Arch is amazing!

I Just wanted to show my appreciation for Arch linux and the strong community behind it. I have been a Slackware user for a very long time because I wanted a system that could be customized to my personal needs. However I recently ran across Arch linux & decided to give it a try; and i must say, I am VERY impressed!
impressed enough to convert from Slackware altogether! Over the years I have probably tried hundreds of distros, each with there own quirks and pre-packaged options. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that, but for an advanced user it can feel like being trapped in a box.
Arch linux is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest versions of Linux it has ever been my pleasure to use!:cool:

Arch is my weapon of choice.
I was so happy when I found it.
It's odd.. there are so few OS's that let you do what you want to do with your hardware.
I mean.. Technically any linux can be customised, but for some reason when I start mucking around with other distros the way I tend to they tend to get unstable. But because with arch you get things pretty much "out of the box" you can tweak and things don't break. Its like getting one of those Tomika cars. You know the moulded plastic ones with the little electric motors. All the important parts are there, but they are in pieces. And if you know what your doing, you can change the way it goes together.
Im ranting now.. but damn it.. It's just that amazing!

Similar Messages

RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

Good day everyone,
This is a request for opinions from the Arch community, especially the Arch developers, Trusted Users, and long time users. I am writing a review about Arch Linux which I hope to publish within the next month or so. Unlike most distro reviews, which are actually distro installation reviews, I have devoted a lot of space to The Arch Way, unique technical qualities of Arch, day to day use and maintenance of Arch, and the Arch community. In my view, the community of a distro is much more important than its installation process.
If I may, I would like to pose some questions about the Arch community. FWIW, I have been quietly participating in the Arch community myself for some months now, contributing material to the wiki. Anyway, please take a look at the queries below, and comment on any as you see fit.
Thank you,
Luke Seubert
1. Despite its modest size, Arch has a very enthusiastic community, as evidenced by its internationalization projects, derivative distros, 3rd party repositories, Arch schwag, active forums and wiki, etc. Is this statement true or false, and if Arch does have an especially enthusiastic community, why?
2. Arch is deeply conservative, refusing to deviate from core principles. Still, within these bounds, Arch permits a wide array of innovation. Are these statements true or false, and why? If true, what are the pros and cons of such conservatism? If false, in what way has Arch deviated from its core principles or resisted innovation?
3. The Arch community is fairly harmonious, with little bickering, flamewars, forks or threats to fork, etc. Is this statement true or false, and why? (I have my own theory on the why of this one, and the answer in brief is... dogfood.)
4. How good or bad a job is Arch doing in cultivating new Trusted Users and Arch developers? Does it have a formal mentoring process? It seems the most direct path to TU status is to put together packages in AUR, and eventually have them voted into Community based upon quality and popularity. However, at some point, virtually all of the popular packages will already be in Community or Extra. How does an AUR uploader become a Trusted User then?
5. Hypothetical Scenario:
The Chakra Project successfully completes in alpha, beta, and release candidate Live CD testing, and releases its Live CD - version 1.0 - with the GUI easy Tribe installer, to wide acclaim - DistroWatch even raves about it. Suddenly, there are lots of new Arch users, who never went through the traditional Arch install process, who never "paid their Arch dues", and who are not nearly as clueful because they never RTFW. They are flooding IRC and webforums with really, uh, "basic" questions, and suggesting/demanding new features. How does the Arch community handle this abrupt change in its culture? Has it dealt with such culture shocks before?
6. If only you too could lift cars over your head, would you be more cool, less cool, or as cool as Phrakture, and why? What if you could only lift cars over your head after eating a can of spinach and slamming a six pack of Red Bull? Then how cool/not cool would you be by comparison?
Last edited by lseubert (2009-08-08 13:45:07)

