[SOLVED] [Wiki] Beginner's Guide suggestion

I want to make a suggestion to improve the Beginner's Guide in the ArchWiki.
I just installed Arch Linux reading this guide and the only thing that wasn't clear to me is when I needed to select packages from a group. Same problem of this guy: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=118413
I gladly would accepted a little explanation on which kind of syntax to use to include/exclude packages.
Last edited by davcri (2015-04-30 06:43:10)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?ti … did=371421
n.b the Installation guide omits "-i"; in that case, there is indeed no selection.
https://github.com/falconindy/arch-inst … rap.in#L84
Last edited by Alad (2015-04-29 11:58:54)

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[Solved]Oops, I accidentally deleted the "Beginner's Guide" wiki page.

My apologies, I am trying to fix my mistake right now, but if someone could help me out, the sooner the better. I accidentally deleted the Beginner's Guide wiki page, trying to add my own edit. Will post back when I get it back to the last revision.
Last edited by kiloecho7 (2008-12-15 19:24:25)

It seems like everybody and their hot sister heard of this Beranger person except me
Update: can't say I checked any of his older posts but I guess I've seen part of his 'dumping linux' blog post -- most likely the one that 'angried' people and said sisters. I can only ask myself: what the big deal is? Who actually cares? Personally I never understood blogs nor the need to have them .. but it was my opinion that these unfortunate inventions were supposed to be destined for your friends (+sisters) to read. So I can't understand this: why does anybody else in the world -- care -- about what that guy uses/doesn't use? What makes him so important / such a(n) hero.
Last edited by string (2008-12-16 21:11:02)

Not familiar with wiki etiquette, Beginner's Guide needs to be changed

Hello everyone,
I am an Arch newbie and did my first Arch installation successfully last night.
During the installation, a problem occured in chapter Configure the network of the Beginner's Guide. When executing
# systemctl start dhcpcd
the system refuses to do it, it complains it is in a chrooted environment and ignores the command. Consequently, I didn't have an internet connection after the reboot, but executing this piece of code again in my "real" system quickly solved the problem.
Since Arch is a community effort and I'd like to give back, even if it's just small things as a newbie, I'd like to help improve the Wiki, but I am not sure about its etiquette after going through the Help:Editing as it has a rather technical nature, but not the policies.
Is it ok for me to make direct editions to the Beginner's Guide?
If yes, should I just add a note along the lines "repeat this command in case you get the error..."? Or what do you suggest to have a streamlined style of writing?
Thanks for any feedback.

parcival wrote:
Hello everyone,
I am an Arch newbie and did my first Arch installation successfully last night.
During the installation, a problem occured in chapter Configure the network of the Beginner's Guide. When executing
# systemctl start dhcpcd
the system refuses to do it, it complains it is in a chrooted environment and ignores the command. Consequently, I didn't have an internet connection after the reboot, but executing this piece of code again in my "real" system quickly solved the problem.
Since Arch is a community effort and I'd like to give back, even if it's just small things as a newbie, I'd like to help improve the Wiki, but I am not sure about its etiquette after going through the Help:Editing as it has a rather technical nature, but not the policies.
Is it ok for me to make direct editions to the Beginner's Guide?
If yes, should I just add a note along the lines "repeat this command in case you get the error..."? Or what do you suggest to have a streamlined style of writing?
Thanks for any feedback.
I am no expert, but in order to install arch, u need an internet connection already before the install process. And after the chroot, that connection will not change; the "systemctl start dhcpcd command" therefore is in my opinion not necessary.
It makes sense to run "systemctl enable dhcpcd" after the chroot to start the internet connection during the next reboot. (That's probably also what u want to do; else u need to run the start command everytime u reboot your system)
PS: Welcome to the "Arch Family"
Last edited by tumas (2013-02-28 10:22:08)

[SOLVED] Cannot install python per instructions in Beginner's Guide.

