UK Arch Community gathering momentum

Prelude
As everyone knows, the British (claim to have) invented everything. From Marmite to Worcestershire sauce, to radar and gravity. We even invented the toilet. Our (stereotypical) perception of ourselves is of a nation of intrepid engineers and scientists who spend their lives in the garden shed inventing the modern world.
British people love nothing more than fiddling with things. We're an island of tinkerers, which is probably why Arch Linux appeals to us. Every time an update breaks something, we put the kettle on, roll up our sleeves and get stuck in.
Join our community
The userbase of UK Arch Linux users is steadilly growing. We aim to foster a community focused on supporting these users, the exchange of information relating to Arch Linux and, of course, enjoying the company of likeminded Archies.
So if you're an Arch Linux user and you're loosely affiliated with the UK, why not come join us? In order to comunicate with other members a forum (on our very shiny website!) and Freenode channel have been set up. All are welcome.
Shiny website: www.archlinux.org.uk
IRC: #archlinux.org.uk on Freenode
Although no formal UK Arch events have been organised yet, I believe a group of org.uk people are going to this year's Oggcamp in Liverpool (1st-2nd May).
See you there!

Xyne wrote:
Can we please avoid the (faint) nationalism already exhibited in this thread? There is no "we" in a national sense when it comes to inventions. The inventors were individuals who just happen to have
been from within the same arbitrary borders as you are. It's like the fat geezers at football games shouting "we won" and exhibiting vicarious pride.
The Arch community is international and nationality shouldn't matter here. I like the fact that we are all brought together from around the world by a common interest. I see a purpose for other forums based on language, and even for organizing local events, but I wouldn't want to see the community sectioned off by nationality and we definitely don't need to foster sentiments of superiority based on such, even if it is mostly in jest.
p.s. chavs, ASBOs, budding Big Brother society, etc... not all British inventions are great
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend! The prelude was meant purely as a bit of light humor, and perhaps as a way of getting people to read the post, genuinely no harm or offence intended.
We have no intention to segregate the Arch community. The aim of the website/forums/channel is to bring people together and make friends with Arch users around the UK. It's not some secret club for UK people, it's a place for friendships and free software collaboration to grow.
Jesting aside, there are far, far worse British inventions than ASBOs, the concentration camp being one sobering example.

Similar Messages

Jabber users in arch community

I wonder if there are people that use the jabber on here? I know many people use IRC, but would also like to extend my contacts in jabber.org!
And if you do not have an acc on jabber, tell me why?

abarahc wrote:
ngoonee wrote:Gtalk is jabber, technically
hum... gtalk, jabber are xmpp? or jabber is another "protocol" (noob network tech. here uu')
btw...
since the topic has received so many replys wanted to know if the community has some room to some jabber server xD
perhaps nothing can surpass the 800 + online IRC channel, but I do not think something bad or too expensive to create a more "new" media using a new technology?
Heh, yeah, GTalk uses Jabber AND XMPP, and Jabber is XMPP. XMPP is just a transmission protocol, like HTTP, except it uses XML messages. Jabber uses XML messages to send chat messages, online status notifications, etc, to each server/user. Also, there is some voice and video capabilities. XMPP also allows much greater possibilities. It's a... "dumb" protocol, I guess? It doesn't care about the content you use. It just takes a XML, sends it to the server, and is done with it. Jabber is the poster child, but you can use XMPP for other things, like a pub/sub model. (Which Jabber uses as well... hah)
There was a previous topic, can't find it now, that also sparked interest in a Jabber/Arch community, they even created a MUC (Multi-User Chatroom). I don't know what happened to it after that. To be honest, if you want to take on the IRC channel, good luck.

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!"

My thoughts (and yours too!) about Arch (I'm in love already!)