Allan wrote:
Here are my opinions on these questions and do not necessarily reflect other Arch devs...
1. True. I believe part of the enthusiastic community comes from the fact that Arch requires you to set up your system for yourself. So people become very proud of their achievement of getting their system setup exactly as they like it.
This is an excellent point. There is a nice sense of pride that comes from tweaking your Arch install to just the way you like it. And it is an involved process requiring some modicum of skill.
Also, people have always been encouraged to contribute fixes or start projects to fulfill areas they see lacking. Seeing your work become used by many others is always a good feeling.
Yeah, I have noted this in my rough draft. Arch has amazingly low barriers to entry. Sign up for an AUR account, which is quick and automatic, and get to work. Your status and authority is derived from a roughly consensual meritocracy, as opposed to a hierarchical, bureaucratic process full of gatekeepers, aka potential gateclosers, like most distros.
This simplicity extends to our package manager, which I believe is a major factor in making the AUR as popular as it is. (Note that while pacman is developed primarily by Arch users, it aims not to be tied to any distro).
Allan, could you clarify this comment? How does pacman make AUR popular? While I use pacman to access binaries from core, extra, and community; I use yaourt to handle PKGBUILDs from AUR. I don't quite follow you on this one.
But as always, the principles guiding Arch do get bent when it is sensible to do so. It was always said we don't split packages like many other distros, but we do some splitting these days (e.g. gcc-libs, KDE). We now include info pages and other docs.
Both of which are good moves. A system should have documentation built in, for those occasions when internet access is down. And I might actually take a look at KDE 4 once again, now that I wouldn't have to download a pile of unwanted packages.
3. There are flame-wars every so often... The last one that was probably quite obvious to many was changing rules governing the community repo (requiring votes or 1% usage as defined by pkgstats) and the move to using the official db-scripts (which may be seen as making the TUs less independent).
That is a flamewar that I missed. How does Arch resolve difficult issues? There is no Constitution that I could find, nor any formal governing structure. Is it as simple as lengthy debate, and then Dred Overlord Phrakture decrees?
I have never heard of a treat to fork the distro or components of it. I guess that is because of the attitude of show us a working implementation of a good idea and it will possibly become official.
Well, there aren't forks, but there are a lot of derivative distros, some of them with very different goals. And there are a lot of 3rd party repositories out there, outside of AUR. I wouldn't call that forking, but it is, I guess, extending. I think such experimentation is a good thing - really good ideas might be developed outside of even AUR, and eventually brought back into the Arch ecosystem. I believe some of Xyne's packages got started that way, yes?
Here is an interesting factoid I came up with in my research:
Packages Per Maintainer Ratio - how many packages on average does a maintainer support?
For Debian, the P/M Ratio is 28
When you add up all the Arch Devs and TUs, and divide out the packages in core, extra, and community, the Arch P/M Ratio is 67.
Arch devs seem quite impressive, until you recall that they mostly maintain one version of each package and for only two architectures, whereas Debian devs support 11 architectures for 5 versions - experimental, unstable, testing, current stable, and old stable. (Ugh - is that brutal or what?)
Seen in that light, one has to admire the very hardworking Debian devs, and wonder a bit about those Arch dev slackers. Yet another T-shirt idea! Change the first idea so it now reads, "I'm a slacker Arch developer, and I eat my own dogfood!"

Everynow and then, my touchpad doesn't work in OpenBox.

It's really annoying. Arch runs amazingly well, but every now and then, my touchpad stops working. The mouse is still there, and I can move it, but mouse clicks (using the physical buttons, aswell as touchpad taps) just don't register. I've tried opening a terminal and restarting HAL when this happens, but it doesn't help.
Any ideas?

Thank you for the advice. I've just checked my Xorg.0.log as its just happened, and I've seen this.
Xorg.0.log wrote:
[mi] EQ overflowing. The server is probably stuck in an infinite loop.
Backtrace:
0: /usr/bin/X (xorg_backtrace+0x3b) [0x80f73fb]
1: /usr/bin/X (mieqEnqueue+0x1ab) [0x80f15cb]
2: /usr/bin/X (xf86PostButtonEventP+0xcf) [0x80cbe8f]
3: /usr/bin/X (xf86PostButtonEvent+0x6c) [0x80cbf3c]
4: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so (0xb710d000+0x3501) [0xb7110501]
5: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so (0xb710d000+0x57ad) [0xb71127ad]
6: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x6d86f) [0x80b586f]
7: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x12269c) [0x816a69c]
8: (vdso) (__kernel_rt_sigreturn+0x0) [0xb785040c]
9: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x26f2d) [0x806ef2d]
10: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0xef19d) [0x813719d]
11: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0xf3e18) [0x813be18]
12: /usr/bin/X (mieqProcessDeviceEvent+0x1b4) [0x80f11c4]
13: /usr/bin/X (mieqProcessInputEvents+0xf0) [0x80f12d0]
14: /usr/bin/X (ProcessInputEvents+0x17) [0x80b5a97]
15: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x3b2b0) [0x80832b0]
16: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x1a685) [0x8062685]
17: /lib/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xe6) [0xb7488b86]
18: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x1a271) [0x8062271]
[mi] EQ overflowing. The server is probably stuck in an infinite loop.
This then repeats down the log.
However, right now I cannot close windows, or interact with task on PyPanel with my touchpad, but can use it within the firefox window. Any ideas on what could be wrong?
Last edited by pritchard92 (2009-12-09 21:19:06)

Not found in sync db

This is a great forum, and lots of responses are quick which is awesome. Not to mention Arch is amazing.
I'm trying to install Amarok, so as root I'm pacman -S amarok, which returns with this
root@tuxzilla tux #pacman -S amarok
amarok: not found in sync db
Not sure what is going wrong here, maybe I don't have pacman configured properly, any help would be great.

tuxzilla22 wrote:Uh oh, is there a terminal to get that will allow copy and pasting, or control c'ing, sorry if this is a bit noobish'
Use Ctrl+Insert, Shift+Insert. Which will work in windows too.
Alternatively you can select the text, then press the middle button/mouse wheel to paste.
And its amarok-base if you havent got it working yet...
EDIT: beaten to it

