Please Help.
I searched on Internet but found only the installation methods in which windows is installed first and then linux is installed. Many thanks.
Last edited by Pranavg1890 (2013-05-24 20:32:37)

Thanks Friends for your Replies.
But I think Somewhere I read that Windows Detects the linux partitions as unusable and formats them too. so, can anyone give me a confirmation for this?
My Partitions are as follows:
/dev/sda : ( 500 GB Hard-disk)
1) /dev/sda1 : System Reserved ( Windows 7 ) (100 Mb) (ntfs)
2) /dev/sda2 : Windows 7 ( Actual windows 7 installations) (362 Gb) (ntfs)
3) /dev/sda3 : Arch-Root ( actual arch linux installation) ( 50 Gb) (ext4)
4) /dev/sda4 : Extended partition in which the below partitions are included
/dev/sda5: Arch-Home ( seperate home partition ) ( 100 Gb) (ext4)
/dev/sda6: Swap Space ( 2 Gb ) (swap)
/dev/sda7: Arch-Boot ( grub is installed on this partition) ( 500 Mb) (ext4)
Please can anyone give me re-assurance for what I want to do. Cause Installing another operating system is a big step unless and until you unterstand follow it clearly.
Also, will I be able to boot Arch-linux from win 8 boot loader conidering my partition set-up ( To be specific , I want the Win 8 BootLoader's Mouse and touch funcionality)
Please Guide me step by step.Many thanks.
Last edited by Pranavg1890 (2013-05-24 21:22:09)

Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

Hi there,
I'm running an Asrock H77M-ITX UEFI mobo. On this system I've already installed Arch on a Samsung 830 SSD (GPT formatted) - but in BIOS legacy mode because I've written the Arch-ISO image with "dd" to an USB-Stick (and UEFI boot mode wasn't even presented at boot).
Out of curiosity I've re-formatted the stick and copied Arch-ISO following https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … B_from_ISO.
Now I could start the ISO in UEFI mode, but it failed to start gummiboot with the "No loader found. Configuration files in \loader\entries\*.conf are needed." error message, concerning a problem with gummiboot.
Following some advice on the forum, I did this:
- install refind-efi 0.4.7-2
- copy /usr/lib/refind/refindx64.efi to [USB]/EFI/boot and renaming it to bootx64.efi (i.e. replacing the original bootx64.efi from gummiboot)
- Create a new file in the same directory ([USB]/EFI/boot/) called refind.conf
- Add this to it:
textonly
scanfor manual
menuentry Arch {
loader /arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz
initrd /arch/boot/x86_64/archiso.img
options "gpt loglevel=7 add_efi_memmap none=UEFI_ARCH_x86_64"
With this I can launch Arch-ISO from the USB-Stick in UEFI mode and I can choose Arch from rEFIND. Then Arch-ISO starts booting but it always stops at the same point with this message:
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
ERROR: '/dev/disk/by-label/' device did not show up after 30 seconds ...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, log out when you are finished
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[rootfs /]#
sdb is the USB-Stick from which I start Arch-ISO. Again - I didn't use dd to write the ISO to the stick.
Maybe this is pretty easy to solve, but I have to admit that I'm somewhat stuck
Last edited by swordfish (2012-11-19 21:31:43)