Hello all! I suppose I would be called a newbie to Arch, but certainly not to Linux. I've been running Gentoo for five months. If I were running, say, Ubuntu for five months, I would probably still be considered a newbie, but five months of Gentoo has made me pretty proficient at Linux.
I (if you haven't guessed yet) am a Gentoo user , and it seems like there are a lot of Gentoo users who go to Arch. That's how I heard about it, through the Gentoo forums. I am currently looking for backups in case Gentoo comes crashing to the ground. I was perfectly content in my little bubble of happy compiling until I learned about the unrest inside of the Gentoo community. I never realized that things were in such bad shape... like a downward spiral. The result cannot be good. I feel like I'm on a sinking ship and am praying for my life here. I've seen a lot of threads at the forums lately like "If Drobbins fork Gentoo, will you follow him?" and "Will you stay with Gentoo if the Foundation is handed over to a 3rd party?" I find these a little unsettling! I understand that the Foundation is a terrible state right now, and the founder's attempt to get it back has failed, so now I don't things are going to head up. So I've started to face facts, that I better have some backup plans so that I'm not starting over from square 1 when this all burns to the ground (hopefully if, not when, because I like Gentoo and really don't want to have to give it up). Now I admit that I don't like EVERYTHING about Gentoo, but I like almost everything, and Arch seems to be like Gentoo in many respects.
Some of my personal desires in a distro:
1.Bleeding edge with rolling updates (and thus no need to ever reinstall the distribution)
2. A large repository for the package manager
3. Not a newbie distro... a distro for those who like the command line and to do things themselves
4. Good community
5. Customizable
6. The ability to choose between a stable and unstable package on a per-package basis
7. Install from source
Arch seems to satisfy 1,3, 4, and 5 correct? And pretty well satisfies 2, though I can see its package manager is not as big as Gentoo (though bigger than like Slackware).
I guess for the most part it doesn't satisfy 6 and 7 though, right? I realize that AUR is source-based, but on the whole, Arch is binary, so I'm referring to the overall tendency of the distribution.
Is there the ability to choose between stable and unstable packages though, to be as bleeding-edge as possible? (I'm thinking no but thought I'd ask)
Many other distributions such as Ubuntu probably wouldn't meet my needs at all. They seem to have a great repository and community, but I just don't want a GUI-based distro. The truth is, I want to feel like my computer needs me. It's my baby. XDDDD Okay, that's pretty sad, especially because it's a Pentium II (I can't WAIT to get my new laptop!!!!!!!!!!!), but I appreciate my Gentoo box way more than our Windows box upstairs, a lot of that having to do with the work I had to put into it to get it working correctly, and all that I had to learn. It makes me appreciate it a lot more, and it makes me a lot better at solving problems. (If it ain't broken, why not break it so you can fix it? XD)I don't want a distro that does everything for me; I won't feel needed anymore. Plus, I'm addicted to the command line. I have a window manager, sure (Thunar with Xfce), but I mostly still use the command line to view my files. Sometimes I don't even start up X (I never start it up by default) and am just as efficient as when I have it open. I insist on knowing how to do everything manually... when I wanted to make keyboard shortcuts for X, I chose to use xbindkeys rather than use the GUI with Xfce, so I could do it manually and still have it working if I ever switched desktop managers. I manually edit pretty much ALL my config files and, like I said, I am just as efficient without the GUI as I am with it. I can't go five minutes in GUI without having a virtual terminal open. So I think, in these respects, Arch would meed my needs quite well, just as Gentoo does now. I have deiced to try out Arch now anyway, regardless of the state of Gentoo, because you know, i might just like Arch better. I know a lot of Gentoo users have said they've gone to Arch. I'm trying to get my friend Evan to let me use his 8 gb hdd to try it on, because my current 6 gig drive for Gentoo is like... 99 percent full (I swear, I'm not kidding, I have 100 mg left, I REALLY have to prune XD), so once I get it, I'm going to install Arch (after unhooking my /home hard drive because I only have two slots for hard drives, and they're both already filled! I will probably end up moving the /home directory onto that 8 gig drive anyway. I realize it's hard to share things between distros, but I will at least be able to have a place to put files for both distros in the same place and would probably end up symlinking some same location to my desktop for both distros
Okay, now I'm just ranting. Back to point! I'm definitely going to try out Arch, and so far I like what I see. I even recommended it to a friend who is also thinking of leaving Gentoo (for Ubuntu, so he can support his amd64 processor). I pointed out Arch64 and he's considering it. I don't think he'd like Ubuntu any more than I. He originally used Slack and only switched to Gentoo because Slack really doesn't have a good package manager. I think he'd like Arch as well.
I've also done research on other distributions someone like me might like (especially coming from Gentoo).
This is my current list:
Arch Linux
Frugalware (based on Arch, right?)
Zen Walk
Vector Linux
CRUX (I'm leaning away from this one, as of now)
Lunar
Source Mage
Sorcerer
FreeBSD (but I've decided not to go with FreeBSD, as much as I like installing from source, because their philosophy of stability over currentness (like not having flash 9 because it's not "stable") just doesn't fly with me.. Linux is better for me, I think)
LFS.. okay, not really, but if I ever have a weekend when I'm REALLY bored.........
I've used Slack before but I would prefer to have a package manager, so I'm steering away from that direction, as much as I liked Slack.
Have I missed any other distros people in this sort of mindset like us might like? ^_^
My primary focus right now is Arch, and it's definitely my first preference as far as switching goes.
I think my biggest problem with Arch is that I REALLY like to compile everything from source (or at least, have Portage do it for me :-p), so I"d miss that. Especially USE flags. However, Source Mge/Lunar/Sorcerer don't sound as good as Arch, and FreeBSD just... isn't my thing. Their package manger seems great, it's their overall philosophy I disagree with.
This post really isn't asking for help with anything, but isn't that fine? This is just the Arch Linux General Forums, right? I just wanna talk about Arch as compared to other distros. I've wiki-ed it some, but I just think it's a fun thing to discuss.
So what things do you guys like better about Arch, and what things do you like better about Gentoo, or maybe about some other good distros?
I can't wait to try out Arch; I'm so excited! No Xubuntu for me! ^___________^ (Gnome and ESPECIALLY KDE would lag far too much for this computer)
-Megan M-

