I don't actually have clamd scanning my computer. I just scan pretty much all downloads. Firefox can do this automatically which is handy. (Anything not got via pacman/aurget/makepkg/texlive etc.) Having antivirus installed and active is a requirement for being allowed access to the university network though I don't think it is really enforced for non-Windows. I've only ever found false positives though in the past I used to get a lot of viruses via email but they never got as far as being scanned as they never actually got downloaded onto my machine.
I'm not familiar with dwb at all. I mostly use Firefox which is moderately well supported on campus and is available in Welsh.
Weirdly, one of the things I miss most on Linux (apart from decent PDF support which is frankly abysmal) is alpine. Although I could use this, I can't figure out a way to make it use a centralised password system. Then again, centralised password system doesn't seem to be in play anyway. (I don't want to tie myself to KWallet or whatever it is called since I guess that's KDE specific.) I miss the Keychain Access app. from OS X. Alpine actually integrated with it beautifully. I don't really like graphical email programmes.
]]>I was going by this comment from the wiki
Systems with Phoenix SecureCore Tiano UEFI firmware are known to have embedded UEFI Shell which can be launched using either F6, F11 or F12 key.
All I can say is that if this is really true, they've certainly hidden it extremely well .
I too came across this quote and tried repeatedly to get to this fabled shell. I even went so far as to check and recheck to make sure I truly had a Pheonix SecureCore Tiano UEFI setup. I knew it was UEFI and I knew it was Pheonix, but I brought up the informational boot screen several times to make sure I had read it correctly.
It is nice to hear that the system admins at your work understand that their support of ms only puts the at the greatest security risk. It is even nicer to hear that because of this they think it no problem to let you access the network with any *nix based system. When I was looking through the systemd boot times I noticed you were running clamd and it was super slow to boot. But now I understand why you find it necessary to do this, as you run the risk of infecting the school's network if you don't. I keep clamav installed to disinfect my family's machines, but I only run/refresh it in times of need.
So you have any idea what you want to put on your work system? It sounds like (at the moment at least) it might be better for your overall productivity if you go with one of those simple, do everything for you, kind of distros. I think Arch would have done well a few months back, but with all the recent changes, it just seems like it might take too much maintenance during this time of transformation. Don't get me wrong, I wil never leave Arch, but I also do not use this machine for much more than tinkering, word processing, internet, etc. You are right though that Gentoo/Funtoo would simply be too much to bear for a work computer I think. Just the compiling alone during upgrades would be pretty terrible to deal with.
I have been doing some reading about opensuse though. Apparently they have a new(ish?) repository called tumbleweed, and it basically turns an existing opensuse install into a rolling release. From what I have read, their users willing to try it have had very good experiences with it. I really cannot see myself going back to another 6-month release cycle, as I feel I have just been way too spoiled by Arch's rolling release. So I was thinking about checking that out... maybe a project for a Sunday afternoon. I will let you know how it goes if I get around to it.
As for the chromium thing, I actually don't use chromium or firefox. I may have mentioned in the above post, but I am a dwb user. For a bit I was trying to find as many programs with vim keybindings as possible and ended up with that. I do keep a couple other browsers on my machine for emergencies or when other people need to look something up quickly. I tried only having dwb and luakit on my computer, but when a friend wanted to check their email, I basically had to do it for them because they couldn't figure out how to do anything.
]]>There are some odd things, though. Officially, Windows is supported, Macs are kind of a little bit supported for certain things e.g. network access but, well, not beyond that. (And certainly nobody in my school can opt to have a Mac unless it is their personal property.) Linux is "best effort" and recently network access support consists of "you're welcome to configure it to access the network using the generic information provided" (whereas they used to provide instructions for Ubuntu, at least).
On the other hand, if you have a laptop (at least your own), officially, you aren't entitled to use the wired network. But if it does not run Windows, I've found you can persuade somebody to approve it - they think you are much less likely to infect the network if you are running OS X or Linux. This is actually quite handy. But letting me install Linux on their machine - yes, that's a further step and quite surprising.
I've been told it supports 64 bit so maybe it is really core2 duo or something. I don't really know much about intel chips in between the i486 and the i3 as everything I had in between was PPC! Gentoo etc. are out. I need something which I can maintain relatively easily and quickly for this machine. I don't want to have to think about it too much else I'll never actually get any work done!