Pm-utiles problems along with some little things

I just install Arch Linux into my Toshiba Portege M100 Laptop. I get pretty much everything working, even the FN key. And Arch runs amazingly fast on this old machine.
However, I do encounter two problems. One of them is the suspend/hibernate problem. My laptop seem able to do both, however, it can not come back to my desktop. It seems like stop after they load everything back, and give me a black screen. There is nothing I can do but hold the power buttom to restart my computer.
The second problem is the gnome network-manager applet. I use it with xfce, but whenever I do a save session for futrue logins, the next time I logins in there is two of them, and the next next time I login there is like 3. and so furth. here is what I set for my autostart command with with Autostart applications under setting. "nm-applet --sm-disable"
This is not really a problem, but it kind of bothers me, and it is the action button applet. After I install a the arch linux Icon set, it becomes a little green man(I dislike that icon so much, haha) I would like it change back to the normal power button icon. which to me looks much nice. And for something even I change Icon set for the theme, it doesn't effect that action button applet.
At last, if you have any good suggestion that I make the laptop installation better, please let me know.
Thank you so much

For the problems hibernating/suspending, you'll probably have to specify a "quirk" with the suspend command. Read the pm-suspend docs and google "pm-suspend quirks". You may be able to find someone else's report of successfully using the same laptop with quirk such-and-such. Else it will take some trial and error to see what works.
For your second question: I think you're giving the right command in autostart. (Possible there should be a "&" at the end of it, but I don't think that's necessary.) You've got some problem with your saved session. To flush everything out, here's what I'd do. Completely uninstall network-manager. Log out, and log back in. Log out, saying don't save session. Log back in, Log out, saying save session. Log in and re-install network-manager. Now log out saving session again. Now test to see if your problem is fixed.
I bet that some of the steps I just described aren't necessary, but I'm not sure which ones.
Last edited by Profjim (2008-08-30 05:29:06)

A little problem with Gnome's GDM....

Hello,
I finally have my Archlinux up and running, most problems are solved so far. I'm not extremely new to linux, since I also run Fedora.
Currently, it isn't really a problem, but I would like to find out why it's failing anyway. (I think It's the GDM because I had seen a part of the message, saying gdm_binary)
I have the network manager applet installed, Gnome, and obviouosly the X-server. During boot, where it says if things are started, or starting up, there are some quick fail messages flickering.
Is there a log that those messages are stored in, if so, could you tell me?
Thanks in advance,
Stephen.
PS: So far, Arch is amazing compared to other distros i've tried. I like that fact that you get what you want, and what you need, without the extra packages.
Last edited by Stephengp (2009-10-20 04:50:42)

You can edit your /etc/rc.local to allow you to read the boot messages - that should help you diagnose the issue:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pos … ot_Process
/edit
...and, obviously, welcome to the forums.
Last edited by jasonwryan (2009-10-20 04:55:32)

Why I always have to go back to Arch?

Hi there!
A little story about me. I discovered Linux a long ago (6-7 years ago) while I was interested in computer security and hacking, and got a hint the 1337s uses Linux (or any other unix based system), so I decided to try it (I choose for Linux because it was the most popular *nix based system atm).
My romance with Linux started with Mandrake (today Mandriva) and included distributions like Red hat (it wasn't enterprise oriented that time and AFAIK there were no Fedora yet), and the lovely Gentoo. Its funny tough, Ubuntu wasn't that popular at the time (I even remember how I was on an open lecture in University about open source and Linux, and I got a free CD of Ubuntu and no body heard about it before )
Anyway its stopped there for few years and I got back to Linux about 2 years ago, with Ubuntu on my desktop machine.
My nature is to discover and be different. If everybody uses Ubuntu, I must use something else (even now, I'm on Xubuntu).
This nature lead me to replace Ubuntu with Arch. This was the first time I encountered a very similar distribution to Gentoo, that were optimized to i686 and did not require you to compile every package (for instance I installed Gentoo like 2-3 times from scratch [those were beautiful Friday evenings-nights :romantic-smiley:]) and I remember how compiling Xorg took me hours (and when I say hours I mean hours, something like 6-8 hours).
Then I got back to windows since my old PC died and I got a new one and a laptop.
This leads us to nearly today. Right now I'm using my laptop as my main computer at home and at work (the desktop PC had a motherboard issue that was replaced under warranty. While they were fixing it, I switched to use my laptop).
I started with Ubuntu, simply because it works! But I hated Untiy and I switched to Xubuntu. But you do remember my nature right? This lead me to switching to Arch.
A few days of configurations and I got stable up and running system. Then I came to work and had some issues (especially with keyring) and they blocked me from working, instead I needed to fix them. Then I said "This is it! I need a machine that works!".
I removed Arch, installed Xubuntu and promised my self never to do this pointless Distro_name->Arch->Distro_name path, because well, it ends the same way always.
But you do remember my nature right? So right now I'm standing in front of a decision whether to go back to Arch or not. I must say I really like the rolling release scheme, I'm in love with pacman (its a lot more superior than apt-get or yum IMHO), I like the way you can customize Arch.
But Archs customization is also its weak point, you have to devote hours or reading and configuring to get a stable and running system. And sometimes (especially if you use your laptop for work or for studies or both) you need to have a running system and you don't want to mess with cups just because its 2 A.M. and you need to print your project to submit it in 5 hours (yes you must take care of it at a lot earlier point than 5 hours before deadline )
Ubuntu is nice, but its bloated. It doesn't even give you the option to select what packages you want to install (unlike Fedora for example). Its comes with (IMHO) stupid meta packages like ubuntu-desktop, xubuntu-desktop so its nearly impossible to try gnome3, xfce, openbox on the same system without breaking something.
Ubuntu simply works, but as soon as you need something deeper, you are screwed.
I don't really ask sort of a question here, but I know many of you use Arch (I'm on bbs.archlinux.org doh -.-' ) as your everyday system, so I would like to know how do you handle its configuration, what you do when something breaks and you don't have the time to fix it (you are at work, hitting the deadline of your university project or whatever). Maybe you will be able to convince me why I always want to get back to Arch and what I need to do to choose it as my the one and only distribution. Maybe you will be able to suggest me another distro that fits my needs. Or maybe you want to tell me how sucky I'm.
So simply go on and post, this is why I created this topic.
Thanks you for your time