Well, I technically have 14 gigs... I have the 6 gig and a 4 gig which has /usr/portage (the portage tree probably takes up so much space it would outweigh any space saved through USE flags XD) and /var/tmp, since that can get huge while compiling and I don't have space on the 6 gig for the fluctuations in space... I had to install the binary for OpenOffice just because the temporary space required to compile it was bigger than the space I had on my hard drive!!!!and I actually have so little space left I am permanently using a ext3 formatted flash drive as my ~/Desktop (it's in my fstab and everything XD!) This gives me 4 extra gigs for all my stuff.
But anyway, just you people answering this thread so nicely confirms my feelings about the Arch community. I can easily see a thread like this simply being ignored on the Gentoo forums, or just merged with other threads. >.<
Actually, to be honest, most pakcages I am running unstable on Gentoo had to do with compile errors and such, or some feature not working correctly in the older version. The only ones that I just wanted to run unstable are.. lemme check my /etc/portage/package.keywords... Skype and Pidgin. And possibly Mplayer too, I was thinking of. Everything else was either because of problems or of it being in the Sunrise overlay (everything in there is masked as unstable since it's not an official part of the Portage tree).
How easy is it to get an older version of a package? I ask because I want Flash 9.0.48.0-r1, NOT 9.0.115.0. The newer one made my Firefox commit suicide and just close with an error when I viewed certain pages (youtube, etc. was fine, but even going to www.adobe.com made it crash *irony*). Gentoo forum users told me that then newer one was unmasked because of a security flaw found in the older one, but for me, I'd rather take my chances with the hole than have firefox crash every five minutes!!!! Is there any way to specify not to update a package either, for when you do a world update (or whatever they are called in Arch)? This also has to do with Flash... I'll give the newer one a try... maybe it was just a Gentoo issue... but if not, I'm DEFINITELY downgrading!
I like how easy it seems for Arch users to add packages to AUR so they are available to others... this is harder to do on Gentoo, despite that everything is source-based. It's most like there is a wall between the users and the developers that cannot be broken easily. This seems like a good way to let users have a little fun in the developer's world without *being* one.
One last question while I'm here.. my other friend who I sugested Arch to... I just want to confirm that Arch would support his CPU. He said to me:
"Oh, and my CPU arch is amd64 / x86-64 / emt64-t
thechnically its em64t since its an intel CPU but i am running a k8 optimized system (because I used to have a opteron)"
^_^
PS: Your forums may be smaller than those of Gentoo, but that is not necessarily a disadvantage. There is like a perfect size, I think. You can be too small OR too big... with bigger forums, it is so much easier for a thread to just get buried if no one can answer it right away, even though someone else might be able to but will never see it because it's already buried. This happened to me in the Ubuntu forums. I obviously do not run Ubuntu but posted a question there regarding mtpfs with a particular MP3 player, because I figured the forums were large enough that I'd get at least a few people with the same mp3 player and they could tell me their experiences with the program. HA! Instead, I just got 0 replies and it was simply buried. With forums, bigger isn't *always* better, imo.
PPS: What is your policy on patching the source code? For example, GTK+ recently deprecated a few features that TiLP(1 and 2) depends on. The source code will now not compile. I made a patch for it to fix it (I was supposed to submit that ebuild two days ago... grah, I really should do it tomorrow!), for otherwise it just gives errors. If it is TiLp2 you have in the repository, it is literally as simple as adding one line in the source code (and is the fix the developer himself recommended), but Gentoo did not even notice and kept the source code in the tree the same even though it would no longer compile! @_@ This kind of ticked me off, personally, which is why I have to submit that patch tomorrow! ha ha
Last edited by violagirl23 (2008-01-24 06:00:10)

[Solved] Questions about Arch on T420s

Hello everybody,
I'm relatively new to Arch and switched from Ubuntu last year. Since then I've learned a lot about Linux in general due to the great documentation provided by the Arch community.
I've managed to install Arch on my Thinkpad T420s with an UEFI Setup using Archboot. But still there are open questions.
My first question is about the UEFI System partition and grub2. Should the UEFI partition be mounted to the filesystem? What about updating Grub2 (eg for setting boot parameters) when the UEFI System partition is not mounted to the filesystem. Up to now I've set boot parameters by manually mounting the UEFI partition and editing the Grub2's menu.lst equivalent. I think this is not optimal.
My second question is about some graphical artifacts in Gnome 3. The T420s uses Intel HD 3000 Graphics. Sometimes icons in nautilus disapear or get replaced by black planes when hovering over them with the mouse cursor. Similar black planes replacing icons can be observed sometimes in Evolution or Rhythmbox. Furthermore gnome-terminal becomes transparent sometimes when I'm scrolling or switching between powertop2 tabs. Anyone else observed similar issues on their T420s or on other models with an Intel HD 3000? I use several options for the i915 driver but none of them seem to be related to the graphical artifacts. Furthermore I've disabled dVT in the BIOS.
options i915 modeset=1
options i915 i915_enable_rc6=1
options i915 i915_enable_fbc=1
options i915 lvds_downclock=1
options i915 semaphores=1
My last question is about the USB ports on my T420s. I've 3 USB ports, one on the left side (USB2.0) and two (USB3.0 and another USB2.0) on the back side. When I plug in a HD on the left side everything works fine and the filesystem is automatically mounted. When I plug in the same HD on the ports of the back side the HD isn't even recognized. Interestingly when i boot with the HD plugged into the back side ports everything works fine. Can you point me any directions how to solve this problem?
Hopefully sombody using Arch on a T420s has already solved these issues and could share the solutions. Otherwise I would be grateful for any suggestions.
Sincerely yours,
Tobsen
Last edited by tobsen (2012-02-09 17:15:27)

