Thing I don't understand...

balrog · 2005-10-07 07:35:08

I've decided to install arch this way....

Booted from CD, selected FTP installation and partitioned my hard drive (master slave, primary is for xp)like this: part. 1. 500MB, part. 2. 15Gigs, part. 3. 4,5Gigs, and my fstab is (using UDev) :

/dev/hdb1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb2 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/hdb3 /home/balrog defaults 0 1

This way I wanted to have my home directory as separate partition because of possibility to restore my / partition without loosing downloaded data etc.

So I installed base and kernel, grub bootloader. Then booted to arch, logged as root and did this. pacman -Sy xorg, pacman -Sy mozilla-firefox, pacman -Sy hwd (using lshwd instead of hotplug), pacman -S alsa-lib alsa-utils alsa-oss, set up alsaconf and stored alsa levels (added alsa to deamons in rc.conf). After that installed pacman -Sy xfce4, pacman -Sy xfce4-goodies. Next step was kernel26archck, changed in grub to vmlinuz26archck. Then installed pacman -Sy ati-drivers from community. Run fglrxconfig and created xorg.conf file.

XFCE4 works well (mouse, kdb, sreen resolution etc.) bud I'm still logged as root. When I create my user balrog, not able to do anything. Unable to run XFCE4 and probably have no access to my home directory (which is on separated partition), nothing like ~/xinitrc is created. I tryied to add balrog to root group by gpasswd -a balrog root, but nothign changed.

1. What am I doing wrong? (creating user, adding him to groups to have access)
2. How to create ~/xinitrc and how to make run XFCE4?
3. Is it possible to have home directory on separated partition?
4. Any wrong steps during my install?

THX 8)

pressh · 2005-10-07 07:59:07

Here is what you've done wrong. You do not have permissions to /home/balfrog from your balprog account, as you mount this as root,only root will have permissions to it. You can eiter change the permissions, or, the normal way is the following:
For your home partition:

/dev/hdb3 /home <put here your filesystem> defaults 0 1

After this, remount your partitions or reboot, you can create a user (this should be done as root) so you can create your /home/balfrog dir with the wright permissions.
Now everything should run fine

balrog · 2005-10-07 09:13:22

And what about KDE? I do pacman -Sy kde.
To start kde run startkde from x server? or not? when i type startkde it returns unknown command, when type /opt/kde/bin/kdeinit it do something like starting, but it returns some message and kde is not running.

when i want to start xfce4 on boot i did: add xdm to deamons in rc.conf and add startxfce4 in inittab, but on boot deamon returns me that rc.d/xdm doesn't exits.

balrog · 2005-10-07 09:18:21

pressh:

Do you think that creating user immediately after installing base and kernel is better, or it doesn't matter when I do this? what do you recommend? what rights give to my user and how, to have full access to all resources etc.?
THX

pressh · 2005-10-07 10:04:02

It is better to create the user immediately after instaling base and kernel, as it is not quite safe to run a window manager as root (particularly if you have an intenet connection up and running)
To create a user, you do as root:

# adduser

You should at least add the user to the groupts: audio, optical, and users.
Using the adduser script, you can choose to create a home directory. Als the permissions are set correctly for you home directory

balrog · 2005-10-07 10:11:37

pressh:

OK when I install base and kernel, create my user, can I isntall xorg, xfce4 etc. logged as my user?

pressh · 2005-10-07 10:29:25

no, when installing packages through pacman you should be root. I mentioned you should create a user early, as you should not log in to a window manager as root, and start webserving etc.

A problem why xdm in the deamon array is not working is because /etc/rc.d/xdm is not in the xorg package (but it should be!). I just modified another script, so you can put it in:

/etc/rc.d/xdm

#!/bin/bash

. /etc/rc.conf
. /etc/rc.d/functions

PID=`/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm`
case "$1" in
  start)
    stat_busy "Starting XDM"
    [ -z "$PID" ] && /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm >>/var/log/xdm.log 2>&1
    if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
      stat_fail
    else
      PID=`pidof -o %PPID /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm`
      echo $PID >/var/run/xdm.pid
      add_daemon xdm
      stat_done
    fi
    ;;
  stop)
    stat_busy "Stopping XDM"
    [ ! -z "$PID" ]  && kill $PID &>/dev/null
    if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
      stat_fail
    else
      rm_daemon xdm
      stat_done
    fi
    ;;
  restart)
    $0 stop
    $0 start
    ;;
  *)
    echo "usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"  
esac
exit 0

You should be root to put in there (otherwise you do not have permissons). Also as root, make the file executable:

# chmod a+x /etc/rc.d/xdm

pressh · 2005-10-07 10:39:05

Probably the script above is a little oversized, as the stop and restart functions are not needed. You can probably remove them, but it does not matter if they are in the script, so you can also let them in.

When using xdm, you should create a file in your home directory, called .xinitrc
You only need to put in the window manager you want to start.
So

.xinitrc

your_wm

I do not know what the commands for either kde or xfce are, as I do not use them. probably you can find out using the 'whereis' command ('man whereis' for more info)

balrog · 2005-10-07 10:42:30

pressh:

THX man 8)

balrog · 2005-10-09 13:38:45

pressh:

Script works, thanks 8)

tomk · 2005-10-10 12:14:58

xdm is a component of xorg, and is normally run from /etc/inittab. AFAIR, inittab includes the required line, but comments it out. It looks like this:

#x:5:respawn:/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon

Uncomment it and change your run level to 5.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-10-07 07:35:08

Thing I don't understand...

#2 2005-10-07 07:59:07

Re: Thing I don't understand...

#3 2005-10-07 09:13:22

Re: Thing I don't understand...

#4 2005-10-07 09:18:21

Re: Thing I don't understand...

#5 2005-10-07 10:04:02

Re: Thing I don't understand...

#6 2005-10-07 10:11:37

Re: Thing I don't understand...

#7 2005-10-07 10:29:25

Re: Thing I don't understand...

#8 2005-10-07 10:39:05

Re: Thing I don't understand...

#9 2005-10-07 10:42:30

Re: Thing I don't understand...

#10 2005-10-09 13:38:45

Re: Thing I don't understand...

#11 2005-10-10 12:14:58

Re: Thing I don't understand...

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