So, the overview:
I just finished installing as per the Beginner's Guide and have logged in as root.
I've enabled a couple mirrors in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
Doing NOTHING ELSE I run the following command: "pacman -Sy" python and the result:
python package not found, searching for group...
error: 'python': not found in sync db
After that I tried another suggestion I saw here on the forum: pacman -Sy and then pacman -Syy
Nothing. I thought maybe I botched something on the install, so I did it again. Same result. I cannot get pacman to install python (or ruby) or anything.
What gives?
Last edited by cult hero (2010-01-10 04:51:42)

Yes. If no mirrors are uncommented a different error comes up. (no servers configured for repository)
error: failed to syncronize any databases

Incomplete Install After Following Beginner's Guide [solved]

If you look at my join date, I've been here longer than most (absolutely not a claim to being a guru or anything, in fact in many ways, I'm still a n00b) , but this latest install was... interesting, to say the least. (wel, it's still ongoing)
cd image: 2014 10.1
I used the beginner's guide because there have been significant changes to the install process in recent years. Everything was going well until I rebooted, and there were no entries in grub. After thinking about it a bit, I wondered if there were no entries because mkgrub-config (I automatically generate grub.config) couldn't find a kernel. So I booted back into the install media, chrooted into my new install, and lo and behold, there was not kernel installed (yes I did use pacstrap to install both base and base-devel and used the "all" option)
This might not be a problem with pacstrap, or with the beginner's guide, but with the way that these meta packages are arranged, I don't know.
So I installed a kernel, generated grub again, and rebooted, to get the old "you're on your own, pal" message, because init wasn't found. So, I rebooted back to the livecd , installed sysv-compat, and full of optimism "this is finally over with!" booted back into my new install. Still no good! For some as yet unknown reason, I can't use pacman to download packages. (Failed retrieving error) I know that I setup my network during during the install process, so my first instinct is to ping my router. No good! Ping isn't installed either!
I know that there are other steps I can take to find out what my network problem is, (if that's what it is), but I think that something has gone wrong if ping isn't installed during the install process, let alone the kernel. And isn't sysv-init unnecessary these days? I can probably solve these, and as yet unknown problems that will almost certainly arrive when I fix those, but I am running out of time, so I'm writing this post instead. Did I miss something? Is it just me? Or is the install process broken?
Last edited by Convergence (2014-10-16 23:33:06)

Trilby wrote:Everything you describe sounds like symptoms of partitions not being properly mounted. How is your drive partitioned? What is in your fstab?
Do you mean how were the drives mounted during install, or during boot? Both?
Thanks for responding!
My drive setup is kind of confusing, but /dev/sda1 is / and /dev/sdc1 is /home. I don't use a separate /boot partition. During install, I verified that I was mounting the correct partions/drives before using 'mount /dev/sda1 /mnt /bin/bash' and used a similar command to mount /home inside of the already mounted /. During the install process, I used 'genfstab -L >> /etc/fstab', (this command was new to me) or something like it. I verified that the generated fstab looked sane to me (that the boot order was correct, it used the proper labels).
Now, in my new install, "df" shows that /dev/sda1 is root (as it should be), and that sdc1 is /home (also as it should be).
mtab says (among other things) "/dev/sda1 / ext4 rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode620,ptmxmode=000 0 0" (there may be a typo because I'm typing this on my wife's laptop) the options listed for sdc1 are /hom ext4 rw,relatime,data-=ordered 0 0
My fstab entries look something like this: LABEL=rooty / ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1
My directory tree seems to be in order, /bin has binaries in it, /home has all my old files in it.
Does that answer your question?

Clock showing wrong hour even though I followed the Beginner's Guide

Hey guys,
So today I re-installed ArchLinux & Windows 7 on my laptop, here's how it works:
SSD: ArchLinux x64
HDD: Windows 7
I mainly use Arch, and the few times I use Windows, I choose to boot from my HDD instead of my SSD, from the BIOS.
Technically, it's not a dual boot I guess, so I shouldn't be affected by these manipulations
The time showed in my BIOS is correct.
The time showed by Windows 7 is correct.
The time showed in ArchLinux is however wrong, it's two hours late.
Following the Beginner's Guide I've run these command without success:
hwclock --systohc --utc
If any of you has any suggestions...
Thanks :]

My apologies. I thought that this particular problem between Windows and Linux was caused by Windows somehow overwriting Linux settings, and since in my case they are in different physical drives, I thought I wasn't concerned.
Anyway, since I've read somewhere in the wiki that localtime should be avoided, I successfully did the manipulation do set Windows 7 in UTC.
I've then updated the hardware clock and system clock time, but it didn't change a thing.
I'm going to try the manipulations provided by your link luvfree, thanks
I'll keep you posted, thanks to all of you, and again, my apologies for my wrong asumptions
EDIT: APPARENTLY IT'S SOLVED:
I had to boot into Linux, and set the time manually with:
# date +%T -s "10:13:13"
Then run:
hwclock --systohc --utc
Next boot, the time value were correct int both Linux, AND Windows
Thanks to all of you, I'll try to think more next time
Last edited by Lowra (2012-09-29 08:14:01)