I don't know about Chromium but I don't use Arch's build of Firefox - I get it straight from Mozilla. The binaries work fine (almost always). I keep Arch's as a backup and would go back to it if it ever works properly but until then I use Mozilla's. Slightly more faff but it only needs to be unzipped in an appropriate place under /usr/local. (I got 15.0.1 in place before my Arch version was updated this time.)
Shame about the shell - I was hoping it might let me reboot without a key if I forget and wipe the BIOS entries without thinking. I've already done this once to fix bluetooth. Luckily, I had a key to hand but that was just luck.
I was going by this comment from the wiki
Systems with Phoenix SecureCore Tiano UEFI firmware are known to have embedded UEFI Shell which can be launched using either F6, F11 or F12 key.
All I can say is that if this is really true, they've certainly hidden it extremely well .
]]>I certinaly hope that your computer continues to reboot in a normal fashion. Is this also a result of your bios reset, or did you experience this before you proceeded with that? I have to say that when reading your last post I was a bit stunned for a second when you said that it rendered your comptuer unbootable, until I read the next sentence and realized that you were referring to the steps that were fully expected after a bios reset.
Now that you ahve sorted out (hopefully) the real issues of your system, namely the reboot, I don't know that there is a real reason to go about getting an install on a usb or flash card working. If everything works as it should now, I don't know that you can actually use a test like that as a comparison.
Regarding the work computer, I am very suprised that they are allowing you to install Linux on your system. In my mind, if an employee is more comfortable (and proficient) with a given operating system, supported or not, it makes sense to let them use it. But alas, most companies are not willing to potentially relinquish such control to their employees, and I think that some even feel threatened by someone who uses Linux, fearing that they will then be hacked! It makes me laugh and cry at the same time.
I assume though that you still have your Thinkpad, and teh Core Duo is simply a work only machine. I would certainly hope they would not take away an awesome laptop and give you a mediocre desktop to replace it. I would take that core duo in a heartbeat though if it meant that I could install Linux over windows though. You are going to have to go i686 then? From my Mac days I recall the core duo being 32 bit and it wasn't until the core2 duo that the processors were 64 bit.
About the second distro thing, I am still looking. I like the whole idea behind Gentoo/Funtoo, but I really would like a binary option. I don't mind installing some things from source, but there are a few things that I would hate having to recompile on every update. For instance one of the bloated web browsers liek firefox or chromium... god forbid I have both installed. I guess right now I am using dwb which compiles in no time since it is so tiny. But I find that it doesn't do some things correctly, so have to have a backup "common" browser just in case. I also like how vanilla Slackware is, but again the source based thing gets me and the lack of dependency management I could do, but I don't particularly like it. I actually think that FreeBSD would fit my needs since their ports system is source based, but also includes some binary packages in repositories. But upon reseraching, I found that my new wireless card does not work with freebsd (yet?). It is an Intel card, so presumably it should be fixed soon.
The reason I would like pacman installed on any secondary system I have is so that I can easily do maintenance on my main Arch install from my secondary install. If I end up using Gentoo, I would also probably put portage/emerge on my Arch install as well. I was thinking about putting a small emergency distro on my system, like your Finnix, but if I could simply have to full distros with their respective package managers on each other, it would make things very easy indeed. Gentoo's portage actually has pacman in its repositories, and I just checked and we have gentoo's portage in AUR.
I was actually thinking that if I end up doing dual Arch, I might give kde a try. I tried it once before when the lastest (4.x?) was pretty new, and I really did not enjoy it. But I have heard good things about the progress of kde since then. I will admit though that at that time I was a gnome user and gnome3 was pretty horrible as well. I think at least with kde I was able to change the ui a bit to make things a bit better. I guess that is ultimately why I ended up just using a simple wm though.
