Successful install of Arch

fox · May 27, 2017, 10:38:02 PM

I managed to successfully install Arch on my first try, relying mainly on Jason's instructions, modified for an install on bare metal. I did it as an additional install on my distrohopping machine, alongside Ubuntu, Bunsenlabs and Manjaro. I didn't install grub, but interestingly, the Ubuntu grub picked it up and booted Arch properly, which it didn't do with Manjaro. I installed plugged into ethernet, but once I installed networkmanager as part of gnome, my wireless was detected. No other drivers were required, probably because my wireless card is an Intel. The one problem I had was getting a GUI shell in gnome. After I installed gnome and rebooted, the computer froze during the boot sequence. I had to boot into a terminal and install lxde. That got me a GUI, and from there I was able to install gdm, which then fixed everything. From there, I enabled AUR and installed a bunch of other stuff. The only residual problem I had was that gnome-terminal wouldn't run, though lxde-terminal was fine.

Update: Most of what I did to tweak Arch after the installation is covered in this article.

fox · May 28, 2017, 07:43:19 AM

I managed to fix gnome-terminal as well, thanks to a posting on the Arch forums. For some reason, the installation didn't set my language as English in the Region and Language setting. Once that was changed, gnome-terminal ran.

ssfc72 · May 28, 2017, 12:54:22 PM

Very nice!

fox · May 28, 2017, 01:20:48 PM

Thanks, Bill. One other thing worth mentioning for those of you who like customization, there were a variety of themes and icons available for Arch (or derivative) users on AUR. I'm a big fan of the Numix Circle theme and icons, but there were more than a dozen other ones available. Some were ones I thought were only available as .debs. I downloaded quite a few to try them. If you're using Gnome as your DE, you really want the gnome-tweak-tool for easily switching among these themes, as well as other customizations.

Jason · May 28, 2017, 06:41:03 PM

Cool! Was it hard as you thought?

fox · May 28, 2017, 09:20:16 PM

Yes and no. I was worried about borking my other installations so I was cautious and went about it quite slowly. Also, I couldn't find an exact example of an installation to match what I wanted to do, what was to install it among other distros but get it to boot without installing its own grub. Had you or Bob been around when I did the installation, I probably would have been more relaxed about it. But in retrospect, it wasn't hard at all.

Now that I've done it, I'm thinking about putting Arch on my Dell laptop. That would be slightly more of a challenge because it has a Broadcom wifi card, but I think I can handle it now.

fox · May 29, 2017, 07:55:51 AM

I have run into a problem - constant fan running in my laptop with apparently high CPU use that seems to be related to systemd journaling (if I'm reading the output of top correctly). I'll probably seek help from the gurus at PLUG mug tonight and if necessary, post something in Support later.

Update: William found the problem with top. Turned out that the google-calendars-indicator, running in python2, was using all of the cpu cycles. I don't even need it, so I uninstalled it. After that, CPU use went way down and the fan stopped coming on. Battery time increased to near-Ubuntu levels.

Jason · May 30, 2017, 03:01:25 PM

Go, William! Did Bob bring his geek of the week glasses for him?

fox · May 30, 2017, 03:11:53 PM

Bob bailed!! (Unless he showed up after 10:30.)

Jason · May 30, 2017, 03:17:36 PM

That's odd, for Bob. He said he was going. Maybe he was just too tired out.

ssfc72 · May 31, 2017, 06:35:16 AM

Thanks to William, for the tip on the command to get information on your computer's cpu.

Just type the word, cpu and then hit the TAB key, and this should expand the word into available commands,
On my one notebook computer, running Mint 18, it produced about 3 cpu commands, that I could issue.
On my old desktop computer running Mint 18, it only produced the command, cpufreq- I then added to this command, the word info, cpufreq-info, and hit the Enter key and it gave me lots of neat info about what speeds the cpu's were running at, etc.

Quote from: fox on May 29, 2017, 07:55:51 AM
I have run into a problem - constant fan running in my laptop with apparently high CPU use that seems to be related to systemd journaling (if I'm reading the output of top correctly). I'll probably seek help from the gurus at PLUG mug tonight and if necessary, post something in Support later.

Update: William found the problem with top. Turned out that the google-calendars-indicator, running in python2, was using all of the cpu cycles. I don't even need it, so I uninstalled it. After that, CPU use went way down and the fan stopped coming on. Battery time increased to near-Ubuntu levels.

fox · June 14, 2017, 07:14:15 PM

10 days later and no problems to report. I am now seriously interested in Arch, enough so that I made some space on the drive in my office iMac and installed it there this afternoon. By and large it went smoothly. I did it on ethernet, but the Broadcom wifi was picked up as soon as I installed a desktop environment (Gnome); no firmware needed. This time I installed Gnome with gdm instead of lightdm, and it started up without any additional software or tweaks. The only problem I had was that, once again, Gnome Terminal wouldn't start up; a potentially serious matter when you don't have any other terminal installed. (This happened before but I forgot about it.) It was easy to fix from the settings application.

My big concern with a wholesale switch to Arch is that the constant updates will break something. It's bound to happen at some point, and one layer of protection is to have Ubuntu installed on the same disk, which I have on every computer where I have added Arch. The other level of protection is to have a backup. I have read about different ways to do this, but I think I'll just make an image of the Arch partition with Clonezilla and store it on an external drive. That way if something breaks I would have the option to just restore the image. I'll wait until it's more or less in its final form with regard to the applications and customizations I want. Data are not an issue, as all of these are on Dropbox or Google Drive. The one exception is Thunderbird emails that I delete from the email server but store on a local drive. Suggestions for alternative backup strategies are welcome.

Jason · June 15, 2017, 05:26:41 AM

Quote from: fox on June 14, 2017, 07:14:15 PM
The one exception is Thunderbird emails that I delete from the email server but store on a local drive. Suggestions for alternative backup strategies are welcome.

I'm assuming you're using InSync. Just add the thunderbird directory to the InSync directory backup list.

fox · June 15, 2017, 06:43:35 AM

Brilliant, Jason; thanks! I didn't even know where the Thunderbird mail was stored until you mentioned this but now I know. I already used this info. to copy my local mail files from the Ubuntu partition to the Arch partition.

fox · June 16, 2017, 11:01:09 PM

Back to my original Arch installation on my distrohopping Acer. It has been uneventful, except when I decided to nuke the Manjaro partition. I don't know how, but this somehow messed up the Arch entry on my Ubuntu grub, and selecting Arch from the menu gave a kernel panic just like it did previously in Manjaro until I fixed the entry. The solution was the same - adding

Code Select

/boot/initramfs-linux.img
to the end of the last line in the entry solved the problem.