Beginner's guides

Hi,
is there any beginners guide to Oracle from a first install? I have installed oracle and know it works, but cannot suss much else.
Is there a beginner's guide or book to oracle that tells you things from an initial perspective including things like how to find out the table and procedure names installed.
select * from systables doesn't work.
Thanks,
Ian

You don't say which version of Oracle you've installed. Lesson 1: the database version is ofetn a significant factor in the answer to any Oracle question you ask. :)
The following link will take you to a FAQ which links to the online Oracle documentation for both 8i and 9i. I suggest you follow the List of books link. Of particular significance to you will be the Getting to know Oracle 8i (there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for 9i, but the introduction 8i will give you lots to be getting on with. Also check out the Concepts as a firm underrstanding of Oracle architecture will stand you in good stead.
Re: Calling a service method from a DataAction
Good luck, APC

Printing the Beginner's Guide

Hello,
Maybe I did something wrong? I wanted to print the "Beginner's Guide Wiki" for reference. Using FF3 (from a different machine), I clicked on the "Printable Version" link, and proceeded to print. The regular text of the Wiki printed fine. However, the boxes (outlined in dashes) that contain the commands to enter did not print. I just have blank spaces where the command line text should be. One of the main reasons that I wanted to print the wiki was to have this information readily available whilst installing and configuring Arch. Now I have a large stack of paper with a lot of important information missing. Any ideas what went wrong?

For what its worth, I finally figured it out. If I select individual pages or ranges of pages to print in the FF print dialog, I have the above-mentioned issues. If I print the whole document, on the other hand, everything is fine. Strange huh?

Possible typo in Beginner's Guide

While going through the Beginner's Guide (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide), I noticed a word "thw" in "Swap partition" section. There is only 1 occurrence, so it's easy to find. Perhaps it's a typo for "the".
sol

It's a wiki. You can fix it yourself.

Translation to Spanish of the Beginner's Guide

I am planning to translate the Beginner's Guide to Spanish.
I'd like to help with something more useful than a translation, eventually, like contributing with Arch development (bug fixing?), but I don't have the time and energy to dive into that pool right now (I'm not even used to Linux programming ).
Anyway, the reason for this post, is to ask whether:
1) A Spanish translation of the Beginner's Guide has already been started.
2) The community thinks another doc should take precedence. I chose the Beginner's Guide because it's the single resource that has helped me the most to get my Arch system up and running.

Nuwanda wrote:1) A Spanish translation of the Beginner's Guide has already been started.
Usually people will write it in the wiki, so everyone can see the progress. There doesn't appear to be a spanish version yet.
tip: I would write it in the wiki also, rather than do it offline, as that way other spanish users can aid you aswell.
Nuwanda wrote:2) The community thinks another doc should take precedence. I chose the Beginner's Guide because it's the single resource that has helped me the most to get my Arch system up and running.
No better page in my opinion. Also, you can see the page hits at the bottom, and the english version is standing strong at 123,000 hits!
Oh and btw, good luck!
Last edited by dyscoria (2008-03-27 00:57:21)

Beginner's guide?

How do I run the beginner's guide after getting past the install script?

caelestis wrote:
What's the point of the beginner's guide if I can't read it while installing?
Is there anyway?
The Installation Guide is like the Begginner's but with less crap, and less explained, getting you directly to the point. The Begginer's Guide can be read before installing, to get some hints of what to do.

Following Beginner's Guide, but one command is "not found" - alsact1

Hello
I'm following the Beginner's guide and doing everything exactly as it says. However, when i get to the Sound Card setup instructions (using ALSA) one of the commands it is telling me to use returns the error "-bash: alsact1: command not found"
I have done everything exactly as per the directions. According to the instructions, this command saves the mixer settings so that on boot-up, the volume levels are as they were previously.
I wasn't able to create the file that "alsact1" is supposed to create, but upon boot-up, the sound levels appear to be as they were last time. so everything works just fine.
Should I just forget about the "alsact1" command and move on? Anyone else have this issue? Is there a fix? or is it a typo in the instructions?
Thanks in advance!