WonderWoofy wrote:See what the difference is between archiso and archboot maybe? Seriously, have you made any effort whatsoever?
Of course. Read:
The "Main Page" ( https://www.archlinux.org/ ) states:
"You've reached the website for Arch Linux, a lightweight and flexible Linux® distribution that tries to Keep It Simple."
"Keep It Simple". Yeah!
In line with that, the "The Arch Way" page ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way ) states:
"The following five core principles comprise what is commonly referred to as the Arch Way, or the Arch Philosophy, perhaps best summarized by the acronym KISS for Keep It Simple, Stupid."
The ArchWiki ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/ ) links to several other pages, such as these:
The "Forum Etiquette" page ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Forum_Etiquette ) states under "Ineffective Discussion":
"Arch is a Do It Yourself community" and "treat others as you would be treated; respect them and their views". I am very much a "do it yourself" person -- that's why I like The Arch Way. I also go by the Golden Rule stated here.
Now, everyone is a newbie at some time. I and other posters here are obviously newbies with respect to ArchLinux. Even experts were newbies at one time. Newbies, by definition, do not necessarily know what they're doing, or where to find information. Hence, Arch's "Beginners' Guide" and such. Hence, posts on this board from newbies asking for help.
As regards initial installation of ArchLinux, and consistent with the above, the FAQ ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FAQ ), under "Q) Arch needs an installer. Maybe a GUI installer", states:
"A) Since installation doesn't occur often (read the rest of this article to know more about what rolling release means), it is not a high priority for developers or users. The Installation Guide and Beginners' Guide have been fully updated to use the command-line method. If you're still interested in using an installer, consider using Archboot."
So the basic installation instructions explicitly state that Archboot is not needed.
The "Installation Guide" ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_Guide ) says nothing about either Archboot or Archiso.
The "Beginners Guide" ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide ) says nothing about either Archboot or Archiso.
The "Archboot" page ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archboot ) is consistent with the above information, because it states:
"Archboot is a set of scripts to generate bootable media for CD/USB/PXE.
It is designed for installation or rescue operation."
The "Archiso" page ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archiso ) states:
"Archiso is a small set of bash scripts that is capable of building fully functional Arch Linux based live CD and USB images. It is a very generic tool, so it could potentially be used to generate anything from rescue systems, install disks, to special interest live CD/DVD/USB systems, and who knows what else."
So the pages describing both Archboot and Archiso clearly state that these tools are oriented towards already-existing installations -- even though it seems that they might be used, in certain circumstances, for initial installations.
I happen to be very new at playing around with installing Linux distros (although I've used Unix/Linux as a regular user for more than 30 years), and am brand new with respect to ArchLinux. I only began playing with it this past Saturday. So I would expect a bit of useful help as opposed to "RTFM!" I will soon get past the need to RTFM for basic tasks, but I have a way to go.
The fact is that for me and a number of other new ArchLinux users, the installation guides simply do not work. C.f. my post https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=153170 . I've done a lot of googling as well as searching the archives on this board, and others have come up against the same show-stopping installation problems that I have. I and others have posted to several recent threads on this board, trying to get past the problems, so far with no success.
Now, the.ridikulus.rat had written:
"You guys are using Archboot's kernel options for Archiso. Thats the issue in both the cases."
Given that neither of these sets of scripts were used by me or swordfish, this comment is not useful.
Given the above, can you or anyone else tell us what Archiso or Archboot might do to help us with our installation problems? Also, can you tell us how we, as newbies, ought to have found out how these might help?
Alan

Suggestion to arch installer...

I'm a newbie to arch. I just moved debian/ubuntu to arch, but I'm not a distro hopper. I'm now fascinated to arch, but I'm also frustrated to arch installation system.
I don't care installing os by console(ncurses). It's quite simple and efficient. I often installed debian/ubuntu in this way previously.
My suggestion is
1. partitioning
after cfdisk and we go through /arch/setup. Yes! "kiss" principle is important. Everything should be simple. but, we might lose "integrity" in the view of installation. cfdisk - partitioning (format stuff) - editing /etc/fstab the separated steps also make sense to me. However, in my opinion, will it be better that they merged into one step? I'm a newbie That's why I didn't find the way to keep(preserve) the previous partition. Whenever I tried to mount ie. "/home" it just formats. I solved this problem to skip the step, not to mount, and I edited /etc/fstab at the end.
2. choosing packages
we can choose base/base-dev packages. I love this because it provides the way to build the really minimalistic system. About 100 packages, I think most of people can't memorize exactly what they are, what they do. Will it be better to show short description like which utilites are installed, which daemon works, what they do... I believe that the user-friendliness during installation doesn't harm the system efficiency or compactness.
I hope the arch keep this way.. however, a bit kinder or nicer...

mairoo wrote:Dieter@be, Thank you so much! It's really helpful. I answered "no" and it really worked what I thought. I'm not good at English cuz my mother tongue is Korean. I hope the feature-request FS#13040 is accepted sooner or later. the way of curses menu during kernel compile could be a good model. Finally, I hope "the menu" could be a bit more /intuitive/ for poor english skilled people like me.
So, you tried again, you answered 'no' to the 'recreate?' question and this allowed you to choose a mountpoint and it automatically put the needed line in fstab, without overwriting your partition?
Suggestions for better menu's are welcome also. There is also a ticket open for a translated installer (i18n or i10n or whatever it's called), but I'm personally not convinced if it's worth it. It will depend mostly on contributions from other people.