So my machine ships with the pheonix bios as well. I was unable to find any reference to an included shell on this system though. I googled like mad and searched through the bios itself, but found nothing. So that is why I installed the shell myself. I launch it the same way I would launch Arch if it weren't the first in my boot order. I hit f12 to get to the boot menu and there I created an entry with efibootmgr for it. So when you reset your bios, you would ahve the same issue of having to recreate the entries, but for times when you want to launch straight from the efi system partition (like with a usb stick), it makes it super easy. I think that if there were an included shell, you would see an option to get to it included in that boot menu by default. And so far I have not found that option listed under any circumstances. My initial assumption was that when I installed Linux and formatted the drive, I also did away with the included shell. But I got recovery discs and restored the system to its original state because I was bored one day, and I still didn't find it. That is actually part of the reason I have a bunch of space to dedicate to a secondary distro.
Wow, that was a lot longer than anticipated....
]]>Reset BIOS, rendered machine unbootable. Reconfigured BIOS, rebooted with Arch media, rendered machine bootable...
When bluetooth is available, I get this from lsusb:
Bus 001 Device 003: ID <id> Broadcom Corp. Bluetooth Controller
Is the ID really sensitive? Or is it generic? Why doesn't it surprise me that something from Broadcom would cause trouble? (I was pretty sure it was Broadcom but wasn't sure how to check before.)
I guess it is generic and I could have left it, judging by the output from lsusb (I assume the serial is the sensitive bit) but just in case:
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0a5c:217f Broadcom Corp. Bluetooth Controller
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 2.00
bDeviceClass 224 Wireless
bDeviceSubClass 1 Radio Frequency
bDeviceProtocol 1 Bluetooth
bMaxPacketSize0 64
idVendor <id> Broadcom Corp.
idProduct <id> Bluetooth Controller
bcdDevice 7.48
iManufacturer 1 Broadcom Corp
iProduct 2 Broadcom Bluetooth Device
iSerial 3 <serial number>
bNumConfigurations 1
Configuration Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 2
wTotalLength 216
bNumInterfaces 4
bConfigurationValue 1
iConfiguration 0
bmAttributes 0xe0
Self Powered
Remote Wakeup
MaxPower 0mA
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 0
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 3
bInterfaceClass 224 Wireless
bInterfaceSubClass 1 Radio Frequency
bInterfaceProtocol 1 Bluetooth
iInterface 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN
bmAttributes 3
Transfer Type Interrupt
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0010 1x 16 bytes
bInterval 1
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN
bmAttributes 2
Transfer Type Bulk
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes
bInterval 1
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x02 EP 2 OUT
bmAttributes 2
Transfer Type Bulk
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes
bInterval 1
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 1
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 2
bInterfaceClass 224 Wireless
bInterfaceSubClass 1 Radio Frequency
bInterfaceProtocol 1 Bluetooth
iInterface 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x83 EP 3 IN
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0000 1x 0 bytes
bInterval 1
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x03 EP 3 OUT
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0000 1x 0 bytes
bInterval 1
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 1
bAlternateSetting 1
bNumEndpoints 2
bInterfaceClass 224 Wireless
bInterfaceSubClass 1 Radio Frequency
bInterfaceProtocol 1 Bluetooth
iInterface 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x83 EP 3 IN
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0009 1x 9 bytes
bInterval 1
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x03 EP 3 OUT
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0009 1x 9 bytes
bInterval 1
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 1
bAlternateSetting 2
bNumEndpoints 2
bInterfaceClass 224 Wireless
bInterfaceSubClass 1 Radio Frequency
bInterfaceProtocol 1 Bluetooth
iInterface 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x83 EP 3 IN
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0011 1x 17 bytes
bInterval 1
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x03 EP 3 OUT
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0011 1x 17 bytes
bInterval 1
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 1
bAlternateSetting 3
bNumEndpoints 2
bInterfaceClass 224 Wireless
bInterfaceSubClass 1 Radio Frequency
bInterfaceProtocol 1 Bluetooth
iInterface 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x83 EP 3 IN
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes
bInterval 1
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x03 EP 3 OUT
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes
bInterval 1
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 1
bAlternateSetting 4
bNumEndpoints 2
bInterfaceClass 224 Wireless
bInterfaceSubClass 1 Radio Frequency
