Complete New User Getting Stated Guide

So i know there are plenty of New User guides out there. But all the ones I found for Arch and Openbox together were incomplete or non-existant.

Here is a new user guide I recently wrote, it is designed to take you from a new in box RasPi to a functional Openbox desktop.

Hope this helps

http://www.mybiteofpi.com/guides.html

(please feel free to offer suggestion to improve it!)

Looks good, almost exactly the steps I followed.
Perhaps you could include:
-How to change the keymap in both X and the terminal
-How to install to an SD card from Windows
-Some alternative software solutions I'd recommend are:
qtfm (file manager)
hsetroot (sets wallpaper)
omxplayer (only media player i found to work on the rpi)
transset-df (don't you need this as well as xcompmgr to make trasnparency work)
-Also you could include how to start X at boot either with auto-login or a login manager.

Great ideas,

I will have an OMX player tutorial soon!

As for from Windows.... I havn't owned a Windows computer in 10 years, and while I could cut and paste someone else's info. I guess I havn't decided I want to. Maybe i will post a link to Windows and Mac instructions.

I have never heard of qtfm or hsetroot, I will look into them.

transet is cool for eyecandy, I will include that today!

I include xcompmgr because tint2 looks for xcompmgr by default to make itself transparent

As I understand it the majority of the Raspberry pi crowd is trying to make "startx" a thing. Maybe I will add a SLiM tutorial soon. As soon as I install it.

There's stuff for the wheezy image on the wiki that's aimed at noob users.

Might also be worth mentioning this:
https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download

w32diskimager makes installing the Arch image a piece of cake for Windows users.

Very interesting! So far, I have only dd'd the March image as I am waiting until I know when my Pi is coming to download the most recent image at that point.

IF my experience with that 29 March image holds, then it will be possible for me to dd the final image to a 2GB SD card.

Unless it is physically impossible for folks to dd the current Arch Pi image to a 2 GB SD card, I wonder if it might make sense to make it clear that steps 9 and 10 about opening Gparted and resizing the partition are only needed if you want to take advantage of the space on an SD card larger than 2 GB. You also might correct the spelling of partition (the double ii). ;o)

I also question step 11, about adding config.txt before booting. My system cannot read the image at all - an old embedded Linux PDA - and it is my intention to wait until after I boot my Pi over Ethernet, to then go in and edit the config.txt file.

If that is a reasonable alternative, you might mention it somehow.

Oh, I forgot, step 7 says cade where you probably mean code.

I cannot go much further than that in commenting as no Pi yet. But it will be interesting to see if I can succeed installing packages I have put on an SD card from the repository, as I will not have direct access to the Internet for a while from the Pi itself.

I guess I had better also put a current copy of pacman's xz file on that SD card before I do any installing, thank you for making it clear how important that will be!!!

Thanks - I've managed to get most of the way but after Step 33, I find I can no longer log in as root or as my new user. Is there a file I can edit to get going again? I don't want to go back to Step 7 if I can possibly help it. The first line in my etc/passwd file is (if that is at all relevant

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root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

Which I am assuming means that 'root', password 'root' is acceptable.

Nice guide, I used the one from the ALArm site, my first thought was gui and have just set off my pi to dling lxde. should probably have sat down and sorted out what I needed first but hey!

I found the solution for this login error after step 32.

You can still login via SSH
pacman -Syu util-linux

Then tada.wav

Disclaimer: I found the solution here
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1125888

OK, found that the default keymap for the keyboard is US. I'm in the UK using a UK keyboard. It caused...problems. I'd recommend that one of the initial steps after booting the Pi for the first time is to change the keymap for the keyboard to one which reflects the KB a user is using (I checked and changed but only cus I've dabbled with linux over the years).

Also get rid of the spare Linux computer assumption, most people don't have one it's mostly windows with MacOS as a close second.

Another thing I'd recommend is doing the SD Card re partition on the Pi itself. A lot of people would end up using the system and then taking the SD card out every time they want to re partition when they don't strictly need to. I haven't got round to doing that yet bit yet but I'm on my third fresh re-install at the moment, my third of Arch. The same goes for setting up the screen which is an old Cello LCD TV.

The default keyboard for all the distributions is UK as far as I know. I certainly have not had any problems using my UK keyboards in any distribution I have tried.

It's not, it's US. I had to change it, wouldn't have noticed if not for my cheapo ASDA keyboard. Initially none of the changes to that file would have been relevant hence why I skipped that bit.

Thing is all the other local settings are fine. I had to adapt the config.txt guide at a rough guess, couldn't do it from a Mac so I set it up using nano using

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nano /config.txt

Not sure if that's making any difference though my keymap is fine now. Gradually figuring my way around, coming up for fourth install if I get annoyed with this one. I like the idea of Arch, it forcing you to learn by doing but I'm finding I have to adapt everything I do so I can do everything on the Pi.