Hi Tobsen, I have a T420 also. Perhaps my experiences will be some help?
Regarding the USB ports: I installed Arch on my T420 with the Kernal 3.0.3 snapshot and all the USB ports worked out of the box. That sounds like a problem with udev to me, though. Have you checked the wiki article on this?
Regarding the graphical artifacts: For me, when a popup window appears from hovering the mouse over an icon, the window is sometimes blank grey. It's totally inconsistent, and I can fix it by just hovering over it again, so I haven't really bothered to examine the source of the problem. Could this be related to your problem with the GPU? I figured it was a problem with the windows manager I'm using (Enlightenment e17), which is unstable.
Regarding UEFI: I don't use GRUB2, so this may not be good advice, but I personally feel like you should avoid auto-mounting partitions you don't always need. It slows down boot, and if the partition is mounted, user error could damage it. I say you should keep doing what you're doing.

Installing Arch on a box which is only accessible to wireless

I am done with Winblows and I'm looking to get a fresh Arch installation on my main box. I have a WUSB54G Wireless-G USB Network Adapter that I use to access the local wireless, plugging in via Ethernet isn't an option unfortunately I'm expecting to run into some issues with this, especially when I'm upgrading pacman. Anyone have any ideas of what they would do if they were in my shoes? Let me know if anyone has some words of wisdom for this approach. Thanks to all you out there in the Arch community.

Got Arch installed, but not yet updated. Using netcfg I've been able to view my Wireless Network (Cheba's Net!) so I know something has to be working correctly. I am able to connect to it, as far as I know, though I can't ping google. Anybody have any ideas as to what might need to be done? I'll post any info that you may need. Thanks again

Kudos to All Involved in Arch

Hi,
First a little introduction I guess... I'm an Ubuntu refugee that thinks he's settled on Arch for the next little while. I've used Linux exclusively since September 8th, 2001 when I first installed Gentoo. Gentoo lived on my drives until approximately 3 years ago when I jumped to Debian, and shortly thereafter to Ubuntu.
I'm the type of user that loves package management systems (hence how I fell in love with portage, then apt when I got tired of compiling everything), but I do tend to maintain an always expanding library of apps and utils that I compile and install from source. Although Debian based distros do allow for this, it's a bit of a pain, and in some cases (more notably in Ubuntu) can actually "break" the package manager. In this respect, and others, I've grown tired of the rigidity of Ubuntu and wandered off to find something more flexible. Also, with each Ubuntu release there seems to be more "undoing" that I tend to do (many of these tasks apt doesn't like either) which I suppose is expected when a picky user like me uses a complete-upon-install-with-all-choices-made-on-your-behalf distro. This is not a knock against Ubuntu btw, it's a great distro for some, and it's great at what it does, it's just not so much for me anymore.
I've just spent the weekend messing around with Arch, and from what I can gather, this is the best of both worlds. It's primarily a binary-based package manager (pacman), but offers a great way to integrate my "roll your own" packages as well (ABS). There is an apparently thriving community and plenty of opportunity to contribute to it (AUR for one). Installation is quite easy, and allows the user to build the system to their liking from the ground up.
The point of this post is to give well deserved kudos to the development team and the contributing members of the Arch community. I don't yet have more to say about Arch given that I've used it for only a day and a half. From what I can see however, it's a well thought out and customizable distribution and I have a feeling it will be a great fit on my machines at home.
I hope that in time I'll be able to contribute as well. Thanks for making Linux fun for me again!
Cheers,
~djc

mangus wrote:Welcome to the community! forget debian systems , you are here to stay and you won't be back! :-)
Don't forget them, for you'll probably have to work with them again on someone else's machine. It's a real pain everytime I have to, I can't help searching for rc.conf and so on.
Welcome to Arch, anyway !