skwo wrote:
Hi there!
A little story about me. I discovered Linux a long ago (6-7 years ago) while I was interested in computer security and hacking, and got a hint the 1337s uses Linux (or any other unix based system), so I decided to try it (I choose for Linux because it was the most popular *nix based system atm).
My romance with Linux started with Mandrake (today Mandriva) and included distributions like Red hat (it wasn't enterprise oriented that time and AFAIK there were no Fedora yet), and the lovely Gentoo. Its funny tough, Ubuntu wasn't that popular at the time (I even remember how I was on an open lecture in University about open source and Linux, and I got a free CD of Ubuntu and no body heard about it before )
Anyway its stopped there for few years and I got back to Linux about 2 years ago, with Ubuntu on my desktop machine.
My nature is to discover and be different. If everybody uses Ubuntu, I must use something else (even now, I'm on Xubuntu).
This nature lead me to replace Ubuntu with Arch. This was the first time I encountered a very similar distribution to Gentoo, that were optimized to i686 and did not require you to compile every package (for instance I installed Gentoo like 2-3 times from scratch [those were beautiful Friday evenings-nights :romantic-smiley:]) and I remember how compiling Xorg took me hours (and when I say hours I mean hours, something like 6-8 hours).
Then I got back to windows since my old PC died and I got a new one and a laptop.
This leads us to nearly today. Right now I'm using my laptop as my main computer at home and at work (the desktop PC had a motherboard issue that was replaced under warranty. While they were fixing it, I switched to use my laptop).
I started with Ubuntu, simply because it works! But I hated Untiy and I switched to Xubuntu. But you do remember my nature right? This lead me to switching to Arch.
A few days of configurations and I got stable up and running system. Then I came to work and had some issues (especially with keyring) and they blocked me from working, instead I needed to fix them. Then I said "This is it! I need a machine that works!".
I removed Arch, installed Xubuntu and promised my self never to do this pointless Distro_name->Arch->Distro_name path, because well, it ends the same way always.
But you do remember my nature right? So right now I'm standing in front of a decision whether to go back to Arch or not. I must say I really like the rolling release scheme, I'm in love with pacman (its a lot more superior than apt-get or yum IMHO), I like the way you can customize Arch.
tl;dr
But Archs customization is also its weak point, you have to devote hours or reading and configuring to get a stable and running system. And sometimes (especially if you use your laptop for work or for studies or both) you need to have a running system and you don't want to mess with cups just because its 2 A.M. and you need to print your project to submit it in 5 hours (yes you must take care of it at a lot earlier point than 5 hours before deadline )
That is the strong point. Arch's customisation allows me to use it on the craptop and on the desktop. I prefer to see it as an investment of time to get a system I want instead of one a developer thinks I want (don't get me wrong open source devs do an amazing job!)
Ubuntu is nice, but its bloated. It doesn't even give you the option to select what packages you want to install (unlike Fedora for example). Its comes with (IMHO) stupid meta packages like ubuntu-desktop, xubuntu-desktop so its nearly impossible to try gnome3, xfce, openbox on the same system without breaking something.
Ubuntu simply works, but as soon as you need something deeper, you are screwed.
Bloat is the price you pay to have a distro that works out of the box.
I don't really ask sort of a question here, but I know many of you use Arch (I'm on bbs.archlinux.org doh -.-' ) as your everyday system, so I would like to know how do you handle its configuration, what you do when something breaks and you don't have the time to fix it (you are at work, hitting the deadline of your university project or whatever). Maybe you will be able to convince me why I always want to get back to Arch and what I need to do to choose it as my the one and only distribution. Maybe you will be able to suggest me another distro that fits my needs. Or maybe you want to tell me how sucky I'm.
So simply go on and post, this is why I created this topic.
Thanks you for your time
My arch setup is relatively simple, I set cron jobs to back up files with rsync and keep important config files backed up too. I am lucky by the fact I have a laptop I can use if the desktop breaks and vice versa but the sensible solution is to upgrade after work is done.
I keep coming back to arch because of pacman and the AUR. No package manager comes close.