The last letter is an L, not a 1
ie ALSACTL rather than ALSACT1

Beginner's Guide, Eufi-GRUB

I was gonna improve the Beginner's Guide but realized that the GRUB section of UEFI motherboards has been removed. I've been lurking around forums and as far as I can tell that the most problems was because of insufficient optioning of grub-install commands. I did started using arch and also linux back in this month and the main grub page was all I needed while, beginner's guide only needed and option for root device which was noted in main grub page.
If that was the case, grub is easy and other distro users are familiar with it.
P.S.: I didn't know how to connect about it, If I'm posting anyway wrong please criticize.
Last edited by Gulver (2013-06-24 07:27:00)

The trouble is, the Beginners' Guide as it stands is not only misleading but outright wrong.
In the section on booting UEFI, it states:
For UEFI systems, two options are available. Choose one as per your convenience.
Boot the Linux kernel directly using EFISTUB.
gummiboot is a simple bootloader, useful if you are dual booting.
And then it explains how to set up direct loading using efibootmgr or gummiboot. Not only is there no mention of rEFInd, there is also no mention that grub can also boot in EFI mode. This is especially problematic given that the "two options" will not work on some hardware given the current issues with the EFISTUB loader.
While I agree that this page should cover only the basics and link to more in depth information, this hardly counts as giving the user a sense of the available options. There are links to grub on this page but only in the context of BIOS booting.
Last time I looked, the page did mention grub in EFI mode and covered rEFInd. Now it just looks like you are screwed if neither a EFI menu entry nor gummiboot works for you.
EDIT: It also claims that the ESP must be mounted at /boot. This is just false. It is true only for gummiboot and not even for the other option mentioned on this page.
Last edited by cfr (2013-07-07 22:32:50)

[SOLVED] Longwinded beginner - Dual-boot & partition questions

Hello,
I'm interested in installing Arch Linux alongside Windows XP (dual-boot). I have little previous linux experience, although I have rented some servers that have used it in the past, as well as compiling some stuff with it while at University (studying Computer Science). Nevertheless, I am relatively confident that if I can still boot into XP, I will be able to acccustomise myself and like the fact that this distribution seems to be hands-on and leaves a lot up to the user.
I've been reading the Beginner's Guide and the dual boot guide, and I would like to get started, however, I'm not going to go ahead with this until I am certain that I will be left with a system that can still boot into Windows XP. I assume that it'll take me a while to get to grips with Arch, and in the meantime it would be massively inconvenient if I couldn't work/play/etc...
What I already know
Anyway, currently I have a 250GB hard drive that I use for Windows (as well as 3 other hard drives full of stuff). I have partitioned the drive with Windows XP on it with gparted like so:
(in order)
UNALLOCATED 32GB
SDB1 (Windows XP) 50GB
SDB2 (Downloads) 150GB
I hope to use the unallocated space to hold linux (and then have access to my other windows drives in the future, using ntfs-3g), however, I am a little confused over what partitions I 'should' have and how large they should be, considering that I will use the OS to mainly develop, browse the web, listen to music, etc...
I was thinking:
/boot -- ext2 -- 100MB
/ -- ext4 -- 15GB
swap -- -- 1GB
/home -- ext4 -- 12GB
/var -- ReiserFS -- 4GB
Questions
• Is 30GB too little, even though most of my stuff is on other NTFS hard drives?
• How large should / be? I've read that it contains /bin, /dev, /etc and others. How do I know how much space these need? Am I misunderstanding things?
• Is a /var partition unnecessary? How large should it be?
• 10GB for /home, 1GB for swap, 100MB for /boot?
• Do I need a /tmp or /usr? This is a single-user machine, but I don't want it to get messy!
• I was thinking of giving /boot ext2, and /var ReiserFS, and then giving every other partition ext4. That okay?
• Do I need to set these partitions up when installing, or can I set them up in advance with gparted - it might be simpler.
• Due to already having 2 NTFS primary partitions on the hard disk, I presume that some of the above will need to be logical partitions in an extended partition? How is this done?
Once the partitions have been set up, and linux is installed, I presume it's just a matter of completing the rest of Part I of the guide, and then ammending /boot/grub/menu.lst to include 'Windows XP'? At that point I am able to restart Windows XP, and only delve into Arch when I want to continue with the configuration, fixing, and so on...
Sorry for the wall of text, and thanks for your patience. (:
Last edited by Bedtimes (2009-09-27 14:21:55)