Automating Arch Installation

Is there a way to automate Arch installation with the current installation media (2012.10.06)?
I'm thinking of something like RedHat / Fedora's Kickstart files that allow you to do the steps mentioned in the Official Install Guide (partitioning disks, installing packages, creating users, etc) in an automated way....

DSpider wrote:
mbrown wrote:This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, thanks! It would be great if something like this became mainstream/widely used, doing installations interactively doesn't scale well...
Except that you're probably not gonna learn anything that way... I thought about this for a while, and I realized that It's not really worth it. You're installing once in a blue moon anyway (I'm still rocking the same Arch i686 install I did on an old Athlon XP 2200+, from four years ago!), and if you have multiple computers, install once and transfer it to the other ones either from a portable USB drive or through the network.
I'm the developer of the above linked to archblocks script/modules and wanted to weigh in on this issue. I actually would like to see archblocks used for learning about arch as well as installing it. Part of the intent behind it was to make each step (block) comprehensible.
I look at the archblocks "blocks" as a link between automated installation and the wiki. Something along the lines of literate programming. And, of course, the benefit is that you get a potentially fully automated install of a very customized system.
Anyhow, just wanted to let you know that I share the value of learning through doing and hope that the archblocks scripts can contribute to that as well

[SOLVED] chroot to LVM filesystem with Arch Installer CD

Just a while ago, I was trying to disable KMS on my computer, as when I booted, for some reason the computer wouldn't connect to the monitor and display a picture until udev started loading modules.
I started by adding the line radeon.modeset=0 to menu.lst's kernel option line, but this only made the problem worse as the computer would then never connect to the monitor.
I couldn't blindly fix this as it would involve guessing when the login prompt was up, typing in my password, opening the editor, and finding the line in menu.lst to edit it.
So I booted up the Arch Install CD, and thought I would try the Change Root method detailed in the wiki, but realised that I didn't know how to mount the LVM filesystem, because root was contained there.
The volume group I had was absent from /dev/mapper and /dev, and the only reference I seemed to be able to find was /dev/sda2, which was listed as 'Linux LVM' under fdisk -l. I tried loading the dm-mod module with modprobe then mounting sda2, but it didn't work.
Fortunately, I had my /boot partition on a separate partition (i.e. sda1) as recommended by the wiki, so I could mount it and fix the problem anyway.
However, I need to fix this problem with KMS somehow in the future, which may require editing files outside of /boot and it may need me to know how to mount the LVM filesystem and chroot to it, so how do I do that with the Arch Installer?
Last edited by louis058 (2012-04-14 10:24:13)

jasonwryan wrote:
vgchange --available y $volgroupname
man vgchange wrote: -a, --available [e|l]{y|n}
Controls the availability of the logical volumes in the volume group for input/output. In other words,
makes the logical volumes known/unknown to the kernel.
Wow, thank you. I did look at 'man lvm', but I guess I wasn't looking hard enough. I'll go test it out right away.

Larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

I've uploaded a testing repository for larch-4 to:
ftp://archie.dotsrc.org/projects/archie/larch/testing
It has some added features which need testing - especially with USB, which is difficult for me to test because my computers are rather old and don't support USB boot.
It should now be possible to adjust the session-saving behaviour without modifying the larch scripts - additional scripts (hooks / event-handlers, call them what you will ...) can be placed in a 'scripts' folder in the root directory of the boot device (using the profile mechanism) to adjust loading and saving of overlay files. Initial description (sorry, it's still rather sketchy) in the session-saving doc page.
The home directory is now a separate sqf (not overlayed).
Added options to mklarch to build a CD/USB-stick from an existing Arch installation. This can be done, for example, from a live CD (using the -x option) or even from the system itself while it is running (option -X). This could be rather dangerous - don't do it on your main installation. I've tried it out - without obvious damage - on a test installation, and it looked quite promising, but be careful.
Added option -r to mklarch to ensure regeneration of base and system sqfs when 'reusing' an installation (with options -b, -x, -X).
Changed the place where the live CD is built (default /home/larchroot) and the structure within this folder. The installation is now made directly to this location and the building is done in subfolder .larch, where the final iso also lands.
To use it, just copy the larch-setup.sh script to an empty folder and run it (as before). Then you have the new mklarch set up and ready to go.
Feedback welcome.