Very Very long ping time, only on arch, and preload doesn't work

Arch is the most amazing Linux system I have ever used. I get like a 30 second boot time from start to finish, i'm just wowed.
I am using arch64, and have only 2 problems!
1. I have like a 32ms ping, for any site, toooo big. I have a 3com NIC card which Is currently being used as eth1, and an nvidia network controller on my board eth0. The nvidia controller doesn't work right, so i am using the 3com, with a huge ping time
2. preload isn't working. I have 3gb of RAM, and AMAZINGLY only 400mb of RAM is being used, with 9 tabs in firefox open, compiz-fusion, gnome desktop. DAMN! I want more RAM being used, what is wrong with this?? (the problem is that things start up a little slow, so it must mean it is not staying in the RAM)
Please tell me what I can do to fix these problems!
EDIT: Could it have something to do with the groups I am in, or the preload.conf settings, or the rc.conf file?
Last edited by savagenator (2008-03-19 23:27:03)

I saw your latency thingy... though that aint so bad
PING fk-in-f147.google.com (209.85.129.147) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from fk-in-f147.google.com (209.85.129.147): icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=146 ms
Pinging from norway to... wherever that node is.
and compare that to a norwegian host
PING www.sau.no (194.63.248.23) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from web.domeneshop.no (194.63.248.23): icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=86.6 ms
all in all, you should not be so annoyed unless your used to sub 10 ms ofc.. but this is still very quick for a webhost, atleast i think so.

How do I setup my system to look like the other Arch user's?

I just finished installing Arch on my EeePC 100HA and I'm looking how to setup my system like other users have in their screenshots located here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=75154 . This one in particular: http://fc09.deviantart.com/fs45/f/2009/ … _haxit.png
I see that he's using some type of window manager like xmonad or openbox, but I can't really tell. He has links to all of his configuration files but I don't know where to paste them on my system. When I look at those config files, I get scared to even attempt this, but I really want a system as slick as that one, or like any of the amazing customized Arch systems I've seen around here.
Last edited by jwmollman (2009-07-02 06:44:18)

jwmollman wrote:
I just finished installing Arch on my EeePC 100HA and I'm looking how to setup my system like other users have in their screenshots located here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=75154. This one in particular: http://fc09.deviantart.com/fs45/f/2009/ … _haxit.png.
I see that he's using some type of window manager like xmonad or openbox, but I can't really tell. He has links to all of his configuration files but I don't know where to paste them on my system. When I look at those config files, I get scared to even attempt this, but I really want a system as slick as that one, or like any of the amazing customized Arch systems I've seen around here.
Remove the period from your 2nd URL. Else it won't work.
I see he is just using a conky and openbox[I guess] O_o

Going to install a PC with Arch in my car!

In my Miata, the center console has a single hole that usually holds a standard-sized radio and a junk holder. When you take them both out, walla, the perfect size and place for a touchscreen! So I'm going to put a display right on my console and install a computer in my trunk. So here's how it's gonna go.
I'm buying speakers right now, a pair of Infinity 6020cs's. I'm psyched because I didn't even know that sound quality could be this high with a brand name this reputable with a price this low! AMAZING sound! They come as a speaker/tweeder set with a crossover and I found it online for $70 (as compared to Best Buy's $191). Anyway, speakers. I'm also going to have a 12" Rockford Fosgate HE2 subwoofer in the trunk, housed by a box I'm going to build. If I don't build a custom box that works around every corner I can, I won't be able to hold the things I would usually be able to fit in my trunk anymore, you know, like a box of pencils, a t-shirt, a pack of CD-Rs (but that's pushing it). But not at the same time. You know. It's a Miata.
Sorry, I'm excited. Point in saying this: I'm going to buy an M-Audio sound card for crisp audio and I want to use software EQs for everything. Actually, if I can, I would love to skip the crossover the 6020cs's come with altogether, and since there are only two door speakers in a Miata, run the tweeders off the third and fourth channels of an amp. This way, I can EQ out the lows to my sub, EQ the mids to my 6 1/2"s, and EQ the extreme highs to my tweeders. So it would be a five-channel system, cause the sub would be mono. Is there a way I can tune my sound like this directly with ALSA? I would really like all my sound to be tuned the way I want it to without relying on a single piece of software, for example, the VLC equalizer. I want to hear my audio EQed out the same all the time regardless of using VLC or if I popped open firefox and watched a YouTube video. How can I do this?
My plan for power management would go like this. Okay, so I start my car. My computer comes out of hibernate and resumes any audio or what not that was going on. Then I park it and get out. My computer will still be running for about 10 minutes with the music automatically paused. After 10 minutes, it'll go inter hibernate again, but if I hop in my car and start it, it'll resume the audio's playback. The audio equipment will be turned off via the +12V accessory wire from my ignition, so only my computer will be running at this point. Hell, I could even have the display turn off too. But this brings me to a question. Is there some software I could use that would run commands based of inputs from a serial port or something? For example, the accessory lead drops the +12V signal, now I want it to wait 10 minutes. I could run the +12V into a relay that trips pins on a serial port and x software could run a script that waits for ten minutes, and when the relay is activated again, a script executes that kills that script. Or maybe even the other way around where the software would trip relays through the serial port, you know, to turn the sub on and off or something of that nature. Does something like this exist?
My idea for HID is to utilize bluetooth. I want to keep a portable keyboard (and mouse too, sometimes a touchscreen doesn't do what you want) in my glove box. I don't want to use any console space for a keyboard. Although, it would be very nice to have an on-screen keyboard when I need to do something quickly. As for volume, track skip, etc, I'm going to use a touchscreen with buttons on the frame that'll respond to doing things like a stereo would. I really don't want to have to fidget with software while I'm driving. The screen will probably be very similar to this one. I'm still deciding on brands. Have any of you guys put a display in your car and have one to recommend? I'm worried about buying a display without actually seeing it. I don't want something that won't go dimmer than blindingly bright or something where the color looks like junk. I'll look more on mp3car.com for this too.
I'm going to be able to stay online with my car too. I plan on tethering my computer to my cell phone - it has 3G and the data moves pretty quick. At home, I want to set up a file server that I can stream my music archive from (and download from when I know I'm going out-of-range). I'll also have a wifi card in my car so when I park it in my driveway, I can get on my computer and administrate the PC. I'm also fooling around with the idea of the computer acting as a remote-start and a security system, but that's for later.
So blah blah blah ... is there any good music player software that would work good in a car like this? What would you recommend for a GPS solution?
Ongoing project cost (as of December 15, 2008):
$85 - Intel D945GCLF2
$13 - Kingston KVR667D2N5/512 (512MB DDR2 RAM)
Total: $98
Last edited by synthead (2008-12-15 10:10:30)