Arch Linux 0.7.1 - my feedback

please read the post before vote
Well, I've used Arch linux for many months in late 2004 / early 2005 and then I've switched to Ubuntu...
some days ago I've installed version 0.7.1 and updated it with pacman -Syu
I've seen a lot of improvement since the last time I used it and I was near to think "ok let's switch back to Arch" until I found I that thing I really hate :!: is still here..
You can't install old versions of some packages. For example, kernel.. or.. php (ok there is one in Aur that is maybe "too" old) and mysql..
in the php/mysql example it's true that version 5 is the latest one but they (at least php) still develope the 4.x version for security and many server still have it and also many scripts supports only php4 and 5.
also, as I am a php developer, I need to test scripts with old versions.
but as I said this is just an example. I think that while you can't think to have a big repository of binaries it would be great to be able to install old versions via source.
and recompiling software by hand using old PKGBUILDS is a problem case you don't have a tool that tells you wich packaged were "aligned" with wich.. I mean.. the new php works only with the mysql5 extension so even if you build mysql by yourself it won't work with php.. and so on for apache..
anyway.. if a user is able to block a package and prevent the automatic update he should also be able to use the non-latest version of it.
I know that arch is a bleeding edge distro but this shouldn't mean that you have only the bleeding things. (see gentoo for example)
Another thing that will help a lot in my opinion is to have in the wiki 2 lists:
- one very detailed with available daemons and their use.. for example.. ok.. fam is the file alteration monitor.. but why you need it and wich are the main programs that takes advantage from it and what happens if you doesn't run it? and so on for hal, etc. ..
- one list with all available standard groups that tells user to wich group subscribe in order to be able to performe a specific action
imho this 2 lists will help the (new) user understand better what is doing and why The arch philosophy of "do it yourself and learn doing it" is great but have to be encouraged, and in fact there already is a very good documentation.
Just my 2 cents. And sorry if some one else already said this before; in this case take my post as an underline mark btw.. I'll attach a poll to it.
bye,
Giovanni.

iphitus wrote:To me this thread looks more like "i dont want to make a second package for myself, so let's get the devs to do it".
hmm.. this sounds a bit offenisve to me. Cause I don't actually need that packages as I'm not using Arch as main distro. This post was meant to give a feedback..
iphitus wrote:Especially as there isnt a huge demand for such a package, and you are most likely to be one of a very small minority to use that duplicate package.
ok I agree with this. but from my point of view it is because users that needed it too already switched to another distro..
and this leads us to this:
tomk wrote:I voted "No, there is no need", because I think this is simply an indication that Arch is not the right distro for you - it doesn't meet your requirements.
Imho, the point is that Arch have a lot of great features. The one I'd like to have is a feature that I think will just increase the number of great features Arch already have and will make Arch the right distro for more users. So users that switch to another distro will lose a lot of features that they like to get one or two that they need..
tomk wrote:This "thing that you really hate" is still there because firstly the Arch devs, and secondly Arch users, have not needed to change it. If you want to work "from within" to change that, with polls like this, feature requests, etc, I wish you the best of luck, but I think your poll result so far should tell you something about the support you can expect.
the poll was mainly for myself to get an idea of the users opinion not to change the things. And as I said it is not a change from my point of view, but just a new feature. About Arch devs I agree but about users I don't.. how you can say it if you say to me that I should change distro? In this way people that thinks like me will always remain a minority in arch community. And I don't think that having a old version of a "core" package would be against the Arch philosophy.
tomk wrote:Finally a general point, and this applies to wiki entries as well - you will get a better response if you do something, and then ask "what do you think?" instead of asking "Why doesn't Arch do this?"
I did it for the software thing with the poll and anyway also for the wiki I didn't wrote it but I thought it was clear.. For the wiki I posted my idea and there was no need for the question "what do you think" cause is a discussion forum Also please keep in mind that I wrote the original post in late night and that I'm italian so my english isn't so good :oops:
anyway.. thanks for the tip about subit a feature request and for your answers.
bye,
Giovanni.

