Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

djpharoah · 2006-07-20 00:31:16

After-Install Guide for n00bs

This guide was written by an arch n00b for other arch n00bs. It might not be the clearest but I thought if it helps atleast one then its worth it.

Acquiring Arch Linux

Download the FTP/Base/Full .iso from the download page.

Installation
1)Follow the installation guide found at the Arch Linux website. I will not be retyping everything from that guide into this guide. So please refer to the official arch guide for the installation.

Starting Arch
1)If you did everything according to the manual you should be rewarded with your system booting into Arch and leaving you at the login prompt. At first login as root without any passwords.
2)Time to set a root passwd.

# passwd

It will ask you to enter the root password twice.
3)You should have the internet before processding with this step. Just to check run

 # ping -c 2 www.google.com

If this fails, then you might have to go back into /etc/rc.conf and change your eth0 settings.
Before installing anything you have to make sure the pacman database is up-2-date.

# pacman -Syu

4) Then time to install everything neccesary for a basic system. I prefer a Gnome/GTK2 system.

# pacman -S xorg gdm gnome gnome-extra

5) Now if you dont have a 3D enabled card, continue onto Step #6.
If you have an nVidia based card => How-To
If you have an ATi based card => How-To

6) We need to get your X server setup. The line hwd -u might take a while to complete so be patient.

# pacman -S hwd
# hwd -u 
# hwd -x
# cd /etc/X11/
# cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.hwd /etc/X11/xorg.conf

If you have ATi video cards, you need to do this.

# aticonfig

Follow the options for the type of display you want.

To test if your xorg.conf works:

# startx

7) Adding other daemons.

# pacman -S acpid dbus hal

8 ) Adding new daemons to start at boot. This step is neccesary if you need automounting to work.Add "dbus hal acpid alsa" to the DAEMONS list in /etc/rc.conf

9) Editing the fstab. There are three lines in the fstab which should be removed to avoid confusion.
Remove the "floppy dvdrom and cdrom". Dont worry with gnome automounting you dont need those in the fstab file.

10)Adding a new user:

# groupadd <USERNAME>
# adduser
<follow>

11) Reboot and hopefully you should get GDM up and running.

karsten · 2006-07-20 00:52:51

thanks

Titus · 2006-07-20 00:58:15

just a fine work it seems like a little wiki for newbies

stonecrest · 2006-07-20 01:29:48

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pos … ation_Tips

Add to this?

djpharoah · 2006-07-20 01:38:21

I will be adding more to this thread quite soon. Might keep this seperate from the wiki since the wiki might have things in there that might be too advanced for the average n00b

detto · 2006-07-20 11:31:37

Good work!
Think this definitely will help some people out.
But ive got also a uick request: Dont know exactly if its necessary, but doing a "hwd -u" before the -x might be necessary for updating databse of hwd first...?
As i said, dont know if necessary

djpharoah · 2006-07-20 12:53:53

detto wrote:

Good work!
Think this definitely will help some people out.
But ive got also a uick request: Dont know exactly if its necessary, but doing a "hwd -u" before the -x might be necessary for updating databse of hwd first...?
As i said, dont know if necessary

Ah your right. hwd -u updates the pcmcia/usb tables for hardware. The reason I didnt include is because it took forever to complete on my laptop.

Will include it in the guide. Thanks

dtw · 2006-07-20 15:59:38

djpharoah wrote:

I will be adding more to this thread quite soon. Might keep this seperate from the wiki since the wiki might have things in there that might be too advanced for the average n00b

Hmm, there is an arguement that would say that if something in there is too much for you then you might be peeing in the wrong bush anyway, so to speak

djpharoah · 2006-07-20 16:03:18

dtw wrote:

djpharoah wrote:
I will be adding more to this thread quite soon. Might keep this seperate from the wiki since the wiki might have things in there that might be too advanced for the average n00b
Hmm, there is an arguement that would say that if something in there is too much for you then you might be peeing in the wrong bush anyway, so to speak

I always thought the quote was "Dont bite off more than you can chew"

Ryujin · 2006-07-21 16:12:49

Just a few suggestions:

At the point you placed startx it will not work because twm is not installed, I would recomend putting gdm at the end of the rc.conf daemons list, or suggesting the command:

echo "exec gnome-session" > ~/.xinitrc

which will make startx boot into gnome.