After login (slim) I got a black screen and a white mouse cursor (cross shaped).
No menus, no panels.
What could have gone wrong?

@HashberryPee

Not too sure but it sounds like slim isn't loading the correct window manager and is just loading xorg-twm.
Your .xinitrc file should have the line

exec openbox-session

somewhere in it.

...has anyone established an autostarting wm by this guide?

Which wm?
In /etc/inittab there is notes to comment something out, and some examples what to uncomment.
The examples probably a new user created, and would have a GUI login.
Obviously I'm feeling a little lazy to look for details

Thanks for all the comments, i have edited the guide accordingly.

I plan on doing a fresh install one night this week, to double triple check everything.

There's stuff for the wheezy image on the wiki that's aimed at noob users.

True, but the sooner we can get noobs using Arch and actually learning about linux rather than using it the better. Being elitist dosn't solve anything.

I found the solution for this login error after step 32.

You can still login via SSH
pacman -Syu util-linux

Thanks for the tip, I didn't have a problem, but i added this to the guide.

After login (slim) I got a black screen and a white mouse cursor (cross shaped).
No menus, no panels.
What could have gone wrong?

Sounds like twm, a very lightweight backup that we installed in case we need to test X. Did you change your .xinitrc file?

...has anyone established an autostarting wm by this guide?

Yes

Which wm?
In /etc/inittab there is notes to comment something out, and some examples what to uncomment.
The examples probably a new user created, and would have a GUI login.
Obviously I'm feeling a little lazy to look for details

you want "openbox-session"

After login (slim) I got a black screen and a white mouse cursor (cross shaped).
No menus, no panels.
What could have gone wrong?

Sounds like twm, a very lightweight backup that we installed in case we need to test X. Did you change your .xinitrc file?

Yes, I created .xinitrc and inserted exec openbox-session just like the manual said.

About autostart.sh:
Somewhere I read that nowadays autostart.sh is only called autostart - without the '.sh'.
I'm also a little confused about the line lxsession & in autostart as there is no lxsession on my system. lxsession seems to belong to lxde. I know lxde is based on openbox..

Point 42:
There's a typing error. Should stand openbox-session instead of oppenbox-session.

Awesome guide, but GParted-ing after flashing seems like a waste of write cycles to me.

@HashberryPee

While you're still trying openbox to run properly I'd recommend an empty autostart file. Then you should just boot up with a grey background and nothing present except the ability to right-click the desktop opening a menu.
Also when I install openbox the autostart file is just 'autostart' however when I renamed it to 'autostart.sh' it still worked fine.

If you login thorugh startx rather than slim do you get the same results?

@ASpotySpot

Thanks for your help!

Here's the situation:

• Tried it with the user and an empty autostart via slim. Same result.

• Then I switched to another console and started the system manually as root ('startx') and openbox booted up. Grey with a context menu.
  ~/.config/autstart is completely empty btw.

Looks like I might have set up something accidentally as root which supposed to be user.

Did some more research. Turned out slim start is the problem.
Switched the 'roles' of user and root. Means that root started openbox via slim and user via 'startx'.
This time the user system started openbox and root didn't (black screen, white cross cursor).

So something's up with the slim configuration.

Awesome guide, but GParted-ing after flashing seems like a waste of write cycles to me.

Well you gotta resize the SD Card somehow, unless you are cool with only a 2 gig system. There are ways to increase size inside of the Arch install, but GParted is way easier and works the same.

Did some more research. Turned out slim start is the problem.
Switched the 'roles' of user and root. Means that root started openbox via slim and user via 'startx'.
This time the user system started openbox and root didn't (black screen, white cross cursor).

So something's up with the slim configuration.

Are you trying to Autologin? I only use a username and password, so i can choose what user to log in as.

Did you put slim in the DAEMONS section of the RC.conf?

Are you trying to Autologin? I only use a username and password, so i can choose what user to log in as.

Did you put slim in the DAEMONS section of the RC.conf?

No, I don't use autologin, I insert user and password.
rc.conf seems fine:

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DAEMONS=(!hwclock syslog-ng network slim openntpd @netfs @crond @sshd)


If you have been trying to login from slim and have been getting a black screen with a white curser, i have SOLVED the problem.

In the DAEMONS section of your /etc/rc.conf you need to have slim AND dbus

slim will not work without dbus.

from the black screen with the white x or from the slim login type <ctrl>+<alt>+<f3> that should get you a console. From the console

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sudo nano /etc/rc.conf

add dbus and you are good to go!


PS. Not in the original instructions but there now is adding snd_bcm2835 to the MODULES section of the /etc/rc.conf for sound support in the kernel.