Some Questions Preinstall

jlowell · 2003-08-10 06:44:50

Took a first, more serious look at Arch doing a base system trial install this evening and have a couple of questions to ask.

1. From the way things would seem, kernel source code is only available with an ftp install, is that correct?
2. What's the correct name and path for the Arch splashimage for grub?
3. Because I didn't have an answer to #2 above, I couldn't write the configuration file for grub. That, in turn, made running grub and fleshing out root and setup impossible. I'm assuming that I'm going to be able to run grub if I do that, however. I'm not going to get caught with an automatic MBR installation, am I? The last distro I looked at only offered an MBR install of lilo and I absolutely require a root superblock bootloader install on this box.

Arch's straight forward, simple approach to installation is appreciated.

jlowell

netkrash · 2003-08-10 07:09:43

hi, i'll try to answer your questions but be aware: i started using arch with the 0.4 release and i've just installed once the 0.5 release.

1. There is no kernel-source pkg. actually the kernel pkg it is just the image needed to boot, it's modules and the include files but not the complete kernel source code. (currently i'm not running the stock kernel so the above information could be wrong nowadays).

2. The grub used in arch is the default grub, this means (as far as i know) that you can't use a boot-image. I tried once but didn't work, then doing the research i realize that the only way to add boot-image support to grub is compiling it from the debian sources or redhat or conectiva (because they use the patched/hacked version of grub).

3. I use lilo most of the time, so i can't help you with this..

greets,

Gyroplast · 2003-08-10 08:19:22

jlowell wrote:

1. From the way things would seem, kernel source code is only available with an ftp install, is that correct?

Simplu put, no. The current vanilla kernel sources are included on the CD, at least on the full image. Not sure whether the base image has them enclosed as well; mount the CD and have a look to be sure. If the sources are on CD, you can compile your own kernel during/after install with the appropriate menu selection.

jlowell wrote:

2. What's the correct name and path for the Arch splashimage for grub?
3. Because I didn't have an answer to #2 above, I couldn't write the configuration file for grub. That, in turn, made running grub and fleshing out root and setup impossible. I'm assuming that I'm going to be able to run grub if I do that, however. I'm not going to get caught with an automatic MBR installation, am I? The last distro I looked at only offered an MBR install of lilo and I absolutely require a root superblock bootloader install on this box.

Arch uses, as netkrash already said, the vanilla GRUB. It does not support boot splash screens. If you're so hot for it, though, you may of course somehow obtain the needed patch and tinker with GRUB's PKGBUILD in the ABS tree to roll your own package to install.
I do not remember from the back of my head where GRUB is installed, but I think the default is indeed the MBR of the disk. To avoid any problems, edit the menu.lst file in the installer as usual, and then do not use the installer's option of installing the bootloader, but instead quit the installer and run grub manually in the shell to setup GRUB in the partition you want. You'll probably have to use the full path to grub, as it's located in /mnt/sbin/grub at this stage.

Arch's straight forward, simple approach to installation is appreciated.

Well, while this is debatably simple, it surely leaves all options to you. It's just a matter of knowing what to do when.

Seriously, I'll look into that again and make sure this is documented. Maybe I'm even totally wrong and the installer already allows to choose a partition to write the boot sector to. I'll see.

Greets,
Dennis

jlowell · 2003-08-10 15:48:19

netcrash & Gyroplast,

Thanks for your prompt replies!

Respecting the kernel sources, Gyroplast, I used the base system ISO and received a message that the kernel sources couldn't be located or some such. In the meantime, I'll use the full ISO and, if permitted, avoid installing anything more than the base packages.

As to the grub matter, I'm glad I raised the question. I run a DOS boot manager on this network, System Commander. It displays a colorful, OS-neutral menu at boot and it prefers to boot linux via grub or lilo installed into root superblock. While it will certainly accept an MBR install, I have to run their rescue disk afterward so as to restore the original menu and locate the new distro on it. After that, it will not accept a second MBR linux install, of course, so I'm sometimes reduced to jury rigging if another distro I'd like to use requires MBR. It's so much simpler for it with a / install. In any event, thanks for the suggestion and your willingness to look into the matter.

