Installing Arch on Atom Z3740D tablet/netbook

I am trying to install i686 Arch on a recently bought Atom Z3740D tablet modeled VOYO winpad A6. It's preinstalled with Windows 8.1. Atom Z3740D comes with integrated intel gen7 video card. Besides, it has 64GB emmc internal storage, 2GB DDR3L memory, a rare Realtek 8723BS sdio Wifi/FM/Bluetooth card. Here's my progression:
1. Disable secrue boot. STATUS:DONE. It can be easily disabled in BIOS. Press Esc while booting and disable it under Security->Secure Boot. It won't affect installed Windows system in anyway.
2. Boot Arch on a usb flash drive with UEFI . STATUS:DONE. It could be tricky that while the CPU support 64bit, its UEFI is 32bit only so it can't boot a 64bit kernel using EFIstub directly. 64bit Linux also has a difficult time accessing 32bit UEFI runtime. So I choose to install i686 Arch. I partitioned a usb flash drive to a 128M Fat32 partition and an ext4 partition with remaining space with GPT partition table. I put the kernel and initrd in the Fat32 partition and used UEFI shell to successfully boot into the system.
3. Input devices. STATUS:PARTIAL. The attached keyboard works out of box. Touchscreen, microphone, gravity sensors and camera not tested.
4. Network. STATUS:GARBAGE. As noted before, this tablet has a quite rare Realtek 8723BS sdio Wifi/FM/Bluetooth card. I can't find the driver anywhere and there's even little information about this card on google. If you know where to find the driver, please inform me! I am planning to purchase a usb wifi adapter.
5. Graphics. STATUS:GARBAGE. The kernel module i915 loads and KMS works, however when I tried to start X, X server segfaults. So far I can't test anything 3D related. I don't know how to debug X so I have to see to it later.
So this tablet is not yet Linux-friendly. Any help or advice is welcomed.
Off-topic:
I am quite content with the performance and performance-per-watt of Intel Atoms of this generation. This tablet can run even Dota2!(Of course in Windows. Hopes one day in Linux too)

I have an odys wintab (http://www.amazon.fr/Odys-Tablet-PC-Dis … B00N3VI8Y8) that is similar to the mentioned tablet. After some time, I have finally got a basic archlinux working.
Xorg OK with acceleration.
Wireless works with the driver mentioned by @dhead (ralink 8723bs) but suffer from stability problem and does not work with wpa supplicant (so no WPA, WEP seems to works with problems, unencrypted wifi seems more or less OK).
Backlight setting works
Audio does not work (seen by Windows as Intel SST Audio Device)
Touchscreen does not works.
Cameras do not work.
Micro Sd card reader does not work [Updated] (but I can read the internal emmc)
Buetooth and HDMI untested
What I have done.
To boot make a standalone 32bit EFI grub as mentioned in the wiki together with a simple config file such as:
set default=0
set timeout=3
menuentry Archlinux {
linux ${cmdpath}/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=c2a27b82-072b-4630-a94e-e16ea783a6e6 rw ipv6.disable=1
initrd ${cmdpath}/initramfs-linux.img
I have installed a basic archlinux from a fully working archlinux (on another computer) on a micro SSD card and transferred the microssd card.
We can load a 64 bit kernel (and thus install archlinux64) from the 32 bit efi grub. Then blacklist the i2c_hid module in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf (lots of problems with this module: the tablet automatically turns off after a few minutes, and xorg segfault) and ignore acpi events in /etc/systemd/logind.conf (optherwise the tablet automatically turn off after a few minutes, maybe this is ionly due to the i2c_hid module: see above).
[Update]: Given so many problems; I think that for now running linux in VirtualBox under Windows might be a better solution.
Last edited by olive (2014-12-14 08:35:19)

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Installing Arch on HP 5102

Hey,
I'm interested in installing Arch on my HP 5102 netbook. Howerver as far as I know, gigabit Marvell network adapter is not supported out of box which makes, I guess, installing somewhat more tricky.
What is the easiest way to get either, wired or wireless, adapter working so that the installation could be done?
Thank you

