Arch Linux

Ben9250

Member

From: Bath - England

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 208

Website

Documentation of Arch.

Hi, been using Arch for some time now, actually as both a personal computer OS as well as production for my work. I've got to the point now where I'm more comfortable with the command line and the less graphical route, just as I set out to do, and I'm now more interested in the actual working of the machine beyond what I needed to know to set it up and maintain it. I was reading through Slackbook and was impressed by the explanation of how a basic Linux system works as well as just the installation - so about runlevels, booting up all the main directories etc. Obviously Arch is a bit different in that there's one main rc file. So it isn't exactly the same. I also keep having this problem when I update the kernel using pacman - my nvidia driver and broadcom-wl module either disappear completely or don't work and need re-installation. It's as easy as doing pacman -S again but it's starting to bug me. So because of this I wanted to get more into what makes everything tick, perhaps things that are not explained in the install guides, the bootup, modules and hooks and things like that. Is there some sort of wiki page like this (I certainly haven't found one) or can people recommend the things I need to read? Kindof this is what happens when you boot up, these are hooks, these are modules, and runlevels things like that. I've already read the Slackbook, and whilst giving me good info and made me understand perhaps Ubuntu and other distros better (incluing Slack - for that was the books purpose ^.^), it's not the same as Arch because of the whole BSD style differences and the adherence to simplicity and the Arch Way.

Cheers, to anybody that can suggest or point me to anything, as opposed to me doing random searches on the Wiki - as that's proving very slow progress.

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"In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it."
  - H. G. Wells

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Documentation of Arch.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Boot_process ?
Next level is to read the code, e.g. initscripts.

Anntoin

Member

Registered: 2009-08-10

Posts: 42

Website

Re: Documentation of Arch.

For the nvidia driver (and I assume the broadcom one too) it needs to be reinstalled after updating the kernel - (very) basically because the nvidia module needs to be compiled against a specific kernel version, then when installing the driver with pacman that module is put in the folder for that specific kernel.
See:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVI … tom_kernel
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVI … the_kernel
http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra … dia/files/

There is certainly some room for improvement explaining these issues in more depth in the wiki. If I have some free time (not looking likely for a couple of weeks) I'll put in a more detailed explanation.

Mr.Elendig

#archlinux@freenode channel op

From: The intertubes

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 4,092

Re: Documentation of Arch.

Wall of text

If you use the stock kernel, and have installed nvidia from the repos, -Syu will install an updated nvidia package when you update your kernel, and there should be no problem at all.
broadcom-wl on the other hand is in aur, and therefor unsupported. That means that _you_ have to recompile it everytime there is a kernel update.

What wifi card do you have btw? (paste the output of lspci -vnn | grep 14e4)

Most broadcom cards works with the b43 driver now, so you might not have to use the non-free broadcom-wl driver at all.

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Evil #archlinux@libera.chat channel op and general support dude.
. files on github, Screenshots, Random pics and the rest

Ben9250

Member

From: Bath - England

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 208

Website

Re: Documentation of Arch.

My Broadcom Driver returns this:

0b:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4328] (rev 03)
It's a Broadcom, came in the Dell when I bought it.

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"In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it."
  - H. G. Wells

Mr.Elendig

#archlinux@freenode channel op

From: The intertubes

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 4,092

Re: Documentation of Arch.

Hm, unlucky, one of the few bmc cards that is not supported by the b43 driver. No way around keeping broadcom-wl updated yourself then.

The reason for why the driver fails after a kernel update is twofold. First off if there is a major version update, the location of the kernel modules changes, since they are located in /lib/modules/$(uname -r).
Secondly, a driver has to be built against the spesific kernel version running for it to work, since even a small change in the api of the kernel would cause the driver to not work anymore. (and because of how linking is done)

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Evil #archlinux@libera.chat channel op and general support dude.
. files on github, Screenshots, Random pics and the rest