Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

occam · 2012-02-28 00:27:44

First time I tried out Arch it was a very nice experience. However, after some time my Arch system got confused (probably by unsynchronized updates) and I could not get it working again, so I gave up.
Now I have tried Arch again, and after half a year my Arch installation does not run anymore. There have been several strange symptoms:
* the upper left corner does not act as per System Settings (showing small windows of all open apps on one screen) - it does nothing
* chromium cannot be restarted in the normal way after having been closed. (But if I call for 'help' in calibre, it starts chromium without any problems)
* the 'holidays' section of the digital clock/calender shows US holidays and cannot be changed

Then I tried to use the integrated graphics of Intel i5-2400. But Xorg.0.log tells me that it cannot open the modules intel, vesa and fbdev - because the modules do not exist.

Finally, Arch can be started ok - but stops very soon, when it is to mount the root partition. "/dev/sda5 cannot be found" it says and dies. The partition can be found easily by e.g. Slackware (which I am using now), to check through the relevant log files

Is there a way of making it find /dev/sda5 (it came there from the boot partition on /dev/sda3)

If there is a way, then are there solutions to the other problems I have experienced?

Last edited by occam (2012-03-07 02:55:09)

jasonwryan · 2012-02-28 00:36:03

There are a whole heap of threads on the boards at the moment about the /dev/sdxx cannot be found. Once you fix that, you can move on to the other issues.

The symptoms you posted do not make any sense without context, ie., what DE or WM you are using and the rest of your setup. Once you have restored the ability to boot into your system, do a complete update from an up-to-date mirror, read all the items in the news and action them, and then you will likely find most of the other stuff is resolved.

Unsynchronized updates, as you have probably realized, are a recipe for fail.

desm0tes · 2012-02-28 00:40:03

You're saying "Arch", but you're actually talking about Gnome/KDE? (or just aspects of Gnome/KDE) - I can only assume this, Compiz does have a similar feature, though.
Gnome is a Desktop Environment that runs on top of a Linux, in this case Arch, Compiz is a Window Manager, that runs within a DE or standalone.

For second issue: Are you sure, you correctly closed down chromium? Start it via terminal to check for error messages.

For third issue: This is probably determined by the country specified in system settings.

For fourth issue: You might not have the intel drivers installed.

So please, when you post here, make sure you use the correct terms, so other people are able to understand what you mean and don't just have to guess.
And just one issue per thread as long as they aren't related in a way, so it doesn't get at messed up.

DSpider · 2012-02-28 07:39:37

What's the point of using a rolling release distribution if you're going to update it every 6 months?

occam · 2012-02-29 11:40:29

Thanks for the comments.
jasonwryan: There may be a heap of threads on "cannot find /dev/sdxx" but they all (as far as I have seen) are concerned with problems happening later - not, as it is for me, at boot after less than a screenful of lines have been printed. If someone can point me to a relevant thread that I have missed I would be grateful.
Since the "cannot find.." happens before any X software or KDE has been accessed, THAT problem at least is nicely limited.

desmotes: The modules intel, vesa and fbdev do not exist, as I mentioned. I believed that the 'gigantic' kernel+modules created by Arch should have included these - not uncommon - modules. Is my installation corrupt?
Googling on the chromium failure shows other people with the same problem - no solution given anywhere.
The other problems may be caused by System Settings in KDE not actually influencing KDE's behavior. This has been the case before in other areas.

DSpider: I actually upgrade my Arch most Friday afternoons - I will probably miss doing it this week. My wife refuses to upgrade her installation - "if it is not broke, don't fix it". She has no problems, but also not the nicer versions of Chromium, Thunderbird etc.

So far I have ascertained I am not alone in having the problems I have. Unfortunately, nowhere have I found any relevant solutions.

desm0tes · 2012-02-29 16:09:42

Arch is not Windows....Updates ain't only kludges to build up a half-decent OS they didn't want to bundle with your PC to create the need for regular updates...on Arch, updates usually are just as stable as their precursors, but with new features.