And as a KDE guy.....

pacman -Sy kdebase xorg kdeaddons

add kdm to the end of your daemons list in rc.conf

or give the command:

echo "exec startkde" > ~/.xinitrc

to make startx go to KDE

and one more thing

hwd -xa

will put the xorg file in place for you, although it won't give you a backup

It looks good djpharoah, the more places help is available the better!

djpharoah · 2006-07-21 17:33:22

Ryujin wrote:

Just a few suggestions:
At the point you placed startx it will not work because twm is not installed...

Actually I thought the same thing but what I meant is that when you run "startx" you are moved from the CLI environment to a blank screen with the X cursor. Should there be problems you wouldnt get that far.

Chaos · 2006-07-21 20:37:55

Im pretty new to Linux so thought id post the steps I done to get a base install to simple window manger (Openbox) hopefully it will help others out, maybe if we get enough examples/steps we could sticky this thread for newbies ?

Please note im new to linux so dont know if this is the best way to do things.

After base install First thing I done was run -

pacman -Sy
pacman -Su (To make sure everything was up to date )

Install Xorg

pacman -S xorg
xorgconfig

followed the xorg wiki instructions but didnt use hwd or nvidea-xconfig.
make sure for your mouse you put dev/input/mice

xorg wiki -
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg

Pacman -S nvidia ( for newest drivers )

manually edited xorg config

nano xorg config

Disable in modules section: GLcore and DRI
Add to modules section:
Load "glx"

Change Driver "nv" to Driver "nvidia"

pacman -S xorg-twm xorg-apps xterm ( to get basic xorg apps ) .

shutdown -r now ( to reboot had to do this for nvida module to load )

login and do startx to make sure xwindows comes up.
should see some basic windows and terminal.

Install openbox

pacman -S openbox

change to home directory (using root for example)

cd /root
mkdir .config
mkdir openbox

copy menu.xml & rc.xml from /etc/xdg/openbox/ to your home dir /.config/openbox/

cp /etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml /root/.conifg/openbox
cp /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml /root/.conifg/openbox

make a .xinitrc in your home dir
nano .xinitrc
add exec openbox to it

startx to launch openbox

Note: when I did this openbox complained about locales and missing bitstream fonts.

For locale Im from UK so

nano /etc/locale.gen, uncommenting removed "#" from
en_GB_utf

save and exit

locale-gen ( to sort the locale )

change to home directory and nano
.bashrc

add in export LC_ALL="en_GB.utf8"

nano /etc/rc.conf and edit the LOCALE= section put LOCALE="en_GB.utf8"

might as well change TIMEZONE to "GMT" if you from UK while you are there

shutdown -r now ( to reboot )

once rebooted locale -a to check your locale is ok, should be no error messages.

Locale wiki entry-
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Configuring_locales

To sort font problem even though pacman said I had the bitstrem fonts I downloaded again.

pacman -S ttf-bitstream-vera

also added some more fonts while I was at it

pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts
pacman -S ttf-cheapskate

Tried to start x and openbox still complained about missing bitstream so after some headscratching and reading I done

fc-cache -fv

this updated the font cache

then done startx and openbox came up hurrah

Openbox will be pretty basic so heres the wiki to learn more about it -

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Openbox

Quite a big job for a noob to get a base to some kind of window manager, but at least im learning some things and I hope this will be helpfull to other beginners. Might as well throw yourself into the deepend

Ryujin · 2006-07-21 22:14:20

we have something good going I think, just need to put it all together, and maybe put some more info in the wiki on GUI options.

djpharoah · 2006-07-21 23:46:21

Ryujin wrote:

we have something good going I think, just need to put it all together, and maybe put some more info in the wiki on GUI options.