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HP_Mini_5102

Installing Arch on an SD card

I already looked at the beginner's guide etc... I've scoured the forums a bit, and I've probably missed something, I won't mind being corrected after saying I couldn't find anything of much use. I'm putting arch on my netbook but I don't feel like playing with the harddrive which I'd prefer to keep as the default windows installation. Unfortunately the harddrive has 4 partitions on it so in order to use it at all I'll have to get rid of something. Fortunately I have an SD card slot which I can go ahead and use (currently planning on using my 8GB card). From what I understand I should put the /var partition on the harddrive so as to not ruin the card any faster than I have to. I'm not entirely sure what I should do here, it's been a long time since I've had to install Arch, and I've never been good at it. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks again,
--Wes

ewaller wrote:The link provided by lagagnon addresses CF cards on an IDE to CF converter.
As the fellow who wrote the original draft of that link, I can assure that it holds equally valid for SD cards. The only difference is that an SD card needs the mkinitcpio USB hook enabled.
ewaller wrote:I cannot think of any laptop that does boot from internal SD readers.
I can not think of any laptop that does not boot from internal SD. I've only set it up on half a dozen or so, but my success rate as been 100%. Nearly every laptop made in the last seven years can USB/SD boot.
ewaller wrote:This laptop (HP Pavilion DV4 1227) has a SD reader, but will not boot from that reader.
Always research large purchases to death. Punch that laptop's name into google, and the third result is "Don't Buy the HP Pavilion...."
Wesman26 wrote:I'm not entirely sure what I should do here.
Don't worry about /var. I've always had it write to the flash drive. (I also replace my SD/CF cards every year and my hard drives every three.) When you are installing Arch, enable USB booting. That is the only critical step. And follow those direction regarding mount flags, otherwise it will be dog slow.
Right now I am typing this from a computer running entirely from a class 6 micro SDHC card. I can swap it with the µSD card in my MP3 player or camera and boot a completely different OS. Once I start thinking about all the places you can hide a chunk of plastic the size of a fingernail, it is hard not to whistle the "Mission Impossible" theme while using a computer.
In short, running linux from SD cards is easy and fun.
Last edited by keenerd (2010-01-08 14:11:30)

Tutorial on installing Arch on VirtualBox

Hi everyone, this is my first post on forum. I have tried installing ArchLinux on Oracle VM VirtualBox 3 or 4 times, but every time I stumbled into a problem and had to start over since I didn't know how to solve it and googling didn't really help. So, first time i had a problem with X - it wouldn't start at all. After that, I somehow managed to get X up and running, but when I tried installing gnome some wierd errors occured and it wouldn't install, after which X stopped working as well. So, next time I managed to install both X and Gnome, but the problem was that Gnome3 wouldn't run normally, it started in Fallback mode, and it was just ugly, like some kind of Frankenstein made by merging Gnome2 and Gnome3, and it didn't really work well. So, now I'm asking if there is some kind of tutorial that covers all the aspects of installing Arch Linux with some kind of desktop enviroment (I don't really care which one for now, as long as it is explained and it works) but on VirtualBox, since I have noticed that the process of installation isn't actually the same. Any help is appreciated. Oh, and sorry if there are some grammar mistakes, English is my second language.

Proka wrote:
Ok, so I've followed the Begginer's guide on wiki, as well as VirtualBox guide and these are the errors that I'm getting when I try starting X using startx command:
(EE) AIGLX error: vboxvideo does not export required DRI extension
(EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering
(EE) VirtualBox USB Tablet: failed to initialize for relative axes.
Upstream error most likely. If you google you will find quite a bit of information on it.
Last edited by Mr.Elendig (2012-01-15 20:54:08)

Possible to install arch on a system with Broadcom wireless?

My netbook has a broadcom BCM4313 chipset. Kernel module: brcmsmac. The latest arch installer can't properly configure my network and I don't have a wired connection at this location. The system keeps spamming messages like this on the terminal every few seconds:
ieee80211 phy1: wl_ops_bbs_info_changed: qos enabled: false (implement)
ieee80211 phy1: brcmsmac: wl_ops_bss_info_changed: disassociated
ieee80211 phy1: wl_ops_bbs_info_changed: arp filtering: enabled false, count 0 (implement)
Is it even possible to install arch linux on a system with a broadcom chipset? Or is the kernel too old, should I use another module?
Thanks for your help!

treadlefish could you post the wifi info from "lspci -vnn"? Then I can check if we have the same card.
edit, here is mine:
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:1795]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
Memory at f0200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?>
Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel
Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?>
Kernel driver in use: wl
Last edited by Wilco (2012-02-27 22:03:37)

How to install Arch from hard drive?