If you want a stable system without Updates, something like Debian was a better choice.

hokasch · 2012-02-29 16:52:43

There may be a heap of threads on "cannot find /dev/sdxx" but they all (as far as I have seen) are concerned with problems happening later

Search again, they are indeed a lot of threads with the exact same problem. You can also search for "pacman -Syuf" and very likely get relevant results.

occam · 2012-03-05 09:34:06

Ok, concentrating on 'root partition cannot be found'. Actually, using the fallback option, the root partition IS found.
However, the modules 'intel' 'vesa' and 'fbdev' do not exist according to Xorg.0.log, so X cannot start.
Using the fallback boot option and CLI I loaded the newer kernel (3.2.8) - same Xorg.0.log result.
The one solution I have now is to install a nVidia graphics card again in spite of the noise it will produce.
Please, anyone - a better idea?

meph · 2012-03-05 11:49:51

occam wrote:

DSpider: I actually upgrade my Arch most Friday afternoons - I will probably miss doing it this week. My wife refuses to upgrade her installation - "if it is not broke, don't fix it". She has no problems, but also not the nicer versions of Chromium, Thunderbird etc.

A lot of us suffer from an OCD when it comes to Arch updating Seriously though, there's basically no reason for not updating, quite on the contrary - the more often you update, the less likely it is that something will break. Or if it does, it will be far easier to single out suspects and get them sorted out. The only rule I obey when it comes to updating is that I make sure that I would have enough time to fix things if they got broken, to read through news, forums, etc. When I do have that time, then I update even few times a day, when the OCD gets bad

As for your wife's policy of not upgrading, I do believe that Arch really might not be the perfect option here. As long as the system doesn't get updated at all, it should run fine, but when she decides to update, because she really really wants the new feature that updated package xyz offers, things most definitely will break. This is what scheduled release distributions are made for. If she just wants to use her computer and not fiddle with it, then she might like Mint for example.

Avant-texte · 2012-03-05 12:44:01

DSpider wrote:

What's the point of using a rolling release distribution if you're going to update it every 6 months?

Not only is Arch rolling release, its bleeding edge. Oviously, you can update a rolling release whenever you want. That's its strength. But the big drive for it is from people who want everything on their systems as up to date as possible, and bleeding edge software only reinforces this. Bleeding edge means things on your system will break from time to time, due to new/undiscovered problems from upstream sources* for all the different packages on your system.

The best way handle such problems is to update often. If only two things get updated when something goes wrong, it's pretty easy to figure out what's to blame. If 50+ packages get upgraded and something goes wrong, it may take time to solve what's wrong. That's assuming there's only one problem.

*Note: In addition to upstream bugs, some package updates are backward incompatible and will cause breakage on your system if you don't follow addtional instructions. They're usually simple and announced on the Arch Linux news listing. If you take too long between updates, you may not notice or be able to find these new listings.

If you're just going to blindly update your system every half-year, you'll find your system will eventually break. If this is too much for you or someone else who uses the machine in question, you might do better with a versioned distro.

/dev/zero · 2012-03-05 19:12:01

desm0tes wrote:

If you want a stable system without Updates, something like Debian was a better choice.

+1. Plenty of times on these forums, a problem will get raised and it will turn out that this person never updates. If you want a system that's as minimalistic as Arch but which you can just forget about after it's installed, do consider Debian Netinst.

occam · 2012-03-05 22:01:50

Please - I said that after half a year my Arch does not work correctly any more. I did NOT say that I have not upgraded (actually I upgrade every Friday afternoon), I said that my wife does not upgrade. So - now my system is borked while her system is running very nicely, thank you.
No, my problem is that Arch for some reason does not accept Intel's integrated graphics (i5-2400) and it shows it in a strange way.
I have two distros installed - when one goes haywire I can use the other (Slackware, I am actually using it now). I agree with the opinions expressed by the respondents, but that does not help my Arch situation now. Yes, I know that sometimes a bleeding edge can mortally wound an installation; in that case I must get another distro in - to use when I bork my Slackware installation.