Bullet Proof Arch System

Hi Arch community.
I have a VPS running Arch (its only for personal use, portfolio hosting, some storage) which i first set up exactly a month ago.
Just like someone said on the IRC (sorry random helper, i don't remember your name, no credits today ) arch is perfectly good to go for a 24/7 system if properly set, and after some research (like discovering that xyne's almost been in jail and Allan breaks stuff on a daily basis) i concluded Arch is a good choice for the job. (Since i can handle very occasional bugs, and have time to maintain once a week)
This whole month my Arch setup ran mainly OpenSSH, Apache, VSFTP, OpenVPN and (unsuccessfully) Postfix with near to no additional configuration, and it was completely trouble-free.
I had even asked for help to a script kiddie to verify if he could "blow that guy's server" and he told it was impossible (lol'd hard knowing i didn't even had a firewall installed)
And so i decided to go to the long run with it, so I'll start by building the system from the bottom with security on mind. But i think its better to ask to the more experienced than to search the web for "randobuntu" guides, and so i want to ask to the community:
- How would you setup Arch for a computer that you physically don't possess (and don't know who does or what they do with it) that you could be comfortable to put your "super-secret-and-personal-files" on it?
- I also would like to make a list of good security practices on a server setup (I mean, others than: "Don't use root")
Right now i got these(With the help of https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/security):
I'm thinking in 3/4 partitions:
- /boot formatted with EXT2 [It's impossible to crypt the bootloader, am i wrong?; Should/Can i merge it to the '/'?]
- / probably formatted with EXT4 [Should i crypt the whole thing? Will it generate too much overhead? It's EXT4 the best for the whole setup?]
- /var with encrypted EXT2 [Any better choice?]
- /home being handled by Truecrypt with EXT4 format [Should i use it? Is AES-TWOFISH+Whirlpool a good pick? Truecrypt should be stronger than the kernel encryption, am i wrong?]
- /boot, /var, /tmp and /home with nodev, nosuid and noexec. [i didn't quite understood what nosuid does]
All of the encrypted partitions with the exception of home using Ecryptfs [Good choice? Should i stack with some other algorithm? Where should the mount parameters (password or keyfile mainly) be to be safe?]
[How can / be encrypted without the password being in clear text on /boot?]
Which bootloader should be used to ensure safety, and how will it be ensured on a remote system?
On the wiki there is:
ArchWiki wrote:It is highly important to protect your bootloader. There is a magic kernel parameter called init=/bin/sh. This makes any user/login restrictions totally useless.
What does this?
The used kernel should be the linux-lts or linux-selinux (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-selinux/)?
I think that SELinux is a bonus, but the AUR package is... an AUR package (i would like to avoid them when possible) and it is not even an LTS kernel.
For the firewall I'm thinking in using UFW since it's much simpler than configuring directly iptables and does the same job.
Everything blocked except the ports 20,21,25,80,143,443,465,587,993,{unknown SSH and VPS ports}/tcp and 53/udp for incoming. What about outgoing?
Also
chmod 700 /boot /etc/{iptables,arptables}
Every possible network service having its own fingerprint as removed as possible [Eg. Just "Apache" instead of "Apache x.x.x mod_something Unknown GNU/Linux x86_64... etc"]
SSH with root login disabled, and rejecting connections from anywhere else than server's own ip.(A VPN should be used to use SSH)
Also set a login timeout with bash "TMOUT" and disable login to accounts after 3 failed login attempts.
Use sudo to administer, only allowing one or certain users to execute the programs that may harm the system, if possible users with uncommon names instead of "admin".
Login with certificates instead of a password.
VSFTP and Postfix with virtual users and system users disabled. [Good idea?]
I think OpenVPN is always safe since it enforces CA's to auth. Right?
What MAC should be used? SELinux? [I understand almost nothing about them]
After all there measures, would you guys trust this system for your files?
What can the ISP/Goverment do that ignores all of those measures? Directly reading RAM looking for filesystem passoword? Replace the kernel with one containing a rootkit?
Any other ways to break this?
PS: Xyne's and Allan's thing was an obvious joke
Last edited by ClaudioP (2013-12-26 07:23:02)

Leonid.I wrote:Typical encryption schemes when /boot is stored on the same HDD as the encrypted root are flawed. Indeed, if the kernel and initramfs are not encrypted, I can replace them and leak your encryption key. Therefore, for the system encryption to be effective (i.e. not only protect your data if the system is stolen, but also protect the system from unauthorised physical access), you must separate kernel and bootloader from the system, and store them in a safe place.
Then encryption just becomes useless after all, unless the files are encrypted on a different computer.
How could /boot be on a different computer? Can I boot with the /boot partition on a network? Like if it was PXE/NFS?
Leonid.I wrote:
ClaudioP wrote:All of the encrypted partitions with the exception of home using Ecryptfs [Good choice? Should i stack with some other algorithm? Where should the mount parameters (password or keyfile mainly) be to be safe?]
No. If the underlying partition is encrypted, what's the point of ecryptfs?
I saw somewhere on the wiki that there are setups with two layers of encryption. I don't know its effectiveness.
Leonid.I wrote:[...] a properly encrypted installation, doesn't even have a bootloader.
Forgive the noob question, but how can a system be booted without bootloader? Can MBR be linked directly to the kernel? Whats the difference?
Leonid.I wrote:If you can't learn iptables, don't try to secure the system.
I've read somewhere that in the close future iptables will be replaced(don't know when nor whats the replacement). I don't want to spend loads of time on something temporary.
And whats the difference between using iptables and UFW and Iptables? Doesn't UFW uses iptables? Sorry if im the kind on newbie who just knows the basics (65k ports, in and out)
Leonid.I wrote:Nmap can do a deep portscan of all 2^16 ports in less than 3min, so messing with default ports will only give you a headache when administering the system.
My bad. I was thinking of doing it in the services only accessible by the VPN, but then there would be no point on doing it
Leonid.I wrote:Before making everything 600 root:root, ask yourself what would an attacker learn from your iptables.rules and ssd_config? That you block certain ports and have ssh login grace time 30sec? A good security doesn't rely on secrecy of the configuration.
I was basing myself on what i found on the wiki. What you said makes sense.
By the way, whats best to do with rejected connections? Deny them or reject them?
Leonid.I wrote:Any attacker with more than 2 neurons will try to exploit all known vulnerabilities in the last 10 versions of Apache. If you know that your service is vulnerable, patch it, don't try to hide.
But there aren't many more in use counting with backports and between every distro? (Not to mention that Arch is a very uncommon distro for a server)
Leonid.I wrote:
ClaudioP wrote:SSH with root login disabled, and rejecting connections from anywhere else than server's own ip.(A VPN should be used to use SSH)
Also set a login timeout with bash "TMOUT" and disable login to accounts after 3 failed login attempts.
Right, no root over SSH -- this is common wisdom. May I ask why is SSH root login bad? Because some blogger said so? Create a 4096 bit ssh key with a passphrase and use it exclusively for system administration.
Also, why 3 attemtps and not 1? Are you trying to hide an unfolding attack from yourself? If I am running am internet-facing server, I want to be able to profile an attack. For example, if you see login attempts with login/passwd pairs root/root or ubuntu/ubuntu -- this is a kid -- pay attention but not too much. If the passwords are more complicated, you might have a problem...
But then if for some reason the key is intercepted there would be a free access to the privileged account, not for some unprivileged account that would have to use su to become root.
Oh i see, the 3 attempts were meant for a multi-user system with common passwords, not for someone using cryptographic keys.
Why would the complicated password mean something bad? Couldn't be an idiot try of brute-force?(IDK, some dumb program that doesn't starts with 0 or A)
What else could the "complicated passwords" mean? Give an example please.
Leonid.I wrote:Just because using sudo for priviledge escalation is a folk knowledge doesn't make it right. But if you are going to use it, read this first:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/owl-users/2004/10/20/6 .
I partially understood it. Not fully since English is not my mother language, but mostly.
Leonid.I wrote:
ClaudioP wrote:After all there measures, would you guys trust this system for your files?
No.
Moral after all: Never(some emphasis on NEVER) trust a remote system to encrypt your files in safety
Leonid.I wrote:
ClaudioP wrote:Any [...] ways to break this?
[...]The question which you should ask is whether the hassle of breaking your security is worth stealing your SSN and $20K in your bank account.
Then nobody receiving less than 1k$ a month or doing anti-government propaganda would be affected by the NSA and the other well known parties.
I'm not too much into the topic, but AFAIK(which is not certain to be right) there are much more people affected.
/dev/zero wrote:No security system is perfect. You need to consider the costs of your time, effort and money and weigh them against the risks of various kinds of attacks.
Right now (since it's impossible to prevent against against physical attacks) I'll forget about local encryption, it just becomes useless. I'll just encrypt personal files before upload.
By the way, is there any encryption utility that works file by file and not with a container? I don't want to upload the entire container every time i change something.
ewaller wrote:Well, one can slow them down a bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_security_module
Sorry but the hardware is not mine and i am not rich
If i was i would not be concerning about security