Hello
I have an old laptop - Pentium II 266 MHz, 128Mb RAM and I want to install Arch on it.
The problem is that there is no way to boot from this laptop -> floppy is broken, CD drive is not bootable, no available boot options from BIOS to boot from PXE or USB.
So, I found this link useful (but not enough).
I have done everything as described on the upper link, but on the final step 7 I don't know how to proceed.
What I have got is:
Arch installation CD is in the CD drive.
After loading vmlinuz26 and archiso.img (which is RAM Disk or initrd) it shows this message: "waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/"
And another message: "ERROR: boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds" and after that it put me in the ramfs prompt.
I try this in ramfs prompt, but without success:
1. ln -s /dev/sr0 /dev/archiso
2. exit (and try again)
What I want is to tell the installer that it must proceed with the installation files on my CD drive.
But how to do that?
If it is not possible, then how could I install Arch on this old laptop? Is there any other methods to try?
PS: There is Windows 2000 and Windows 98 installed on this laptop, but I want to install Arch on it. The whole hard drive is one partition.
Last edited by clovenhoof (2011-08-09 06:49:48)

Try either of the following:
* Add archisolabel=LABEL to the kernel line in menu.lst, where LABEL is the filesystem label of the partition where the ISO resides.
* Add archisodevice=/dev/sdaX to the kernel line in menu.lst, where sdaX should be replaced with the partition where the ISO resides.
[Edit]
Hmmm, sorry I think I was wrong. With the above, you need also extract the ISO, put the arch/ directory at the root of the partition.
Alternatively, you can put the ISO to the root of that partition, and add img_dev=/dev/sdaX and img_loop=foo-bar.iso. For details, see:
https://projects.archlinux.org/archiso.git/tree/README
BUT even if it loads, I don't think you will be able to install Arch on the same partition since it's mounted readonly to /bootmnt, (unless, you explicitly add copytoram to the kernel line, in which case, everything is copied to RAM, but since the machine has got only 128MB of RAM, this is not gonna happen). So, you need to put the ISO (or the extracted squashfs images) to a different partition than your target installation partition...
There probably are other things I'm missing... Gotta say this sounds quite challenging.
[Edit2]
Bah! Try archisodevice=/dev/sr0 then!
Last edited by lolilolicon (2011-08-09 07:48:17)

Installing Arch on Asus Eee, Already Read the Wiki [Solved]

I'm attempting to install Arch on my Asus Eee 701 (4GB SSD model) and I made a mistake that I'm having trouble correcting. First, I accidentally wrote the image to my Eee's SSD, instead of my USB drive. I tried to install Arch with the installer on my SSD, set up the partitions (one for /, one for /boot, and one for /home), but when I issued the command, it told me that the disk was in use. It was then that I realized what I did. I used an Ubuntu LiveCD on another computer to burn the image file again, this time to my USB drive. I booted my Eee from the USB drive and tried to partition my SSD again, but this time, it tells me:
Device or resource busy
This disk is currently in use - repartitioning is probably a bad idea.
Unmount all file systems, and swapoff all swap partitions on this disk.
Use the --no-reread flag to suppress this check.
Use the --force flag to overrule all checks.
When I boot from my SSD, I get the same message, so I'm not even 100% certain that I booted from my USB drive before. My USB drive's activity light was on though.
Is there any way to fix this? Also, given that I have an SSD, what partitions should I set up and how big should they be? I can't find any concrete numbers in the wiki.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Last edited by Tyrian (2008-11-17 04:14:23)

