Time to turn to Arch

Sometime in March 2013...

Prepare disks

Two 1TB disks. Create physical partitions:

Create RAID:
mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=raid1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 --assume-clean --metadata=1.0

Format partitions:
mkfs -t ext4 /dev/md0

Mount root:
mount /dev/md0 /mnt

Setup connection:
wifi-menu

lsusb	Realtek RTL8191SU 802.11n WLAN Adapter
ip link	list interfaces
ip link set eth0 down	shutdown eth0 so it’s not on the way of wlan0

Install system

Install the base system:
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel

Generate fstab:
genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

chroot:
arch-chroot /mnt

Install wpa_supplicant, so netcfg would work later:
pacman -S wpa_supplicant

Install bootloader & run bootloader script:

On partition 1 set bit 2 attribute (legacy BIOS bootable):

Install MBR:

Configure bootloader (setting vga for framebuffer):

UI vesamenu32.c
PROMPT 1
APPEND root=/dev/md0 ro md=0,/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1 vga=361

Update RAID config file & assemble RAID (check config):

Set hostname:
echo [hostname] > /etc/hostname

Set timezone & set harware clock to system time:

Set locale (set LANG if needed, uncomment locales, generate locales):

Create initial RAM disk environment (added both modules and mdadm_udev to conf):
nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

MODULES="ext4 raid456"
HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata mdadm_udev filesystems usbinput fsck"

Set root password & reboot:

Initial setup

Configure pacman, as needed:
nano /etc/pacman.conf

Setup network connection (wireless):

ip addr	find wireless device
cp /etc/network.d/examples/wireless-wpa /etc/network.d/mynetwork	create profile
nano /etc/network.d/mynetwork	start
netcfg mynetwork	start X

Update the system:
pacman -Syu

Configure user:

Install X:

pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-server-utils	X
pacman -S mesa	3D support
pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils	nvidia
pacman -S xorg-twm xorg-xclock xterm	default environment
startx	test & make sure it works

Install gnome:

Apps

Some useful things:

yaourt	adding access to AUR
gnome	gnome-tweak-tool (kb layout switch, shell extensions, etc.) https://extensions.gnome.org/
fonts	e.g. ttf-freefont, etc. manual install of fonts: su mkdir /usr/share/fonts/my-fonts cp <font-files> /usr/share/fonts/my-fonts chmod 0644 /usr/share/fonts/my-fonts/* fc-cache -vf (build font info cache files)
ssh	openssh on local site: add Port 443 to /etc/ssh/sshd_config (to enable SSHD listening on HTTPS port) on remote site (behind firewall): put ProxyCommand /bin/corkscrew <proxy_ip> <proxy_port> %h %p into ~/.ssh/config call ssh -L <port>:localhost:<port> <username>@<sshd_ip> -p 443 connect to localhost:<port> as required
vsftpd	Enable the following in /etc/vsftpd.conf # Allow anonymous FTP? (Beware - allowed by default if you comment this out). anonymous_enable=NO # Uncomment this to allow local users to log in. local_enable=YES # Uncomment this to enable any form of FTP write command. write_enable=YES chroot_local_user=YES # jail local users to their home directory
firefox	plugins: flashplugin, NetVideoHunter, Russian spellchecking dictionary, Australian English Dictionary, Transliterator about:config extensions.transliterator.layouts.sasha.description;sasha extensions.transliterator.layouts.sasha;[["a","À"],["b","Á"],["v","Â"],["g","Ã"],["d","Ä"],["e","Å"],["yo","¨"],["zh","Æ"],["z","Ç"],["i","È"],["j","É"],["k","Ê"],["l","Ë"],["m","Ì"],["n","Í"],["o","Î"],["p","Ï"],["r","Ð"],["s","Ñ"],["t","Ò"],["u","Ó"],["f","Ô"],["x","Õ"],["c","Ö"],["ch","×"],["sh","Ø"],["shch","Ù"],["``","Ú"],["`","ú",true],["y","Û"],["''","Ü"],["'","ü",true],["q","Ý"],["yu","Þ"],["ya","ß"],["\\e","ª"],["\\i","²"],["yi","¯"],["\\'","'"],["y\\u","ÛÓ"],["y\\i","ÛÈ"]]
thunderbird	move old profile and run thunderbird -profilemanager to migrate everything
gimp	plugins / extensions: gimp-plugin-gmic gimpfx-foundry(yaourt) gimp-plugin-separate+ extra-fonts-gimp gimp-extras gimphelp-scriptfu FIL(manually)
apache php php-apache	web server & extensions
ntp	time sync
ntfs-3g	NTFS support
digital camera (PTP) & Android phone (MTP)	pacman -S gphoto2 pacman -S gvfs-gphoto2, gvfs-mtp pacman -S thunar * thunar auto-mounts the mobile on connection * after restart both camera and mobile are auto-mounted on connection (by system) e.g. lsusb: Bus 003 Device 053: ID 04b0:0423 Nikon Corp. D5000 Bus 003 Device 051: ID 04e8:685c Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd GT-I9250 Phone [Galaxy Nexus] in thunar use: mtp://[usb:003,051]/ gphoto2://[usb:003,053]/
tigervnc	vncserver :1 (start) vncserver -kill :1 (stop)
x11vnc	x11vnc -display :0 (to connect to main display)
fuseiso	for mounting ISO images
virtualbox	usermod -aG vboxusers romashka (to allow VirtualBox to access USB devices)
aspell dictionaries	e.g. aspell-ru aspell dump dicts (check installed dicts)
firewire	yaourt -S dvb-fe-tda10048-1.0.fw - firmware dvgrab - to capture DV / MPEG-2 Transport Stream (HDV) video and audio data from FireWire
mythtv	systemctl start mysqld usermod -a -G mysql,mythtv <username> systemctl restart mysqld mysql -u root -p < /usr/share/mythtv/mc.sql mysql_upgrade -u root -p mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | mysql -u root -p mysql echo MBE_USER='mythtv' > /etc/conf.d/mythbackend mythtv-setup systemctl start mythbackend (run as superuser) mythfilldatabase must make ~/.mythtv/channels readable and <storage dir> read/write to get channel 9 working, manually add transport and rescan: Standard=DVB, Freq.=191625000, Bandwidth=7MHz, Inversion=Auto, Modulation=QAM-64, LP Coderate=None, HP Coderate=3/4, Trans.Mode=8K, Guard Int.=1/16, Hierarchy=None Full channel table (+ after DTV move, if applicable) Seven ATN 177.500 Mhz -> 529.500 Mhz Nine TCN 191.625 Mhz Ten TEN 219.500 Mhz ABC ABC 226.500 Mhz Television Sydney TSN 536.625 Mhz SBS SBS 571.500 Mhz -> 557.500 Mhz w_scan -c AU (install and attempt to blind scan all DVB, if some channels are not found)
HP PSC 750 (printer-scanner)	pacman -S sane cups xsane (scanner got recognised) hp-setup -i (setup printer)

