Mirroring my arch installation?

I have arch on an old computer that uses an IDE hard drive, just to test it out. Since then I've decided that I like arch so much that I'm considering using it on my primary computer, which uses SATA. I know that I can use a SATA to USB converter to copy my installation to the SATA, but here's where it gets complicated... My main computer is x86_64 or amd64, and my arch computer is i686. Also, the main computer is 64-bit, while the arch computer is 32-bit. Is it possible to get arch on a SATA drive and use it in my main computer or will I have to reinstall from scratch?

I think it's best to do a fresh install, but have a look at some wiki articles:
* https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fu … with_rsync
* https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mi … installing

Similar Messages

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.

How to clone my current arch installation to a VM?

Hey,
I would like to clone my current arch installation to a VM to test if awesome runs with my settings. I thought about making an rsync image and importing it into the vm.
Has anyone tried this before or do you have any recommendations?
thx 4 help

Hi!
Take a look at this Blogpost. There is an description how to create a disc image ponting to an real harddrive.
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename rawimage.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda
Warning:The downside of that approach: The disc image is actually linked to your harddrive, so any change in your VM will affect your host-system.
But I've found another useful command:
VBoxMange clonehd rawimage.vmdk realimage.vmdk
This will create a copy of your linked image. It seems to me, like the copy of the linked image is a *real* vmdk-image.
Of course this comes without any warranty - I did not test it: Please be very careful using these commands. But it seems to me, like this approach could be a solution for you.
Sincerely,
brb
Last edited by barabbas (2011-04-28 10:05:41)

Dual boot with two arch installations and gummiboot

Hi,
I found similar topics regarding this matter, but they couldn't resolve my doubts, so I ask once again.
I currently have an EFI partition with gummiboot and will like to add a new arch installation (to have different configurations, packages versions and repositories. I came to the conclusion that this is the cleanest way to achieve what I want). I think I could use the same partition but if I mount it on /boot there will be problems when I upgrade the kernel because it will override the image in the partition when running mkinitcpio. Maybe if I maintain both installations in sync everything would be fine, but on the long run I think this could cause problems.
I considered to edit /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset in one of the installations to change the name of the image, thus both images could cohabit in the same partition, but I don't know if there are some cleaner way to achieve what I want.
Thanks.

TheSaint wrote:It'll be necessary to configure mkinitcpio to address the correct path in order that the future kernel updates will go to ther right place.
See this for details.
I don't think so -- the use of a bind mount means that the kernel image can go in the standard location, that's the whole point of it.
@OP: Yes, just make sure to call the path to the respective kernel images relative to $ESP

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.

[SOLVED] The terminal in the Arch installation

I've notice that the terminal in the Arch installation has interesting features: the TAB autocompletion shows lots of information, typing a command and using up/down arrow only navigates through the history of this command... I love it. I'm using Arch with LXDE and its lxterminal does not have those features. Is it possible to install the Arch-installation terminal in LXDE? Or maybe adapt lxterminal someway? Thanks.
Last edited by David López (2012-09-03 22:52:50)

Background info: http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/ … 02683.html
The config it uses: http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra … sh-config/

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)

Partition Layout for 2 Arch installs

Morning all,
I've currently got Arch with GNOME installed on /dev/sdb with partitions taking up all the space of that hard drive. However I am wanting to have another Arch install that will run the latest KDE /trunk that will become 4.2, and so I'm wondering what would be the best way to layout my partitions. Here is my current partition layout for /dev/sdb (could someone also explain why the size of the partitions is quite odd? I didn't specify those exact values, it would have been like 128mb or 1gb for example):
/dev/sdb1: /boot (ext3, 125.48mb)
/dev/sdb2: swap (linux-swap, 972.69mb)
/dev/sdb3: / (ext3, 83.82gb)
/dev/sdb4: /var (reiserfs, 26.90gb)
No personal data (eg, Music, Pictures etc) are stored on either of these partitions, as I have another hard drive (oh I love to keep things separated =3) with all of those on, so it doesn't really matter about making it easy to share things between the 2 installs.
So, will I have to create another boot and swap partition for this new install? I'm guessing not, though not sure if that will cause issues. From what I can remember, I will have to create extended and logical partitions as I already have 4.
If someone could point me in the correct direction on how to set this up, would be greatly appreciated
Regards,

I have two Arch installs on the same machine: One is for the family (Xfce), which also serves as my backup system, the second one is my workbench and playground (Openbox). I have the following layout:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 9.3G 4.2G 4.7G 48% / # 2nd Arch for me
none 252M 0 252M 0% /dev/shm # swap
/dev/sda6 9.2G 6.2G 2.6G 72% /home # home
/dev/sda2 9.3G 2.3G 6.6G 26% /mnt/sda2 # 1st Arch for family
I use two different usernames on both systems, but symlinking email/browser directories from 1st to 2nd.

Compiling 64bit packages under a normal 32 bit arch installation

Hello!
For making packages (e.g. custom kernels) I have a virtual arch installation 32 bit (vmware). After the package is compiled I copy it to the destination machine and install it.
At the moment I want to install my first 64 bit archlinux and I want to make a custom kernel for the system. Is it possible to get the 64 bit tree of arch linux and compile it for my 64 bit system under my 32 bit virtual machine?
Second question: Can I use the normal custom kernel script (wiki article: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cus … _with_ABS) for a 64 bit kernel?
Greetings,
Flasher

This shouldn`t work within a 32bit-system. But you can compile 32bit-stuff on a 64-bit machine (using a chroot environment).

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.

Arch installer not detecting all my partitions

I have a macbook 2.1, and i am dual booting OS X and arch linux, I have 4 partitions in /dev/sda. The arch installer only detects three of them. I have been following the macbook and official install guide articles on the wiki. However, the last time, it saw all of them.
What's wrong?

Yes. It is identical to the output provided from the partition inspector in the *.dmg
*** Report for internal hard disk ***
Current GPT partition table:
# Start LBA End LBA Type
1 40 409639 EFI System (FAT)
2 409640 77742119 Mac OS X HFS+
3 78006272 156301311 Basic Data
Current MBR partition table:
# A Start LBA End LBA Type
1 1 409639 ee EFI Protective
2 409640 77742119 af Mac OS X HFS+
3 77742120 156296384 05 Extended (CHS)
MBR contents:
Boot Code: None
Partition at LBA 40:
Boot Code: None (Non-system disk message)
File System: FAT32
Listed in GPT as partition 1, type EFI System (FAT)
Partition at LBA 409640:
Boot Code: None
File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
Listed in GPT as partition 2, type Mac OS X HFS+
Listed in MBR as partition 2, type af Mac OS X HFS+
Partition at LBA 78006272:
Boot Code: None (Non-system disk message)
File System: FAT32
Listed in GPT as partition 3, type Basic Data
Partition at LBA 77742120:
Boot Code: None
File System: Unknown
Listed in MBR as partition 3, type 05 Extended (CHS)
EDIT: Almost identical, this output doesn't contain an error.
Last edited by Lexion (2008-12-28 17:05:34)

Custom Arch Installation?

I'm interested in doing a custom Arch installation disk for my office, with all of the needed packages that we want by default. Is there a way I can get my hands on the installation program to modify it?

Yeah thats sort of what I'm talking about but I still have the same question as the other person did.
But i wanna know if i can use this way to create a linux distribution which based on arch?
Mainly I want to learn how that portion of the install cd is done and because it would just be cool to show off around the office.

Mirroring my arch installation?

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