I'll try that, thanks. What would happen if I dismounted the SSD with -f if it was in use?
EDIT: I just realized that when I go into the installer, it lets me set up partitions manually (I run the installer, pick "Prepare Hard Drive", "Partition Hard Drives", "/dev/sda"). But how should I set them up? When I test it by just making one 4GB partition, it tells me, "Wrote partition table, but re-read table failed. Reboot to update table." So I rebooted, and it appears to work. So I deleted that partition, made a 512MB one, rebooted, and repeated until I had 3 partitions in ext2, a 512MB (sda1, bootable), 512MB (sda2), and one roughly 2.5GB (sda3). I then went to "Set Filesystem Mountpoints", said "NONE" for the swap (due to the avoiding pitfalls section of the wiki), picked "/dev/sda1" as "/" in ext2, made "/dev/sda2" as ext2 called "/var", and made "/dev/sda3" in ext2 called "/home", then said "DONE". When I say "Yes" as the confirmation prompt, I get this message:
Error creating filesystem: mke2fs /dev/sda1
I hit enter and get dropped back to the "Prepare Hard Drive" menu. I followed this section of the Beginner's Guide too.
Is there any way to fix this?
Last edited by Tyrian (2008-11-15 18:37:10)

Installing Arch Linux on USB key: error while booting

Hello,
first of all, I must say I've followed the steps from this article on arch wiki to install archlinux on my USB key: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … _a_USB_key
So what I did is to use one of my 2 usb keys to INSTALL linux, and the second one to RUN linux. I used dd to write on the 1st usb, eveything worked fine when booting, then I do install arch on the my second usb following the stept from the link above, everything works until I get this error while booting (at the middle):
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/sdc/
Root device '/dev/sdc' doesn't exist. Attempting to create it.
ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor number of root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/lotsofnumbers'
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
Type 'exit' to try and continue booting
/bin/sh: Can't contact tty; job control turned off
[ramfs /]#
To summarize I'll show you my conf files that could help you to resolve my problem:
/etc/fstab.conf
/dev/sdc1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdc2 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdc3 /home ext3 defaults 0 1
So here I've sdc1 boot 32MB partition; sdc2 root 3GB partition; sdc3 home 978MB partition for a total of 4GB USB key~
I didn't make a swap partition as in the tutorial they are writing it's unnecessary for some kind of reasons.
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
HOOKS="base udev usb autodetect pata scsi sata filesystems"
I've added to here, "usb" to the hooks
installed GRUB on my sdc, here is the menu.ist:
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux (USB)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdc ro vga=773
initrd /kernel26.img
So, I boot GRUB without problems, start Arch Linux, but then I got this error above.
I've searched alot on some forums and read many stuffs, but sitll can't fix it and it seems complicated.
I've tried to boot with UUID, also, but didn't make difference. I tried to remove some parameter from the hooks, but unfortunately this wasn't working still. I've read somewhere to use chroot, but I didn't catch on how to do that and what was the use of chroot, I'm still noob user of arch linux and currently learning. Maybe it's the problem, as some forum were talking about creating a new image, but I still don't know how to make it. By the way, I'm not sure this could have fixed my current problem. I've also read somewhere it could be due to my lack of space, but I wrote you how I did partition my USB key, let me know if you have any suggestion please.

1. What I did is re-installing entirely from my installation disk or USB to test out different setting in my config files, because I don't know how to edit my .conf as I can't really finish to boot to the end and get in terminal mode? If there is a quicker way to edit files from any terminal to go into my current USB sdc to modify directly my file from there, I'd enjoy probably. So rebuilding the initpio, no, I just re-installed to test out different configs.
2. Yes, same error.
3. Tested out by-id/by-path and uuid = no difference
4. Didn't know about larch, it seems to be a nice tool, I'll check it out

Install arch on a virtual machine

I am following a tutorial to install arch linux on my virtual box, oracle.
when it comes to the command mkinitcpio, it gives me an error, command not found.
#arch-chroot /mnt
#mkinitcpio -p linux
sh: mkinitcpio: command not found
I added /sbin to my path, but that had no effect.
could anyone guide me please.

saman_artorious wrote:Yes, it is the UUID, but I don't know how to check it.
I think this is the way to do that-
To list basic information about the partitions, run:
$ lsblk -f
or, if you like a gui, I'm partial to "gparted" where you right click on a partition and then click 'information'
Somewhat off topic, but are there preconfigured appliances for download that are recommended? It would be nice to not have to go through the whole instillation routine.
I found this one, and it seems to be one of the few out there from the systemd era:
Archlinux-2013.08.01.ova.torrent
For the OP, you may consider working backwords. Load up a preinstalled appliance, and remove packages you don't want.
Just thinking out loud.
Last edited by browntown (2014-01-14 15:56:48)