rson451 wrote:You should list prices as you go along so we can see how much damage you're doing to yourself
Good idea! I'll start a list on my first post.
mrunion wrote:
Your Miata already has one battery in the trunk -- and it's vented to the outside. Another back there would be no problem. Just buy another of the same kind and use a 'T' type connector to merge the vent tubes. Secure the thing down good. As for the "PC", some people remove the carpet from the deck behind the seats and under there there is a little "well" area. They stick the thing in there. Try hitting miata.net and searching the forum and you may find the post about the guy who did it. Might save you some effort and R&D.
Yes, I have a Miata as well....My "toy" is a 2002 SE Blazing Yellow. Only a 1000 of these things driving around!
You have a yellow one That's killer, those are really rare! Is it in good shape? I love Miatas, they're so much fun and stupid cheap to own
The battery in my car is strapped to the chassis with a rope. I don't have the factory battery mount. I was going to weld one together soon though, but now that you mention vents, I'm curious. How exactly is it fitted? Time to Google ...
jerryluc wrote:
When I read about this project yesterday I remembered having read about a guy doing the same.
I found the story, but it's in Norwegian so it's probably not so interesting for most of you. Anyways:
http://linux1.no/blogg/noja/3532/linux-i-bilen
The guy has put Arch in his car as a music server, touch screen and all...
If someone(Synthead specially) is really interested i could try to translate it, but I'm not that good in English -
Maybe someone who speak Norwegian and speak English a little better then me can do it?
Niiiice, and he used MythTV! That's brilliant! I installed it on my car PC in progress and I'm working on it Awesome, thank you!
Ranguvar wrote:
The Atom 330 is a dual-core with HT, sorry!
Really sweet project, though. Good luck!
As for SSDs, the crazy-pricey Intel ones may be worth waiting a little for... 80GB+ with _real_ 250Mb/s speeds! They smoke everything else. Do a lot of research here though, because some SSDs are really wretched. Also remember that SDHCs are extremely cheap and offer tons of storage, so a small and fast main SSD may be a good choice.
I kneeeeew there was a catch. That's okay, I'll still have a dual 1.6 Ghz CD player And regarding combining storage types, that is an excellent idea. I'm definitely going that route. I would love to use an SD card or a CF card as storage and a smaller SSD for the OS. That's perfect. Thank you!
Some good success so far ... just building up the OS at home until I can find a good screen, solid state disk, and power supply to use I started a thread about xorg locking up and it turns out it was because of the new hald integration. I LOVE the idea of combining hald and xorg! But anyway, my GUI is up and running and it's setup the way I like as a desktop. When I migrate the carputer into my car, I'll tweak things around so it'll be practical to use with a touchscreen.
Right now, I'm connected to the internet using Tetherbot with my Google Android phone and it works great. So that takes care of the internet. I have a bluetooth receiver and a GPS system that acts as a dongle when attached (will replace with a standalone GPS module later). I'm tinkering with these.
Later on, I'm going to go to Goodwill, grab a multimedia keyboard, and gut it. There's a removable ashtray next to the stickshift in my car, so I'm going to use this area to install a touchpad and the hacked up keyboard controls for the PC. I will go to TAP Plastics and have them fabricate something nice that'll drop right in. I'm going to source out buttons that look like arrows and the like to have designated buttons for skip, play, pause, stop, etc. I'm also going to try to find a keyboard with one of those rotary volume controls and use it. Nothing like a little xbindkeys I would really like this to look fancy. Not blue LEDs/carbon fiber/chrome fancy, more like "that guy did a good job" fancy. Although if I could have the buttons lit when the car's parking lights are on, that would be killer.
So at this point, I need to buy these things for only the car PC to work in my car the way I want:
* DC-DC PSU
* 8" Transreflective screen that operates (or can operate) on 12VDC that can go very dim and very bright
* Resistive touchscreen overlay, preferably USB (for when wearing gloves, it's a convertible)
* Solid state disk, doesn't have to be too big or too fast
* Bluetooth keyboard
* USB touchpad
* Goodwill keyboards, fancy switches, TAP fabrication
I'm probably looking at 300-500 more dollars on this end. Throw another ... $300 in for the two-way speakers I want + an amp. My sub and sub amp I have, but I need to build a cabinet. Also, for an M-Audio sound card, I'll probably put aside another $100. And yes, they make an astounding difference in sound quality. I use an M-Audio 1010LT in my home studio with some audiophile headphones and the difference is very obvious
I'll try to take some pics of my car and where I'm going to put things soon.
Last edited by synthead (2008-12-12 07:48:58)