Avant-texte · 2012-03-06 16:41:18

occam wrote:

Please - I said that after half a year my Arch does not work correctly any more. I did NOT say that I have not upgraded (actually I upgrade every Friday afternoon), I said that my wife does not upgrade. So - now my system is borked while her system is running very nicely, thank you.

1. See my previous comment on blind upgrading or https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … _system.21

occam wrote:

No, my problem is that Arch for some reason does not accept Intel's integrated graphics (i5-2400) and it shows it in a strange way.

...Linux is what supports your hardware. Support must be compiled in directly or as a module. Blaming a distro that is built around a largly unchanged Linux kernel and tries to provide all official drivers isn't going to help.

Saying "the Arch repos are for some reason missing the driver I need, x86-such-and-such", or "the default driver I need has an upstream bug so can we get it patched in the repos until it's fixed or is their a patched version I can find in the AUR?", etc, would be different, but have you even tried troubleshooting this issue on the forums? If so, I missed it. A lot of your post seem to be about "newb"/new-installation issues. Maybe you're blaming your tools over an information deficit in need of fixing. Have you paid https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel a visit? Have you tried using Google/DDG (your friends) to find out what Linux needs to support your hardware?

occam wrote:

I have two distros installed - when one goes haywire I can use the other (Slackware, I am actually using it now).

Well, that's a good practice.

occam wrote:

Yes, I know that sometimes a bleeding edge can mortally wound an installation; in that case I must get another distro in - to use when I bork my Slackware installation.

As multiple others have said, maybe you do. If you need a system that "just works", Arch is not the best choice. Arch is a distro for people who want a system that has a rather blank-slate default and lets the user decide what must be added and trusts the user to understand (or be willing to learn) what it takes to make everything run. Distros like Ubuntu were designed with the "it just needs to work" requirement.

occam wrote:

I agree with the opinions expressed by the respondents, but that does not help my Arch situation now.

To be fair, you started off with a rather trollish/rantish tone and gave little in the way of details for Arch-ers here to try troubleshooting your issues. Secondly, you mixed multiple problems together. Not only is it bad form, it's very impracticle if you're looking for troubleshooting. Thirdly, you're talking about Arch as a monolithic blob. Rather than seeing the machine for its parts, you were speaking about "Arch" in the same way a user may speak about Windows. Doing so is more likely to attract elementry and conceptual lessons from posters over technical suggestions.

Last edited by Avant-texte (2012-03-06 16:43:48)

occam · 2012-03-06 23:45:41

occam wrote:

No, my problem is that Arch for some reason does not accept Intel's integrated graphics (i5-2400) and it shows it in a strange way.

Avant-texte wrote:

Linux is what supports your hardware. Support must be compiled in directly or as a module. Blaming a distro that is built around a largly unchanged Linux kernel and tries to provide all official drivers isn't going to help.

Thanks - my error revealed. I had assumed that Arch supported 'standard' graphics card without explicit downloads. I had the impression that one got, eg for nvidia the nv driver by default and the manufacturer's nvidia only if you explicitly installed it (from extra).

Thanks again for the support.
(But you do agree that the symptom was rather confusing?)

ngoonee · 2012-03-06 23:50:39

occam wrote:

occam wrote:
No, my problem is that Arch for some reason does not accept Intel's integrated graphics (i5-2400) and it shows it in a strange way.
Avant-texte wrote:
Linux is what supports your hardware. Support must be compiled in directly or as a module. Blaming a distro that is built around a largly unchanged Linux kernel and tries to provide all official drivers isn't going to help.

Thanks - my error revealed. I had assumed that Arch supported 'standard' graphics card without explicit downloads. I had the impression that one got, eg for nvidia the nv driver by default and the manufacturer's nvidia only if you explicitly installed it (from extra).
Thanks again for the support.
(But you do agree that the symptom was rather confusing?)