Install arch on a read-only filesystem

Hi to all, I have an idea about installing arch in a particular way, a way that makes the system more secure.
I want to install a host archlinux system on a hard disk or ssd but I want no data can be written to the storage. The host system will have a predefined set of programs and should use a ramdisk to store temporary data. It is something very similar to a ISO.
The real computation will be handled through a series of virtualbox instances of linux ( the virtualbox images will be stored on an external hard disk, a read/write volume ).
How could I achieve this? Through unionfs? AUFS? or some other thing?
Last edited by pabloski (2011-02-16 16:18:11)

I want to mount my sda2 read-only and union it with a tmpfs, so the machine is secure and the file system is the same every boot.
I installed aufs3 with 3.2.6-1-aufs_friendly, I made a hook (as some-guy94 adviced), but it doesn't work.
The code is:
1. mkdir -p /root/ro /root/rw
2. mount /dev/sda2 /root/ro
3. mount -t tmpfs root.rw /root/rw
4. mount -t aufs -o "dirs=/root/rw=rw:/root/ro=ro" root.union /
At 2. it says: "mount: mounting /dev/sda2 on /root/ro failed: No such file or directory" Both files exist - I can list them just before the mount.
3. & 4. work, but it doesn't matter as sda2 gets mounted rw on / right after (by initramfs's init, I gues).
Can you help me with this, or point some useful howtos?
Btw: is there a better way of debugging a hook, other than making the image and rebooting each change?
Update: This is how they did it in larch: http://git.berlios.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cg … cpio/hooks
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /root/ro works now.
I used exec /sbin/switch_root as in larch3 hook and for loop from /lib/initcpio/init:109 to move /proc /dev /sys /run to the new root
So the union mount works just fine now, my sda2/sbin/init & sda2/etc/rc.sysinit run, but the latter fails with following:
* Mounting Root Read-Only - this is actually quite acceptable
* Starting UDev Daemon
* Loading Modules
* Remounting Root Read/Write - acceptable as well
After boot X opens and system freezes immediately (no reaction to keyboard, doesn't ping). No useful information in logs. I don't think system can run well without udev/modules. So this is udev not liking / mounted rw (as tmpfs is rw) or maybe /dev /proc /sys /run fault.
I tried to make union mount only in rc.sysinit when /dev/sda2 is already mounted on /, but mount --move / other-dir fails.
Any ideas what can be wrong?
My code:
run_hook ()
read -p "Union mount root (y/N)? " answer
if [[ "$answer" == "y" ]]; then
modprobe aufs
ro="/root/ro"
rw="/root/rw"
un="/root/un"
rob="${un}/ro"
rwb="${un}/rw"
mkdir -p $ro $rw $un
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 $ro
mount -t tmpfs -o "size=20%" root.rw $rw
mount -t aufs -o "dirs=${rw}=rw:${ro}=ro" root.union $un
mkdir -p $rob $rwb
mount --bind $ro $rob
mount --bind $rw $rwb
mkdir ${un}/media
mkdir ${un}/sys
mkdir ${un}/proc
mkdir ${un}/dev
/bin/mknod ${un}/dev/console c 5 1
echo "rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0" >${un}/etc/mtab
[ -z "${init}" ] && init="/sbin/init"
if [ -e "${un}/${init}" ]; then
mount
read
for d in proc sys dev run; do
if [ -d ${un}/${d} ]; then
mount --move /${d} ${un}/${d}
else
umount /${d}
fi
done
exec /sbin/switch_root -c /dev/console ${un} ${init} ${CMDLINE}
fi
fi
Last edited by kaos (2012-02-22 17:14:18)

Installed Arch on external usb drive: Drive errors after reboot

I installed Arch on my external usb hard drive and everything seemed to be working fine. After rebooting though, I had a bunch of filesytem errors (ext3) and the system was unstable. I am guessing that this has to do with the unloading of the usb modules at shutdown. If this happens to early, then the root drive doesn't have a chance to shutdown properly, hence the filesystem errors.
Anyone know how to solve this?
Thanks!

