Arch Linux

Tyrian

Member

Registered: 2008-10-22

Posts: 7

Non-FTP/Torrent Arch Linux Downloads [SOLVED]

Hey all,

A while back, I bought one of the early model EEE PCs (701) from ASUS.  I like the hardware, but I'm not a big fan of Xandros.  After doing some searching around the Internet looking at other Linux distros, I decided I wanted to install Arch Linux for a couple of reasons.  First, the reviews indicated it was a good distro to "learn Linux" on.  Second, your repositories seem much more comprehensive than other small-footprint distros, especially with regards to compilers.  Plus, I read good things about your community.

Now for my question:  I've gone through the wiki and feel confident about being able to install Arch Linux; however, your USB image download comes as a Torrent.  I'm currently at University, and our network admins are very paranoid about any sort of Torrent or P2P traffic, as we've been getting a ton of heat lately because of the DMCA.  They might just push the "panic button" and decide to kill my connection if I start a Torrent.  I've looked around and found a mirror here: 

http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/O … -864.shtml

Is this as up-to-date/official as the one hosted through the Torrent network?  And will I be able to use that download for the USB install technique listed here?  (I'm using the flashnul method.)

Thanks!

Last edited by Tyrian (2008-10-26 19:11:57)

SamC

Member

From: Calgary

Registered: 2008-05-13

Posts: 611

Website

Re: Non-FTP/Torrent Arch Linux Downloads [SOLVED]

Wouldn't the ".img" files on the ftp mirrors work on a USB stick?

Tyrian

Member

Registered: 2008-10-22

Posts: 7

Re: Non-FTP/Torrent Arch Linux Downloads [SOLVED]

Wow, didn't see those.  I was looking under the core subdirectories on the FTP servers, as that was where the wiki pointed me towards.  All I saw there was a ton of tarballs.  Thanks for the help.

Tyrian

Member

Registered: 2008-10-22

Posts: 7

Re: Non-FTP/Torrent Arch Linux Downloads [SOLVED]

Ah, sorry for the double post, but I've run into another problem, and rather than make a new thread, I'll just ask here instead.

I've gotten the .img file from the FTP server and have used flashnul to image it to a USB drive.  I plugged it in, set my BIOS to boot from it, saved settings, then restarted.  However, I ended up back at my Xandros desktop.  I looked in Home (Xandros equivalent of Windows Explorer), found my flash drive, and opened it.  Inside was a folder called partition1 and inside that was the image for ArchLinux.  I think I need to get the image files outside the partition1 folder, but I don't know how to get flashnul to drop it there.  I can't copy them in Xandros.

Thanks again for your help!

WhiteMagic

Member

Registered: 2007-03-01

Posts: 85

Re: Non-FTP/Torrent Arch Linux Downloads [SOLVED]

You could try the following command

dd if=./archlinux.img of=/dev/sda

where "archlinux.img" is the file you downloaded and "/dev/sda" is the path to your usb device. Don't use "/dev/sda1" or aynthing like that because you want to write the image on the device itself and not into a partition. The above command will destroy any content on that device so make sure you have the correct device and that there is nothing on it you might still need.

Tyrian

Member

Registered: 2008-10-22

Posts: 7

Re: Non-FTP/Torrent Arch Linux Downloads [SOLVED]

Hmm...Good news and bad news.

Good news:  That command worked. 

Bad news:  Apparently /dev/sda is my Xandros partition, not my USB or SD card.  So, I've just wiped out my current OS...  Not a big deal; there was nothing saved to it.  But not great, none the less...

Last edited by Tyrian (2008-10-26 16:51:59)