Its only confusing when you don't expect it. And expecting defaults to always work is a hazard in general with Linux (and especially with Arch which doesn't do as much hand-holding). Time to mark this thread [solved]?

cfr · 2012-03-06 23:52:17

occam wrote:

Thanks - my error revealed. I had assumed that Arch supported 'standard' graphics card without explicit downloads. I had the impression that one got, eg for nvidia the nv driver by default and the manufacturer's nvidia only if you explicitly installed it (from extra).

But you must have explicitly installed whatever video drivers you were using so I don't understand how you could not realise this. By default, Arch gets you a command line without X. In order to have the symptoms you began by describing, you'd have to install a bunch of stuff, including video drivers, else you would not be running Chromium etc. at all?

occam · 2012-03-07 03:25:34

Ok, the thread is marked [SOLVED].

I have a list of software I want in whatever distribution I am installing and explitly install from a (more or less) fix list; nvidia is/was one of these. So, strange as it might seem - Slackware needs less hand holding than Arch.

However, it must be noted that sometimes no EXPLICIT installation of packages is needed - when such packages are dependencies to whatever package you are downloading. Here Arch needs less hand holding than Slackware.

Avant-texte · 2012-03-10 22:34:09

occam wrote:

occam wrote:
No, my problem is that Arch for some reason does not accept Intel's integrated graphics (i5-2400) and it shows it in a strange way.
Avant-texte wrote:
Linux is what supports your hardware. Support must be compiled in directly or as a module. Blaming a distro that is built around a largly unchanged Linux kernel and tries to provide all official drivers isn't going to help.

Thanks - my error revealed. I had assumed that Arch supported 'standard' graphics card without explicit downloads. I had the impression that one got, eg for nvidia the nv driver by default and the manufacturer's nvidia only if you explicitly installed it (from extra).)

It throws off people used to support everything out of the box systems like Windows, Mac, or Ubuntu, but Arch Linux takes a minimalist approach. Only install that which is need (or the user wants). There's no way for devs to know which drivers you need in advance, so you need to explicitly install them. Thankfully pacman makes this trivial in most cases.

A tip:
Back up your list of installed packages. You can then pass it to pacman if you ever find yourself needing to rebuild your system without having to track down everything you need again.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … d_packages

occam wrote:

Thanks - my error revealed. I had assumed that Arch supported 'standard' graphics card without explicit downloads. I had the impression that one got, eg for nvidia the nv driver by default and the manufacturer's nvidia only if you explicitly installed it (from extra).
Thanks again for the support.
(But you do agree that the symptom was rather confusing?)

Yes, it's confusing when you don't know what to expect. However, much what's embraced in the *nix world and on Arch are things designed for people that have a working understanding of things. It can be a little confusing when you start out, but ignorance is only a temporary sate. Once beyond it, many apreciate tunability that comes with designing things for people who understand the inerworkings of their machines.

occam wrote:

However, it must be noted that sometimes no EXPLICIT installation of packages is needed - when such packages are dependencies to whatever package you are downloading. Here Arch needs less hand holding than Slackware.

This is one of the big factors in Arch's success. It leaves much to the user and has very little "sugar" in its tool's interfaces, but it provides a simple & stong package manager to make that approach easy to execute.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-02-28 00:27:44

Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#2 2012-02-28 00:36:03

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#3 2012-02-28 00:40:03

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#4 2012-02-28 07:39:37

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#5 2012-02-29 11:40:29

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#6 2012-02-29 16:09:42

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#7 2012-02-29 16:52:43

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#8 2012-03-05 09:34:06

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#9 2012-03-05 11:49:51

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#10 2012-03-05 12:44:01

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#11 2012-03-05 19:12:01

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#12 2012-03-05 22:01:50

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#13 2012-03-06 16:41:18

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#14 2012-03-06 23:45:41

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#15 2012-03-06 23:50:39

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#16 2012-03-06 23:52:17

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#17 2012-03-07 03:25:34

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

#18 2012-03-10 22:34:09

Re: Time to "Reload Arch"? [SOLVED]

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