That's the thing, I expect that I'm doing something wrong with the GRUB loader - and I admit my hard disk layout has been quite strange for a long time before installing linux.
Basically, it currently looks like this:
/dev/sda1 ntfs Music 250GB
/dev/sdb3 ext2 /boot 120MB
/dev/dsb4 extended
---- /dev/sdb5 linux-swap 1GB
---- /dev/sdb6 ext4 / 20GB
---- /dev/sdb7 ext4 /home 12GB
/dev/sdb1 ntfs Windows XP 50GB
/dev/sdb2 ntfs Downloads 150GB
/dev/sdc1 ntfs TV & Movies 950GB
• This list is in order that the entries appear on the hard disk, hence /boot is in the first 1024 cylinders of the hard disk, but as you can see the sdb numbers are actually in the chronological order that I created them.
• I used an extended partition with logical partitions inside since I had read that there was an issue with more than 4 partitions in a hard disk, and I already had 2 NTFS partitions.
• When it asked me to install GRUB to the MBR, I installed it to SDB as opposed to SDBx as it asked me to in the manual. This is the drive that contains /boot!
• I just managed to amend something in the menu.lst, in order that I can boot into Windows XP. Therefore my machine is not totally fucked up any more. (: Unfortunately, what I changed doesn't make sense to me, since I would have expected Windows XP to be on a different hard disk.
The contents of sdb3:
grub kernel26-fallback.img kernel26.img
lost+found System.map26 umlinuz26
When typing the command /sbin/blkid:
/dev/sda1: UUID="D0..." LABEL="Music" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="A8..." LABEL="Windows XP" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb2: UUID="557..." LABEL="Downloads" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb3: UUID="2676..." TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sdb5: UUID="0474..." TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdb6: UUID="0886..." TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sdb7: UUID="519becf..." TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sdc1: UUID="46AC59" LABEL="TV & Movies" TYPE="ntfs"
Inside /boot/grub/menu.lst:
timeout 5
default 0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue
# (1) Windows XP
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
# (2) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd1,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/0886... ro vga=773
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
# (3) Arch Linux (Fallback)
title Arch Linux (Fallback)
root (hd1,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/0886... ro vga=773
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img
edit: I'm able to access all of the installation partitions with gparted-live's terminal (by mounting the devices I need to access into folders in my root folder), so is there anything else you want me to check/change in order to find my linux root/boot partition?
Last edited by Bedtimes (2009-09-27 12:54:24)

Efibootmgr's entries crash instantly - mistake in Beginner's Guide?

Hi,
after installing Arch on my Laptop (first time using the non-aif method - I much prefer it, thanks guys!) I had some problems with the entries created by efibootmgr, i.e. them crashing instantly on me (screen would turn black, then return to the UEFI boot menu). After some experimentation it turned out that using single '\' (as per "UEFI Bootloaders"-page) instead of double '\\' (as per Beginner's Guide) in the efibootmgr-command fixes this issue. Is this something others experience as well or is it unique to my setup (or just a problem between keyboard and chair)?
I'm on a Lenovo X121e, using UEFI/GPT with a 512MB FAT16 EFI partition (FAT32 has the same problem). Installation as per Beginner's Guide, except for the single backslashes.
Now, to OT my own topic: Additionally, rEFInd seems to misparse refind_linux.conf, because the submenus are empty (not even "Return to main" or similar) although I created multiple boot options. Also, OS descriptions are weird ("Boot EFI\arch\vmlinuz-arch.efi from". Aren't those supposed to be "... from <somewhere>"?).

Slightly off topic but may i ask what changed and double \ is not required anymore? Last time i had to create a boot entry i did it with double \
# echo "root=/dev/sdaX ro rootfstype=ext4 add_efi_memmap initrd=\EFI\\arch\initramfs-arch.img" | iconv -f ascii -t ucs2 | efibootmgr -c -g -d /dev/sda -p 1 -L "Archlinux (EFISTUB)" -l "\EFI\arch\vmlinuz-arch.efi" -@ -
Also is the \\ correct in the initrd sections (this is from uefi bootloaders)

[SOLVED] [Wiki] Beginner's Guide suggestion

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