bInterfaceProtocol 1 Bluetooth
iInterface 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x83 EP 3 IN
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes
bInterval 1
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x03 EP 3 OUT
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes
bInterval 1
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 1
bAlternateSetting 5
bNumEndpoints 2
bInterfaceClass 224 Wireless
bInterfaceSubClass 1 Radio Frequency
bInterfaceProtocol 1 Bluetooth
iInterface 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x83 EP 3 IN
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes
bInterval 1
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x03 EP 3 OUT
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes
bInterval 1
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 2
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 2
bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class
bInterfaceSubClass 255 Vendor Specific Subclass
bInterfaceProtocol 255 Vendor Specific Protocol
iInterface 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x84 EP 4 IN
bmAttributes 2
Transfer Type Bulk
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes
bInterval 1
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x04 EP 4 OUT
bmAttributes 2
Transfer Type Bulk
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes
bInterval 1
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 3
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 0
bInterfaceClass 254 Application Specific Interface
bInterfaceSubClass 1 Device Firmware Update
bInterfaceProtocol 1
iInterface 0
Device Firmware Upgrade Interface Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 33
bmAttributes 7
Will Not Detach
Manifestation Tolerant
Upload Supported
Download Supported
wDetachTimeout 5000 milliseconds
wTransferSize 64 bytes
Device Status: 0x0001
Self Powered
I'm wondering if reenabling it will mean I start to see issues again... The bluetooth seems really buggy in linux or this machine or both... (I had trouble with bluetooth under linux on my last laptop - kernel panics on boot.)
Ah yes, I do recall now skimming over stuff about your gpt/bios issues in your super uefi thread. That is rather interesting... I didn't read that whole thread in its entirety, but out of curiosity, were you trying only grub, or did you try other bootloaders as well?
Just grub.
In any case, I think that if you set up the usb key to be mbr+uefi, I think it will still serve the same purpose of testing your hardware. I think that if it proves functional, then at least you know that you are not dealing with a hw issue. I guess that would still leave you questioning whether it is an uefi issue, but I think that would only apply to the bluetooth. From what you have told me, I think that the issues with systemd should be able to be tested independent of the booting method.
Maybe I'll have another go. I probably need to redo the install to do this, though...
Interestingly, I never even thought to try and find the package with those tools. I just used pkgfile and realised that they are in arch-install-scripts. At one point I had simply searched w/ pacman for pacstrap, came up empty and moved on. I guess those would be a handy tool to have.
They seem useful. Saved remembering and typing the string of commands for chrooting which I usually need to reenable booting after reenabling bluetooth on the machine, for example!
Besides, with a i5 2.5ghz w/ 3.1ghz "turbo power" or whatever you call it, my system is pretty speedy.
Lucky you. IT just gave my i3 work machine to my new office mate and have found me a core duo somebody else is chucking out. Hardly ever used the i3 mind and they will let me put linux on the older one so it will be infinitely more useful. They also gave my monitor to the same person, gave me another discard, then came back and gave me a different discard which is identical to my previous monitor. Still, I suppose I'm lucky to have a computer at all... (And I'm definitely lucky to have been told I can put linux on the thing. Normally they are a standard Windows XP image - sometimes with admin rights, often not.)
The only thing I can think that I would really like about Funtoo/Gentoo is having an up to date pacman in Portage. But then, really i can install pacman on whatever distro manually. I ahve to do a bit more searching, but I keep thinking I am going to fail and simply install another arch next to my arch (probably with a different setup like maybe a full DE).
Would be interested to know what you find. I have been meaning to put a second OS on this machine. I've been wondering, too, about doing the opposite i.e. arch + a minimal set up! What's the advantage of having pacman installed on another distro, though?
About that part, I think that is where the uefi shell would really come in handy.
I've thought for some time this would be handy but how do you launch it? According to the wiki my firmware is supposed to include a shell already which I assume means I shouldn't need to install anything. And it suggests launching it with, I think. F1/F6 or F11 but F1 is BIOS setup, F6 makes no difference and I'm pretty sure I've tried F11 with the same results.
]]>I installed pacstrap and friends and used them to do the install.