Why is Arch trending up?

I just went to the distrowatch page and I noticed that for the default 6 month listing Arch is in 10th place. That seems awfully high. Then I went to view the last 7 days detail and arch is in 5th place with over 1000 H.P.D. Is there something going on in the Arch community lately that is causing this high traffic? I've been out of the loop since exams started.

ngoonee wrote:
You may want to reconsider that, sand_man. Give Arch half a million members and the forums would be overflowing with "X DOESN'T WORK WTF!!!" type questions, and many questions would be answered immediately with tangential solutions which are at best workarounds or hacks.
Case-in-point the official forums for a certain popular-distro-which-should-not-be-named. I found gems there, but the forum was just a mess.
Maybe there should be a completely separate "newbie" forum where all newcomers have to post until they reach a certain post count. Kind of like a chroot jail, or it could be "chroot probation." All issues from all newcomers go in there. Once a user has a certain number of posts (25, 50, 100, whatever) they "graduate" to being able to post in the main forum.
Not that post count itself means much -- and I definitely don't mean it in any elitist sense -- but you have to use something. It wouldn't guarantee anything, but it might cut down on the forums getting flooded with a lot of stuff that otherwise would all be contained in a single newcomer forum. It would also automatically "weed out" those who are just distro hopping and trying arch out for a while or out of curiosity, but who soon leave.
Another benefit is that the newbie forum could be easily scanned to provide quick, targeted help to newcomers. Not that that doesn't happen now, but I think a forum dedicated to relatively easy newbie issues would not only make it easier to provide stealth help but also serve as a great info resource for newcomers, kind of like a second wiki, or a cross between a forum and a wiki.
Perhaps most importantly for the long term, I think when the person finally did "graduate" to the main forum, a sense of accomplishment, belonging, etc. would come with that and make the person psychologically more invested in keeping the main forum operating smoothly. Win-win all around.

Building my Arch: is Enlightenment17 for me?

Dear Arch Community,
I'm moving from Linux Ubuntu with the standard GNOME inteface and I want to start using Arch Linux for reasons that I probably don't have to spell out here. I've been making my way through the documentation, and have pretty much gotten stuck on choosing a Desktop Environment. While I know I can just switch between several window managers, I'd feel much better if I had an impression of what I'm getting into before I make the leap. I've done a search and did not find something that gave me an answer I could feel satisfied with.
The situation is thus: I have a small Samsung netbook of modest capabilities that I work with on the road. Therefore I want a stable system that lets me do Office work, watch movies, listen to music and browse and there it mostly ends. I have been looking for a full-environment DE that is fast and work-oriented and especially low-resource.
I have used GNOME extensively and while it's not bad, it's too broad and bulky for my tastes and the displays tend to take up a lot of screen space. As a fan of GNOME Do I want to use such an application for my computer use.
If anyone could help me get perspective on how and what to choose I would appreciate it greatly, especially in the form of pros and cons and comparisons if possible.
Cheers,
Matsjo