spookykid wrote:
Hi gradgrind, this tool is really what I'm looking for. I have 3 partitions: /dev/sda1 -> swap; /dev/sda2 -> reiserfs (partition where my system is installed); /dev/sda3 -> reiserfs (partition where I'm running mklarch script). I want to try larch but I have a few questions.
1) To create a LiveCD from my current arch setup I only need to run
./mklarch -X
If you're running the system you want to save, yes. But from your description it sounds like you're doing something else. Do I understand correctly that you have some other system unrelated to sda2 on sda3 and you want to run mklarch from sda3? And what you want to livify is sda2? Then you need to do something like:
# mount -o dev,exec /dev/sda2 /mnt/sda2
# ./mklarch -x /mnt/sda2
Note the small 'x'.
spookykid wrote:2) Is it possible to add gensplash to larch?
Sorry, I have no idea about gensplash. If it's supported by Arch then it should work with larch too, but it's not something in which I have any interest.
spookykid wrote:3) For what I've read about larch I can have a system installed with 4 GB and that will fit on a 700 MB CD?
I hope I didn't write that. You might need that much free space to build a 700MB CD, but a more accurate estimate of what fits would be about 2GB. If you want more you'll need correspondingly more free space and a DVD or a large USB-stick.
spookykid wrote:4) Larch will only go for my /dev/sda2 partition (where i have my system) or will it add all available partitions to the live image?
It just packs up what it finds at the mount point, so if you've got other stuff mounted within the system (I guess in your case you probably haven't) don't be surprised if it tries to pack that up too. I think (I hope!) it ignores stuff mounted within /mnt and /media, but I'd have to look at the code again to be sure. For people who have /home or /var or whatever on separate partitions it is necessary to mount these before running mklarch.
If you use 'mklarch -X' (big 'X') to build a live CD from the currently running system, all the mounts should be ok anyway, but I think that in general building from a separate system, as you seem to want to do might be slightly safer.
In any case, please back up anything important before running mklarch - just in case! It runs as root and could do all sorts of nasty things. I don't think it will, but don't blame me if it feeds your grandmother to the ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal

Arch, Arch installer and Sda/Sdb confusion

I have been attemping to install Arch and get kdemod up and running and I have been running into some issues.
Because of this, I have been reinstalling it quite a few times to get it to work.
My first main issue is this:
I have 3 physical hard drives in my computer.
A 1TB Sata drive
A 250GB IDe drive
A 80GB Sata drive.
For some reason, 75% of the time, when I boot from the Arch Installer cd, it detects my 1TB sata drive as Sda and the 250GB ide drive as Sdb
the other 25% of the time it detects the 250GB drive as Sda and the 1TB as Sdb
When it detects it as Sda, I am able to usually boot into Arch after it's installed.
When it detects it as Sdb, it will "sometimes" boot into arch.
The rest of the time, it seems to change it's mind and think that the 1TB drive is once again Sda and the 250GB ide drive is Sdb, which confuses the boot loader (I think)
Thanks in advance for any help

I'm not sure as to why is "randomly"detecting the drives wrong ... having said that this is what I would do if confronted with that situation.
1. Disable in my BIOS the two small drivers.
2. Install Arch in the 1TB HDD ( I assume that's what you really want)
3. Once Arch is properly installed (you of courses reboot the machine to test that ) I would edit my /etc/fstab file and add the other drives. Like
/dev/sdb1 /home ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdb2 /backups ext4 defaults 0 1
and that should give you a consistent and working system.
I hope this helps.
R.
Edit: Just one thing ... in step 3 you have to reboot your system and re-enable in the BIOS the other HDDs you disabled in step 1
Last edited by ralvez (2010-01-02 18:02:26)

A fresh Arch installation - from VirtualBox?

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