Interestingly, I never even thought to try and find the package with those tools. I just used pkgfile and realised that they are in arch-install-scripts. At one point I had simply searched w/ pacman for pacstrap, came up empty and moved on. I guess those would be a handy tool to have. I have been trying to find an suitable distro to put beside my arch install, so I installed Funtoo. After compiling the kernel, I realised again why I had moved away from it in the first place. I do really like the USE variable, but I think that I can really achieve the same thing with ABS and some planning. Also, I have read time and again that with x86_64, machine optimized software does not provide the same advantage as it used to. Besides, with a i5 2.5ghz w/ 3.1ghz "turbo power" or whatever you call it, my system is pretty speedy. The only thing I can think that I would really like about Funtoo/Gentoo is having an up to date pacman in Portage. But then, really i can install pacman on whatever distro manually. I ahve to do a bit more searching, but I keep thinking I am going to fail and simply install another arch next to my arch (probably with a different setup like maybe a full DE).
I was actually trying to make the USB key independently bootable but I'm not sure how possible that is.
About that part, I think that is where the uefi shell would really come in handy. Assuming that your existing efi system partition would show up as the first, it would be labeled FS0:, and then the efi system partition on your usb key would be FS1: and from there it is kind of like a dos shell. So you navigate to the directory housing the *.efi and launch it appended by any kernel command like params you would like. Otherwise I think it would be as simple as putting an efibootmgr entry in specifying the disk and part as your usb drive. I know that there are reports everywhere that udev likes to randomly assign identifiers to your hardware (like my first drive as sda and second as sdb), but i have actually never seen my machine do this. Still I use UUID's, but presumably it couild throw a wrench in creating an efibootgmr entry if your disk is /dev/sdb or whatever.
]]>I installed pacstrap and friends and used them to do the install. I figured I might as well practise a little with them. pacstrap is just a wrapper for pacman but it is rather convenient since it creates necessary directories, copies any available mirrorlist and pacman key etc. It does some other things whose purpose I'm not quite clear about but the basic set up is as you say.
I can't set up both bios and efi to boot this machine, I don't think. Unless it is actually on the key - that works. Because I never could get gpt + bios to work on this laptop. (mbr + bios works or gpt + efi.)
]]>Do you literally just give pacman a different root for the USB key? Or did you use the pacstrap magic from the latest isos?
Yeah, it is simple really, I think pacstrap is just a wrapper around pacman that sets up the necessary directories in /var if required, and then installs while specifying the root (which the user specifies) and the cache directory. Assuming that you mounted your system on /mnt/root, all you have to do is this:
# pacman -S <package> -r /mnt/arch --cachedir /mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg
I would think that Finnix would need to have to have bluetooth simply for the keyboard/mouse setups that are so common today, just as you speculated. You have to figure that it needs to support as many hw configs as possible and, for instance, Arch's kernle package is only 60MB installed which seems to support anything I can throw at it.
]]>Finnix is a pretty minimal rescue system. I haven't checked but I rather doubt it includes bluetooth. (Though maybe it would for keyboards... hmm... Will have to check.)
KDM controls shutdown and reboot via commands set in the config file, /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc. I switched these to systemctl commands. KDE has a GUI for setting various power-related options so e.g. you can tell it to do something when the lid is closed or the power button pressed. There are no visible options for specifying the command and I'm not sure where these are configured. I assume it picks up shutdown/reboot from KDM but I'm not sure what it uses for sleep. There's also no obvious reason it should do anything with the sleep button but if it is not KDE, I don't know what it is. I also don't know why KDE should suddenly handle the sleep button now that systemd is installed when I needed acpid for that before.
Do you literally just give pacman a different root for the USB key? Or did you use the pacstrap magic from the latest isos?
I'm not really a student. I sort of teach. I know some of what I'm doing this year - a little - but the rest is rather hazy. Very much wish they would make up their minds whether they want to employ me or not... The class I know I'm teaching starts 1st October provided I get enough students... (They have just put the fees up yet again so I'm not sure this is very likely.)
]]>So how is it that KDE controls shutdown and reboot? Does it then control the power button as well? If so it seems very odd that it's settings would be separate from the sleep button.