Regards.

jlowell

jlowell · 2003-08-10 19:01:09

netcrash & Gyroplast,

Well I thought I'd better write right away before anyone went to further trouble looking into the grub matter for me. The questions is answered: there is no problem installing grub into /, neither is there a problem with the source code for the kernel. Beautiful!

A comment, compliment and a question:

1. Doing a second install from the full ISO today, I experienced a problem with resolving dependencies for autoconf. A search revealed the need to extend thanks to ladislav and, despite his very best efforts to warn me via FAQ, Gyroplast as well! I thought I'd partitioned and created files systems properly last night, but clearly I hadn't. No wonder there was a problem with the kernel sources and grub! That little DONE button at the bottom makes a big difference, doesn't it?

2. This is a very nice installation program. It's straight forward and, for anyone whose experience with linux extends even a little beyond the Reddrakes and the Manhats, quite easy to follow. I'm anxious to take a look at the package program now, having only the base system installed.

3. Is source code available as an alternative with any or most packages with pacman or is everything binary? I saw something on the website about obtaining and compiling packages, make-something-or-other, but I'm unclear as to how things work. May I request a little initial guidance in this connection?

jlowell

kritoke · 2003-08-10 19:06:20

Yes, there is a way to install either via binary or source. The source way is done via ABS(Arch Build System), to do that, you basically just have to install cvsup after your initial update of the system's repositories(pacman -Syu), you install cvsup by doing this: pacman -S cvsup. Then you type abs. That should make a directory in /usr/abs and basically browse to your heart's content and go into the directory that you want to install something and then you just type makepkg, which basically makes a binary package for you to install from the source. Then you just do a pacman -A packagename of that newly made package. It is pretty slick really. Binary is just done with the pacman -S programname. I hope that answers your question.

Kritoke

jlowell · 2003-08-10 22:55:18

kritoke,

Very helpful, kritoke, thank you.

Perhaps you might be kind enough to answer another question that occured to me as I was finishing up with the install. The full CD suggests that you simply install the base system packages at first, getting any desired additional packages at a later time. Only the base system packages have an "X" next to them. Simply to see if the installation program contemplated a return trip after rebooting so as to add more packages, I ran the CD a second time. Unless I'm missing something, the program has nothing like this in mind at all, the language and the instructions encountered remain unchanged from the first time around.

Query:

1. Given the above, the typical user at this point would have to approach pacman for any additional packages. Why might it be that Arch encourages the use of pacman for obtaining these packages rather than installing them from the CD? Would there be some advantage in doing things this way?

2. Assuming, then, that what's on my box at the moment, kernel excepted, are precompiled binaries, can the method you've described to me in your message above be used to rebuild each base system packages from source? If so, I gather that one package would have to be build, then another, and another, and so on with no provision made for "batch processing" as it were. Am I right?

Regards.

jlowell

kritoke · 2003-08-10 23:06:29

Not sure if I can help you much with dealing with the full cd install. I tend to use the base iso and install the base and lib files off that and then boot into my system. My memory of previous releases is kind of shady, but I believe there used to be a bug when installing more than the base(think it was related to not being able to edit the configuration files afterwards or something like that), but I think that has been fixed. Probably best to get an official response from a developer or someone who has dealt with this in more detail. I don't believe there are any batch processing type things, but I only do the source building for things like my alsa-driver and maybe if I need to tweak a thing or two with the source, so there might be someone with a bit more experience with this than I who can maybe give you a bit more info on this subject. But you could in essense, recompile everything from the base install and then just upgrade the packages with the ones you made with makepkg, although, I wouldn't think there wouldn't be any excessive speed increase because the packages are built as i686 anyway, but some people still like to do it.

Kritoke

Gyroplast · 2003-08-10 23:34:18

1. Arch actually uses it's installer really only for the purpose of installing the system. Updating via the network with a syncing pacman is encouraged, if only to make sure you get the latest and greatest of packages. If, for any reason, one wants to make use of the CD as an additional repository, there's hints in the official documentation FAQ and the pacman.conf itself on how to make the CD become a repository to sync with, so that pacman -S works not with an FTP but the repository on CD.