EtreCheck looks at your log files for any kernel I/O errors. That is what it is reporting. EtreCheck just reports what it finds and tries to avoid judgements exception the most extreme cases. The drive might be OK. I am seeing more reports of this than I would have expected. It may just be a problem with Yosemite. It really prefers SSD disks in all cases. On my own machine, I have seen a slow external drive exhibit classic failure symptoms and sounds when connected via USB2. But then when I switched to FW800, it was fine. Other people are reporting that when they downgraded back to Mavericks, their disk errors went away.
So, I don't have a good answer for you. The drive might be bad, and it might be fine. Yosemite is definitely having problems with it. You may experience performance problems with that drive attached.

Impossible to install arch in UEFI mode on my Acer Aspire S3-391

Hi there,
I am trying to install arch-linux on my Acer Aspire S3-391, which came with a pre-shipped Windows 8. I am trying to make a dual boot, so I would like to keep the UEFI mode at startup. However, my computer won't boot on the Arch Linux USB Flash drive when in UEFI mode : when plugged in, the key prevents the computer from loading anything. The "Acer" page keeps on reloading itself, without even letting me access the BIOS menu (In other words, the computer is blocked at "POST" phase when the installation media of arch is plugged in).
Here's what I did to try and solve the problem :
1) of course, I disabled Secure Boot and hibernation in Windows 8.
2) tried to boot in legacy bios. It works, and i could install arch this way : but as told before, i would like to install it in UEFI mode.
3) Checked, re-checked and re-rechecked the installation media.
4) tried to install Ubuntu in UEFI mode. It worked : the bootable key of Ubuntu was loaded, when the bootable key of arch is blocked. Why ? No idea...
5) Installed Ubuntu, and tried to install Arch in UEFI mode from Ubuntu, following the tutorial "Install_from_Existing_Linux". No luck here : i was blocked at step "Testing if you are booted into UEFI mode" on the beginner's guide : I was not, and I couldn't find any solution in the tutorial.
Any suggestions on what I should try next ?

If you've already installed in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode, my recommendation is to install your EFI-mode boot loader and try it out. You'll need to use something else that does boot (such as Ubuntu), install the boot loader using the Windows bcdedit command (assuming you're dual-booting), or install the boot loader as EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi (if you're setting up for Linux alone) to get it to work, though.

I'm going to install Arch this weekend but I have some questions

Currently I use Linux Mint on my primary PC, but I've installed Arch on my older PC at my parents house. I like it a lot and I think I want a distro that is rolling release and also that I build myself (as opposed to installing all of the bloat on Mint). However, I do have some questions; Linux is pretty new to me (been using it since about November) so I don't know exactly how everything works.
1) How do I know what packages I have to have installed for building C/C++ programs? I know in Ubuntu install gcc/g++ by itself doesn't get the job done, you need build-essential to get all of the libraries. Also, what packages do I need for OpenGL and SDL? I'm a CS major and I'm in an OpenGL class so I need to be able to compile OpenGL programs; SDL is for my own purposes, but I'd still like to have it.
2) I use Amarok to transfer songs to my iPod. Amarok 1.48 and libgpod 0.6.0 are in the repos and I know both of those are compatible with my 6th gen. However, I do have a question about transferring album art. On Mint, Amarok transfers the album art as I transfer the album, but someone told me that Amarok doesn't do that by default; there must have been a setting changed somewhere to do that. I looked through Amarok's options and didn't see anything like that... anyone know if I can do that in Arch, and how? There's no real information about Amarok in the wiki.
3) I'm going to use Gnome environment but some KDE apps (like Amarok). Will there be any problems with that that I should know about in advance?
I'll probably have some more questions once I actually install Arch, but that will do for now Those are the important ones.

1) You know by seeing its dependencies on pacman or by the developer documentation. Unlike other distros, you don't need to install dev packages. Example: You have gcc and all the basic gnu tools installed, and you want to compile a program that is not in a arch linux package yet (if theres a package, you can build it using abs / makepkg and pacman will handle the dependencies) and requires, for example, a library called "xyz", you only need to download "xyz" from pacman, and all the dev stuff will come together (like header and etc).
I hope it helps.