Matsjo wrote:While I know I can just switch between several window managers, I'd feel much better if I had an impression of what I'm getting into before I make the leap. I've done a search and did not find something that gave me an answer I could feel satisfied with.
We discourage these sorts of threads because they invariably become a list of what individuals prefer: the Wiki has excellent entries on all of the DEs and most of the WMs: you are encouraged to read through those, look at the dedicated threads for WMs here on the boards, install a couple and make up your own mind.
Installing E17 or LXDE is not an irreversible choice - you can uninstall one or the other, or have both on the system and choose when you start X.
Closing.

Any Support for National Arch Users ?

Hey There,
We, as Turkish users of Arch Linux, want to contribute our very beloved distro for i18n, packaging and documentation. In order to accomplish this task, some of our friends have already made the move and bought http://www.archlinuxtr.org. But some of us think that since we're trying to create our community, it'd be the best if we could get a subdomain (http://tr.archlinux.org) and e-mail lists etc....
As far as I can see, Arch doesn't provide these things for its communities.. Is there a plan for this in the future or should we do it "arch way" ?

@T-u-N-i-X: Good luck! :-) At the moment I think it is best if every national Arch community is "self hosted". This has some advantages like less work and no additional need for resources for archlinux.org. In addition to this you keep your flexibility. BTW: Why not archlinux.tr?
@wonder: I am not sure if I understand you. But if you think creating national communities will split the entire arch community, you are wrong. :-) If done right the opposite is the case and such communities are a great addition to everybody.

Uncyclopedia Arch Linux Entry - Ubuntu Noobs

Seeing as Arch's community has a relatively significant population of (ex?) Ubuntu Noobs, I felt the urge to include a little splurge about it on Uncylopedia. The fact that I wrote it is a bit ironic, because I am an ex Ubuntu noob myself (used it for almost a year before I called it quits).
I'm posting this thread to see if my statements actually resonate with the Arch community or not really - and if anyone has serious objections to it I'll remove it. But hey, it's just a joke...
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Archlinux#Ubuntu_Noobs
edit: I doubt this is worth noting, but this is my first time using uncyclopedia so I hope I really hope you like it.
Last edited by vsk (2008-08-11 15:53:44)

vsk wrote:I'm posting this thread to see if my statements actually resonate with the Arch community or not really - and if anyone has serious objections to it I'll remove it. But hey, it's just a joke...
Methinks you don't quite yet have the right mindset to contribute to Uncyclopedia.
(head here or here for some good pointers to get you started)

Arch Linux Pumpkin Carving!

After seeing Best Halloween Pumpkin Carvings from Ghost1227's blog, it inspired me to do a unique pumpkin carving this year. Looking through the archive of awesome pumpkin carvings, of course I didn't see Arch Linux (but there was Tux fortunately). So I wanted to make that carving! I planned this days ahead, thinking how the design should be. I did a practice carving before I did this one, which I made several mistakes on. Considering that was only practice, this second one came out much better! Happy Halloween!
Wallpapers:
1280x1024
Last edited by Acecero (2009-10-31 03:24:06)

Well I did two more pumpkin carvings at the last minute before the tricker treaters arrive.
One of them is a taco, because of how much significance tacos have in the Arch community! I hope you like it, I also included the moldy Arch Linux carving as well.
Last edited by Acecero (2009-11-01 02:20:36)

What is the best Desktop Environment in Arch Linux?

Hello, Arch Community! I am having troubble desiding which DE to install on my new Arch box. I have narrowed it down to KDE, GNOME, and Xfce.
I like KDE's customization but I also like GNOME's simplicity. Xfce is lightweight, but in previous experience GNOME apps such as NetworkManagerApplet don't run that well with it and I had troubble with Compiz Fusion in Xfce. Please help me decide. Please don't tell me that it is 'apples and oranges' or any crap like that. I just want an answer that talks about performance and customization, etc.
BTW I am glad to return to Arch after getting sick of Fedora's massive updates. I am in love with Arch's rolling release cycle.
Last edited by theDBANfan (2009-07-26 03:00:32)

you dont even need a proper desktop environment, thats part of the reason i like arch so much, you can use ~/.xinitrc as your own personal desktop environment.
just put what you want in your ~/.xinitrc
this is mine
xbindkeys &
lxde-settings-daemon &
xfdesktop &
xfwm4 &
xfce4-panel &
exec ck-launch-session startlxde
i have the minimal lxde install (just lxde-common, lxde-settings-daemon & lxsession-lite + lxapperance for my themes) so all my settings like themes etc... are loaded on boot then i just added the panel i wanted, the window manager i wanted etc...
if you want a fast minimal install with only the apps you want then do something similar, load somekind of settings manager so all your settings are loaded every time you boot then pick and choose you favorite panel, window manager etc...

UK Arch Community gathering momentum

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