[solved] Can't set up dual boot Arch + Win 7 on separated disks

Hello everybody,
I'm new to this amazing project as I installed Arch just two days ago (and everything works like a charm in linux).
Anyway I have a problem and I'm very sorry to bother you with another question such this, but I tried everything and I accurately read the wiki.
The problem is that I can't manage to create a dual boot in grub with Arch on the first sata disk and Windows 7 on the second disk.
Before trying Arch I used ubuntu 10.10 dual boot with the same Windows 7 on the same secondary disk (the pc is a dell XPS L702X 17' laptop with, of course, dual disk bay) using GRUB2 which was automatically installed during ubuntu installation.
I tried to chainload windows disk in grub using map command to let windows think it's on the primary disk and not on second one.
At start I just had "BOOTMGR missing" error, then I put windows disk as primary removing arch disk and I repaired its bootloader: windows could boot then.
When I substituted disks and tried to boot, Windows 7 loading screen appeared and immediately I had a blue screen of death (or something similar) which anyway disappeared in less than a second (I was not able to read anything from that screen)
Now, when I try to boot windows either with grub or trying to enable boot straight from second hard drive in BIOS, I receive an error stating that it is necessary to use the windows repair disk to fix problems.
My question is: how can I finally fix this situation?
It would be quite important, for me, to not format neither of the disks, and I could even accept to renounce booting windows from grub as it would be ok even changing BIOS priority every time I need to use windows 7.
I really apologize for my annoying question but I really tried everything I could find without success; sorry for my poor english, too.
Anyway, this distribution seems just amazing to me! Thanks for your time.
Luca
Last edited by enigmatichus (2011-12-27 02:05:14)

It worked!!! Actually I don't know what changed, I proceeded removing the first disk (arch) WITHOUT, this time, changing the position of the windows disk. I used windows 7 DVD to repair the second disk. It tooks several attempts since it failed without specifying the problem. Eventually, I was able to boot windows 7, everything worked. Then, I plugged the primary linux hard drive and booted into arch, where I used "grub-install /dev/sda" as root. It executed without errors, but when I checked menu.lst file, surprisingly I discovered that it was not changed at all by grub-install.
Anyway it must have detected windows on /dev/sdb, since I am now able to boot both arch and windows without problems.
It was a weird situation, but anyway it worked well!! Thank you for the support, I really appreciate!
Luca

Dual boot Mac OS X and Arch: Arch installer cannot find CD drive?

Hi, everyone! A friend convinced me to install Arch about a month ago on my desktop and I've loved it so much that I want to dual boot Mac OS X and Arch on my Macbook Pro 7.1.
So I have a Macbook Pro 7.1. I have partitioned the drive in Mac OS X and installed rEFIt. I have the Arch x86_64 disk which I know works because I installed Arch on another computer.
When I boot from CD I get the familiar Arch screen with options "Boot Arch Linux, existing OS... etc." I click boot Arch, and it starts to load. However, it says "Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201005 ... ERROR: boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds... Falling back to interactive prompt. /bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off."
After searching around the forums, some people said they had similar problems attempting to install via USB. I used "cat /proc/scsi/scsi" and my CD drive does not show up in ramfs.. What can I do to install this amazing OS on my MB Pro 7.1?
Thank you for your time!

Solved! sledgehammer and MrE (sorry, I can't spell it) in IRC helped me out. I had to download a newer iso that offers better Mac hardware support. 2010-12 iso

Automated build server for Arch? (like the sourceforge build system)

Has someone considered some kind of automated build system for Arch?
Something that would work like this:
- It'd have every library and dependency possible installed.
- It'd intelligently read the makefiles produced to see what libraries they used and compare them against a lookup table to see what Arch dependencies they then required. Failing that, it could use ldd and a second lookup table that matched libraries to packages.
- It'd attempt to figure out the target binary to run (again, from the makefiles produced), and then run it. If it worked, it'd be marked as usable. If it didn't work, it'd be marked as needing fixing.
All of these points can fail, especially in the parsing of the makefiles; in each case, this would be noted by the system and user action could be taken.
In operation, it wouldn't take away from users managing their own packages. It'd just provide a secure environment to build packages in, and attempt to automate some of the process. In the best cases, the system would theoretically be capable enough to download a package's sourcecode, ./configure it, make it, make a package out of it, get the package verified as usable, then update the repo with it.
Note the verification step in the previous paragraph: I would never want this to be an automated system. Sure, it sound amazing on paper, and might even work for a little while, but sooner or later something would come crashing down and since repo management is quite a trust-based issue, everyone would freak out and they wouldn't want the build server anymore.
-dav7
Last edited by dav7 (2008-10-17 18:41:22)

Who would have access to upload to such a build server? If it's the general public, then this is a security nightmare, as well as a growth curve nightmare. The monetary investment for a project like this would need to come from somewhere.
And yeah, something like this has been considered, and a working proof-of-concept has been sitting around for years. http://projects.archlinux.org/?p=pacbuild.git;a=summary . What this kind of project really needs is someone with some distributed computing smarts and dedication (and time) to get it off the ground in a form that will survive past a proof-of-concept barebones implementation.
One of the largest design challenges would be dependency resolution for batch upgrades. For instance, let's say we update libfoobar, which is depended upon by foo, bar, baz, and batman, the system needs to know that libfoobar needs to be built and installed in order to compile the rest of them against it.