With all these problems you are having, I am kind of wondering if you should maybe try a fresh install on a usb key or a sdcard, install systemd and see what issues it has under absolute newness. I find that the install process is pretty simple now with the chroot and con totally be done from your existing system. So it is kind of nice that I can say "I want to install another Arch to this partition..." and not even have to reboot. It reminds me a lot of the Gentoo/Funtoo install where you simply download a tarball and expand it in the root of your desired parition. Only you are instead using pacman to download a package at a time and expand it into a filesystem. I like the transparency of the install method rather than clicking a button and gettting near zero info until it tells you it is done.
I assume you are a student at university if you connect to Eduroam, do you start school soon or already started? If so I hope you can figure some of these things out before school gets into full swing.
]]>The remaining problem is that it sometimes stutters on resume from suspend if the lid is involved, at least. I can't reproduce this reliably - I don't think it is a straightforward case of using one thing or another to suspend. I suspect it is more complicated.
What I can't find out is how, exactly, KDE suspends, hibernates etc. I know how it tries to reboot and shutdown but I can't find info on how it sleeps or hibernates. (I haven't tried the latter with systemd - it is really much less of a priority for me.)
However, I then found I was getting two suspends with the sleep button. Under initscripts, acpid handled this and it worked fine. I've now disabled this function in acpid and now I just get one suspend. This is great but I really wish I knew what was causing it to sleep now because as far as I can tell, nothing should be doing so. In logind.conf, I've set:
#HandlePowerKey=no-session
#HandleSleepKey=tty-session
#HandleLidSwitch=off
HandleLidSwitch=tty-session
I figured there was no reason to leave the lid switch at "off" though I'm not sure if this is correct or not. The idea is that, following the wiki, KDM/KDE (somehow) handles the lid when running. Not following anything at all, some unknown something handles the sleep button at least in a desktop session - I haven't actually tried in tty-session. I don't know yet how stable this is.
Bluetooth is, however, driving me slowly nuts. It *should* be possible to unblock it, I think, but the radio function key on my laptop doesn't seem to work. (That is, under Linux. I assume there's nothing actually wrong with it.)
On the other hand, I suspect the bluetooth Linux stuff of causing havoc with power and systemd and although I can't prove this and don't have any real evidence, maybe systemd is not currently compatible with bluetooth with some hardware/configurations.
I want to understand more about what's going on with suspend etc. and why I can't reboot with systemd. I can reboot fine from Finnix with initscripts so I'm pretty sure this issue, at least, isn't hardware. (I'm beginning to suspect that it is ALL software, in fact. Or maybe BIOS + software. But I'm not, of course, at all certain...)
]]>I think I'm going to ignore netcfg for now. wicd has the enormous advantage of being one of the very few things which is "just working" right now. Right now, that's worth a log more than a few extra booting seconds - if it wanted 5 minutes, I'd be inclined to just make a cup of tea. (Right now, lots of cups of tea .)
I'm actually suspicious about the bluetooth stuff in Linux's kernel, too. I don't really trust the bluetooth stack in Linux - I've seen it cause some very nasty issues.
I think my priority right now is to try to rationalise my powersaving strategies and, especially, to figure out what on earth is going on with suspend (lid/button), reboot, shutdown, poweroff...
]]>% cat wireless-wpa-configsection
CONNECTION='wireless'
INTERFACE=wlan0
SECURITY='wpa-configsection'
# Uncomment this if your ssid is hidden
#HIDDEN=yes
IP='dhcp'
CONFIGSECTION='
ssid="University"
key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
eap=TTLS
group=TKIP
pairwise=TKIP CCMP
anonymous_identity="anonymous"
identity="myusername"
password="mypassword"
priority=1
phase2="auth=PAP"'
Regarding the warranty, I have to admit that even though Lenovo doesn't seem to know sh*t about Linux, at least they are willing to support Linux machines still. I have heard some horror stories of other companies refusing to even look at a machine w/o Windows on it. Seems pretty terrible that we live in a world where you are forced to support a company upon purchase of a machine, and then if you want the warranty that is gauranteed upon purchase, we are forced to actually *use* said company's software to recieve support. That is precisely why I have taken a liking to referring to then as the Microsoft Cartel... they just bully people into submission.
I think that the bluetooth thing is definitely suspicious... it might be worth a bit of in depth googling to see if other users of your machine experience the same problems. Because if so, then at least you know that it is a common bios issue that an update can fix, rather than a problem specific to your bios.
]]>