For the ppl by the ppl.

Gotta love the OSS.

codemac · 2006-07-22 04:43:15

uhhh, I don't understand how any of this would be "too advanced for the average noob"

Both the wiki and this are just a list of commands to run.... if you can't type, may I suggest a new distro, you know, that one without the keyboard? :-P

I guess it must be the understanding of what you are doing, I just must not be looking at this right.

That all being said, this damn well better be put somewhere on the wiki. The article that was linked DEFINITELY could use these. Even if you want to makea special "noob" version, this should all be added to the other one as well.

Substance · 2006-07-22 13:26:00

Thanks for this hmmm Sticky?

Mr Green · 2006-07-22 14:52:48

emmm wiki maybe ;-)

then link with sticky....

post on front page

add an icon

etc etc.....

Chaos · 2006-07-22 15:37:19

What about a new article under the installation Catagory ?

Base Install to Gui for Beginners

I could add my info for open box, then others can add there chosen steps to there preferd gui then sticky the article ?

Could put a link at the end of the article to the Post Installation Tips article.

I've never used a wiki or added anything to it before but could give it bash.

Mr Green · 2006-07-22 16:21:04

ok drop Judd a mail ;-)

Chaos · 2006-07-22 19:30:35

Mr Green wrote:

ok drop Judd a mail ;-)

Whos that , wiki owner ?

Anonymo · 2006-07-23 03:33:50

oh no, you ARE new to the board. Judd be the man, the patrick volkerding of Arch.

karsten · 2006-07-23 05:09:13

sticky this thread please!!

karsten · 2006-07-23 05:33:45

hi, why would you do this and not add your new user to the "users" group instead? trying to learn, thanks

djpharoah wrote:

10)Adding a new user:
# groupadd <USERNAME>
# adduser
<follow>

Chaos · 2006-07-23 12:04:34

Ryujin wrote:

Just a few suggestions:
And as a KDE guy.....
pacman -Sy kdebase xorg kdeaddons
add kdm to the end of your daemons list in rc.conf
or give the command:
echo "exec startkde" > ~/.xinitrc
to make startx go to KDE

Im going to try kde today, I read that you can do pacman -S kde for the full sha bang, looks like your only adding certain kde packages, im assuming you dont need most of the stuf.

Wouldnt you also need to pacman -S kdelibs ? the wiki reckons they are required. Or does the kdebase pull these down ?

Mr Green · 2006-07-23 16:15:54

Look guys this stuff is in Arch Docs....

make a wiki page link it ...

Arch Linux

#1 2006-07-20 00:31:16

Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#2 2006-07-20 00:52:51

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#3 2006-07-20 00:58:15

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#4 2006-07-20 01:29:48

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#5 2006-07-20 01:38:21

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#6 2006-07-20 11:31:37

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#7 2006-07-20 12:53:53

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#8 2006-07-20 15:59:38

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#9 2006-07-20 16:03:18

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#10 2006-07-21 16:12:49

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#11 2006-07-21 17:33:22

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#12 2006-07-21 20:37:55

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#13 2006-07-21 22:14:20

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#14 2006-07-21 23:46:21

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#15 2006-07-22 04:43:15

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#16 2006-07-22 13:26:00

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#17 2006-07-22 14:52:48

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#18 2006-07-22 15:37:19

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#19 2006-07-22 16:21:04

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#20 2006-07-22 19:30:35

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#21 2006-07-23 03:33:50

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#22 2006-07-23 05:09:13

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#23 2006-07-23 05:33:45

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#24 2006-07-23 12:04:34

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

#25 2006-07-23 16:15:54

Re: Arch after-install Guide for n00bs.

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