Arch Linux Rocks! A Follow Up

A week and a half ago, I took the plunge and installed Arch 0.7.1 (Noodle). I posted a thread here on that day called "And the Odyssey Begins - First Impressions of Arch Linux".
It is a week and a half later, and I am a confirmed believer. I have retired my previous distro (SuSE 9.3) and use Arch exclusively. Noodle is amazing. It is the FASTEST linux distribution I have ever used: fast in terms of boot time from grub prompt to full desktop and fast in terms of the speed with which applications launch and run. Everything is significantly, noticably faster than it was under SuSE on the same hardware. Truly amazing.
But that is not all. By and large, everything I have tried on Noodle JUST WORKS! All my physical devices JUST WORK, including the usually troublesome ones like my webcam. I have had almost no issues getting everything up and running. I had a brief issue with sound (my fault - didn't add my non root user to group "audio"), but that was it.
...and multimedia - it all JUST WORKS. I can't tell you how much trouble I had to go to in order to get other distros to do basic stuff like play MP3s or MPGs. In Noodle, I installed XMMS, MPlayer and gxine, and all my media JUST WORKS. Again, amazing.
...and then there is package management. Why can't everyone have a package manager that is as simple, fast and effective as pacman? pacman is a real winner! ...not to mention the impressive selection of packages that are available. I have been able to find almost everything I normally use in the repository. The few I haven't been able to find I have been able to build from source easily, without all the usual fussing about.
Arch is the linux I have been looking for. It is fast, stable, capable and supported by a great bunch of folks here in the forums. My hat is off to those who created and maintain this great distro, and to everyone here in the forums. I have found a new home.

Can you expand on that? What does qpkg do?
I had one bad experience with AUR and haven't gotten back to it yet. I followed the instructions I found somewhere (Wiki, forum, somewhere - don't remember any more), dowloaded the package, and attempted to build. My screen flooded with compile errors and I just gave up - I figured that if I had to fight with compile errors, I might as well do it with the good 'ol
./configure, make, make install
route, rather than adding the complexity of a (to me) unknown build system on top of it. So far, I haven't needed to go back. Arch is *so* good (i.e. follows normal standards, everything is where it should be) that pretty much everything I have tried to build from source the usual way has worked like a champ.
I think it was qamix that I was trying to build this way, by the way. Eventually I built it myself from source via the ./configure, make, make install route. There were *lots* of compile errors this way too, but I fixed them all and got it to build. Perhaps the version in AUR was suffering from the same problems.
If qpkg is in AUR, and it sounds interesting, perhaps I will give this a whirl again.
Meantime, to get back on topic for a moment, it is a few weeks later now since my Arch install, and I remain incredibly impressed with it. The best part is the speed. I feel like I've gotten a new CPU that is twice as fast. Arch not only ROCKS, it RACES!

Arch Linux Gallery

I am proud to present the re-opening of the new Arch Linux Gallery!
The Arch Linux Gallery is a site dedicated to screenshots of (guess what?) Arch Linux. It is meant to be a repository for screenshots, configs, artistic creations, and anything else Arch Linux-related.
When registering, zenphoto will provide you with your own personal album to which you can upload images and configs.
The only caveat is that, for now, it only supports .txt for text objects. So when uploading configs, they should be of .txt extension. Extensions need to be added, and I'm not sure of all the extensions that will need to be added, so if you want to request an extension to be added please post here and let me know.
Gallery searching, ie. filtering for only Openbox, is tag-driven, so make sure to tag photos with relevant information. Once some content starts being uploaded I can begin to create some dynamic albums of common content. I also plan to have a dynamic album for each month (like the screenshot threads) but I still need to figure out how to make that possible.
Special thanks to dennizjov who provided the server and domain, Ghost1227 for the wonderful logo, and the zenphoto devs, an amazing piece of software found over at http://www.zenphoto.org/
Here's the link, and have fun!
http://www.archlinuxgallery.com/
Last edited by kagutsuchi713 (2009-10-24 00:47:38)

Is nothing being displayed my fault or the site's fault?
I go to gallery, and it lists some names with question mark looking graphics beside them. Then I click the name, and it comes to a page that looks like I should be expecting to see a picture but has nothing.
Oh, and if I click archive after clicking a name, I see:
Notice: Undefined variable: typeGallery in /home/web29205/domains/archlinuxgallery.com/public_html/themes/arch/archive.php on line 14
Either way though, thanks for picking this up and running with it. It looks like a great idea!

Arch is amazing!

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