Services to enable to auto-start:

Other issues:

Get delete key to actually delete a file:
in ~/.config/nautilus/accels uncomment line (gtk_accel_path "<Actions>/DirViewActions/Trash" "Delete")

Fix broken icons:

Fix audio starting mute:

Fix HIGHMEM64 issue (using only 2.7 GiB of RAM for 32-bit systems):

Fix a degraded RAID array:

mdadm -D /dev/md0	find out faulty device Number Major Minor RaidDevice State 0 0 0 0 removed 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1
mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sda1	overwrite superblock
mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sda1	add hdd back to array
cat /proc/mdstat	check the status of sync

Fix Adobe Flash plugin not opening in fullscreen mode:

(if
 (is (application_name) "plugin-container")
  (begin
   (focus)
  )
)

Changes / Additions:

Remove netcfg, install NetworkManager

[main]
plugins=keyfile
no-auto-default=00:24:1d:8a:2e:09	# do not create default wired connection to eth0 (use wlan0)

dkms (dynamic kernel module support)

Remove orphaned packages and their configs recursively:
pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qtdq)

Remove old kernel versions:

Send mail from console:

Problem with NVIDIA / PAE:

• Used to have the following packages: linux, nvidia
• Then I realised that I need linux-pae to enable HIGHMEM support. So the setup became: linux-pae, nvidia-pae
• Then NVIDIA dropped support for my card, so I had to switch to nvidia-340xx. There is no nvidia-340xx-pae, so I started using dkms. The setup became: linux-pae, nvidia-340xx-dkms
• Then nvidia-340xx-dkms became outdated in AUR (it seems to be no longer maintained), so I had to "update all" ignoring the newest nvidia-340xx-utils and nvidia-340xx-libgl
• Then new Xorg got released which no longer works with outdated nvidia-340xx packages
• Now the only setup that works for me (hanging the latest KDE plasma soon after start and crashing Enlightenment from time to time, but at least it does work) is as follows: linux, nvidia-340xx

Problem with new wireless USB adaptor (8192CU):