Looking at ARCH

[ruralguru]

Im somewhat new to linux, however everything is only a search away so i've found ot to be a good environment. I am contemplating getting arch on a secondary SD to tool around with. I understand ARCH is very different from other distros and almost everything has to be configured. Any recomendations or things to be aware of when entering into the OS?

[SonOfAMotherlessGoat]

Arch is a great distro, and the documentation is outstanding. But it's a rolling release with bleeding edge packaging, so know what you're installing. Read the PKGBUILD's. And the Arch Alarm website has a great walkthrough of how to install. It's not just burning an image, you're rolling your own. Give it a try and post here if you have any issues.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

I am playing around with arch on my PineA64; similar in most respects to the Raspberry PI 3B, but with more memory on a larger foot-print (index card sized).

Yes, arch is manual; which is good, because it will force you to learn gnu+linux.

For instance to get wifi going you will need to manually configure it /

Code: Select all

ip link set wlan0 up

ip link show wlan0

ip dev wlan0 scan | less

iw dev wlan0 link

wpa_supplicant -D nl80211 -i wlan0 -c <(wpa_passphrase "ssid_host_id" "ssid_pass_phrase" ) &

dhcpcd wlan0

You can of course automate all of that... but arch makes you do it yourself !

marcus

[ruralguru]

I am playing around with arch on my PineA64; similar in most respects to the Raspberry PI 3B, but with more memory on a larger foot-print (index card sized).

Yes, arch is manual; which is good, because it will force you to learn gnu+linux.

For instance to get wifi going you will need to manually configure it /

Code: Select all

ip link set wlan0 up

ip link show wlan0

ip dev wlan0 scan | less

iw dev wlan0 link

wpa_supplicant -D nl80211 -i wlan0 -c <(wpa_passphrase "ssid_host_id" "ssid_pass_phrase" ) &

dhcpcd wlan0

You can of course automate all of that... but arch makes you do it yourself !

marcus

If only there was a like button! and btw that is a glorious beard.

[ruralguru]

Celebrating Primeday by getting another Samsung EVO+ as per http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff- ... crosd-card just for arch.

[fruitoftheloom]

Celebrating Primeday by getting another Samsung EVO+ as per http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff- ... crosd-card just for arch.

http://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/microsd-cards

[ruralguru]

Arch is a great distro, and the documentation is outstanding. But it's a rolling release with bleeding edge packaging, so know what you're installing. Read the PKGBUILD's. And the Arch Alarm website has a great walkthrough of how to install. It's not just burning an image, you're rolling your own. Give it a try and post here if you have any issues.

Got it rolled fine (not exactly sure what rolling my own in this context means). Had to augment the bsdtar.
Have spent a few hours at the pretty flashing cursor... still don't know enough to get anything to work. Any recomendations on where to start?

[sdjf]

Hard to give you suggestions or tips without knowing what you want to do with ArchLinuxArm on your Pi. You can pretty much do whatever you want, just consider it another computer at your disposal. The difference is very little is pre-installed, so you will need to install the packages that are required for your end goals. You will need to learn how to use our package manager, pacman. Man page is good as a reference, but best to find a tutorial, and I really think to wait until you hve something you want to install, so you can learn as you try to use it.

[pepedog]

Creating A Desktop Environment
To install an X environment (eg lxde) log in as user alarm, then su to become root (password default is root)

Code: Select all

pacman -Syu
pacman -S lxde xf86-video-fbdev xorg-xinit

Add this to bottom of /home/alarm/.xinitrc

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exec dbus-launch startlxde

You could now start lxde logged in as alarm by running

Code: Select all

startx

You will be running as user named alarm with password alarm (if you haven't changed it)
Make logging in as user alarm launch lxde automatically
Add this to bottom of /home/alarm/.bash_profile

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[[ -z $DISPLAY && $XDG_VTNR -eq 1 ]] && exec startx

To automatically go straight into lxde, logged in as alarm, from boot
Now create this file

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systemctl edit getty@tty1

and paste these contents in

Code: Select all

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=-/usr/bin/agetty --autologin alarm --noclear %I 38400 Linux

Untested, but should work

[cjan]

Untested, but should work

Hey, you forget wifi networkmanager etc.

[SonOfAMotherlessGoat]

Trust pepedog, the guy knows his Arch.

[ruralguru]

Will the lxde thats a good start. Mostly I have no idea what I want to do since I can't do anything yet.
Any good references for the pi with arch?

[cjan]

Will the lxde thats a good start. Mostly I have no idea what I want to do since I can't do anything yet.
Any good references for the pi with arch?

most fun is play with AUR & PKGBUILD.

[pepedog]

Will the lxde thats a good start. Mostly I have no idea what I want to do since I can't do anything yet.
Any good references for the pi with arch?

You say above you have a flashing cursor, no login prompt showing???????
Don't know your definition of start either.

[fruitoftheloom]

Will the lxde thats a good start. Mostly I have no idea what I want to do since I can't do anything yet.
Any good references for the pi with arch?

Found this on Wayback Machine, believe the blogger used to be a Forum Member, so a little out of date but basics are there:

http://web.archive.org/web/201303160210 ... spot.co.uk

.