How to install Arch for dual-boot with Win 7 (on 2 hard drives)?

Hello,
the TLDR first: how exactly should I proceed when setting up GRUB for 2 hard drives to dual-boot Arch (64 bit)and Win 7 (64 bit)?
Long version: So, I have the following hard drive & partition layout:
On my first hard drive (250 GB big) I have: Win 7 64 bit, all the programs for Windows and of course the EFI partition
My second hard drive is 1 TB big and formatted in NTFS and it only contains data. It has 2 partitions, one is about 750 GB big and used for simple storage.
Sidenote 1: sometimes my disk management (Windows' own gparted) shows either the little disk or the big one as disk 0. Don't know what exactly this means, but I have never ever experienced any problems whatsoever during use.
Sidenote 2: the UEFI motherboard (ASRock H67M) cannot boot into Legacy mode.
I want to install Arch on a ~200 GB partition on the second hard drive (the one with 1 TB). (click here if you want to see a screenshot) I am posting this because I am confused with how exactly I should deal with the whole "2 hdds & UEFI" thing.
So how exactly should I proceed when setting up GRUB for this setup?
For partitioning I suppose I would have to use fdisk or cgdisk. I used cgdisk before and found it to be straightforward. Then, because I have experienced my fair share of problems with rEFInd, I'd like to use GRUB.
Last edited by jones (2013-06-29 14:36:56)

First thing you should do is become familiar with your motherboard.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/manual.asp?Model=H67M
This will probably help you out in understanding the sidenote 1 thingie (hdd's on sata3 and/or sata2 connectors)
As on sidenote 2, according to the manual it seems to be possible to boot legacy mode, see Storage Configuration.

How to install arch 2009.08 from hard drive? Please enlighten me

OK, I admit I am impatient for the installation from the CD drive. Whenever possible and whatever distro I wanna try, I head first to try to install it from the hard drive. I don't remember how many times and how many distros I have done the same to, ubuntu, zenwalk, sidux, fedora, opensuse and of course arch. It rarely failed as long as I followed someone's guide, sth like "install any OS from hard drive", I do not exactly remember. And I did the same in the past with arch. But after 2009.08, it simply didn't work. I've read the article "fast install arch from existing linux system" in the wiki, it didn't work either (by the way, if someone can solve my problem, I think the article should be updated). After it boots, at some stage, it says "Use Hook [archiso]", then tell me "waiting for /dev/archiso for 30 seconds ..." then when the time due, it throws me into a ramfs shell. I've hacked for a long time, but no luck. Then I went back to download the 2009.02 iso, however, it works flawlessly.
I did find some differences in the menu.lst/isolinux.cfg between two version.
In 2009.02, we have
title Boot Arch Linux Live CD
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 lang=en locale=en_US.UTF-8 usbdelay=5 ramdisk_size=75%
initrd /boot/archiso_pata.img
While in 2009.08, it is
title Boot Arch Linux Live CD
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 lang=en locale=en_US.UTF-8 archisolabel=ARCHISO_AHCOHH6O ramdisk_size=75%
initrd /boot/archiso_pata.img
I know I can install arch from usb, but I simply wanna know what's wrong here, so guys, if you have any idea, don't hesitate to enlighten me.

Hi, vacant, thanks for the reply. I did not notice you are the author of the article. Actually I missed the head of the article which directs me to another (the amalgamated one you mentioned). I take a look at it, it seems to make things complicated. I still miss the old days: you simply download the iso, mount it and copy all the contents into a separate partition, edit your current grub, then reboot and everything works. I don't understand how Arch could be so evolved to exclude this simple installation scheme. I am not complaining the development of Arch. In my opinion, a distro as flexible as Arch should provide as much installation strategy as possible. In this respect, I think we can learn from Ubuntu or sidux (in sidux, it provides a very convenient kernel parameter called "fromiso" which allows you to install sidux from the plain iso, that means, you even don't have to mount it and copy the contents out of it to a separate partition).
Last edited by plmday (2009-10-25 06:25:44)

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