2. There is a little known and hardly documented (shame on me) program called ''makeworld'' available which does exactly that. Run it without arguments to get an idea of it's syntax, it's grrrreat fun to work with. Run makeworld -bc /home/me/mypackages base as root from the /usr/abs directory, and it'll rebuild the whole "base" category including dependencies from source, putting the directories into the target directory specified as a parameter.

Greets,
Dennis

kritoke · 2003-08-10 23:44:36

Interesting, ya, there definately needs to be some documentation on that, because I had no clue such a thing existed, heh.

Kritoke

jlowell · 2003-08-11 00:20:04

kritoke & Gyroplast,

This distro is getting more interesting by the minute!!

I just ran the following in order, kritoke:

pacman -Sy
pacman -Su
pacman -S cvsup
abs

Gyroplast, I'm assuming that what I need to do from this point is, as root:

cd /usr/abs
makeworld -bc /home/me/mypackages base

and the base system packages will be rebuilt from source? I'm much too new to Arch to know if by /home/me/mypackages you're being literal or formal. Can you help me with this? And when you say "putting the directories into the target directory specified as a parameter", do you mean that makeworld will do this automatically or must I enter the parameter?

What I've learned about this distro in the last couple of hours makes it seem like one of the best kept secrets around. I mean, essentially, you have all the capabilities of a source distro here, at least that's what I'm gleaning. Oh my!

jlowell

Gyroplast · 2003-08-11 00:46:57

The /home/me/mypackages is to be understood as a placeholder, substitute this directory with the location where makeworld should store the created packages, and it will. While it's compiling you'll see this directory fill up with the created packages, and if you feel adventurous you might even elect to use makeworlds option to install the newly created packages right away. It's all about choice.

What I've learned about this distro in the last couple of hours makes it seem like one of the best kept secrets around. I mean, essentially, you have all the capabilities of a source distro here, at least that's what I'm gleaning. Oh my!

Hey, it's not my fault that you didn't believe in the first place that Arch was really flexible.

jlowell · 2003-08-11 01:36:03

OK, Gyroplast, so I'm feeling adventurous.

Let's say, as root, I use this series of commands given what you know about where I am already,

mkdir /home/sourcepackages
cd /usr/abs
makeworld -bc /home/sourcepackages base

and makeworld stores the packages in /home/sourcepackages. What command do I run next to install them properly, something like makeworld -i /home/sourcepackages?

jlowell

Gyroplast · 2003-08-11 01:42:52

Wellwell, once you end up with your truckload of packages in /home/sourcepackages you'd simply run pacman -Up /home/sourcepackages/*.pkg.tar.gz to install (or rather update) all the packages. Missing dependencies should not occur since you used the -b option for makeworld.

Yeah, that's basically it. Don't expect any gotchas.

Good luck,
Dennis

jlowell · 2003-08-11 01:58:52

Gyroplast,

We've hit a snag, unfortunately. I ran makeworld -bc /home/sourcepackages base after having created /home/sourcepackages and changing directories to /usr/abs. The output involves 15 instances of find: pkg/whatever: No such file or directory and I'm given back to [root@localhost2 abs]# with blinking cursor. What's happening?

jlowell

Gyroplast · 2003-08-11 02:12:19

find: pkg/whatever: No such file or directory

This warning is perfectly normal per se. When a package is, well, packaged, the find command is used by makepkg to get a list of all installed files below the pkg/ hierarchy. You'll most likely encounter some "strip: file format not recognized" errors that occur when attempting to strip non-binaries. That's all dandy and fine. What I cannot gather from your post is when exactly you're dropped back to the shell. Doesn't makeworld finish all packages? What's the actual fatal error causing it to quit if not?

jlowell · 2003-08-11 02:30:28

Gyroplast,

What I cannot gather from your post is when exactly you're dropped back to the shell. Doesn't makeworld finish all packages? What's the actual fatal error causing it to quit if not?

It does not finish, it simply shows

find: pkg/opt/*/lib: No such file or directory
find: pkg/opt/*/bin: No such file or directory

and so on for 12 more similar entries and then

find: pkg/opt/*/sbin: No such file or directory
[root@localhost2 abs]#

There is nothing to indicate why it stopped; it reports nothing more than I've mentioned! Should I run
makeworld -bc /home/sourcepackages base from /usr/abs as root again or would you suggest not to? Might this just be flakiness?

jlowell

Gyroplast · 2003-08-11 11:21:49

Well, when does it stop like that? This is makepkg's typical way of ending a compilation, no report or anything, you just end up back at your prompt, but with a created package as one would expect. So, again, are all packages of the base category created or not? What's contained in the /home/sourcepackages directory after dropping back to the prompt?

Gyroplast · 2003-08-11 14:23:58

Holy crap.

I did a makeworld base myself a moment ago, and about a dozen packages did not get built, mostly due to incorrect download URLs in the PKGBUILD files. The rest was built correctly, though.

The list of errors I encountered is available at http://archlinux.veloxis.de/patches/bas … 30811.html for a few weeks now.

Sorry for killing the bug statistics in the tracker with a dozen new entries, Judd.

Greets,
Dennis

neri · 2003-08-11 15:00:14

Gyroplast wrote:

Holy crap.
I did a makeworld base myself a moment ago, and about a dozen packages did not get built, mostly due to incorrect download URLs in the PKGBUILD files. The rest was built correctly, though.
The list of errors I encountered is available at http://archlinux.veloxis.de/patches/bas … 30811.html for a few weeks now.

Hi Dennis,

Yesterday I tried to built aspell-de, but it failed the - gnu-servers say:

The following files are not available because their authenticity is being
confirmed. We expect to have them uploaded Real Soon Now (RSN).

There is a list, a _long_ list, with files following. These are just bad times
for a makeworld base. It's probably better to take it out off the bugtracker,
I think.

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/pub/gnu/aspell/as … RSN.README

bye neri

Gyroplast · 2003-08-11 16:30:11

Thanks for that information, I closed the appropriate bugs.

jlowell · 2003-08-11 18:08:05

Gyroplast,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. There were the small matters of sleep and starting work for the day.

Anyway, to answer the question you raised earlier:

ls /home/sourcepackages
filesystem-0.5-2.pkg.tar.gz initscripts-0.5-4.tar.gz

That's all that's there. I assume that neri's post concerning package availability and, consequently, this being a bad time for makeworld explain the paucity of output I'm experiencing and that some waiting is in order. Am I right about that?

How long do you think it will be before the packages will be made available again?

Thanks for your help.

jlowell

Gyroplast · 2003-08-11 18:27:35

Yup, indeed seems to be a bad time at the moment. If you're interested, you could have a look at the log files put into /usr/abs, named makepkg.log and build.log, to see why building all the other packages failed.

I personally was able to build all packages but those listed on http://archlinux.veloxis.de/patches/bas … 30811.html today, so you might want to see why yours failed.

Greets,
Dennis

neri · 2003-08-11 18:31:30

Hi jlowell,

jlowell wrote:

Gyroplast,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. There were the small matters of sleep and starting work for the day.

Hm, you forgot food

jlowell wrote:

That's all that's there. I assume that neri's post concerning package availability and, consequently, this being a bad time for makeworld explain the paucity of output I'm experiencing and that some waiting is in order. Am I right about that?

You're right. This happend last weeks. I dont know what happend. When
building aspell for the second machine I figured it out. For more details,
there should be two file in /usr/abs -> build.log for makeworld
and makepkg.log for makepkg in the first you can find what broke and in
the second why it did. Most likely it is because of the gnu-srver problem.

jlowell wrote:

How long do you think it will be before the packages will be made available again?

No idea, this depends on the GNU-folks.

bye neri

Gyroplast · 2003-08-11 18:33:25

Do tell, is it me or do I really need to get off my lazy ass and write The ultimate guide to pacman and friends real soon?

Arch Linux

#1 2003-08-10 06:44:50

Some Questions Preinstall

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