Arch Linux administration notes
Notes
pkgfile
to find which packages(s) contain particular files
pacman
to install and uninstall packages. pacman -Q | sort
for a sorted list of all installed packages
timedatectl
to administer time, date, NTP, time zone, etc.
Template installation notes
- During installation of the OS, after
arch-chroot /mnt
and installation of grub but before booting into the new OS for the first time:GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="biosdevname=0 net.ifnames=0 systemd.unit=multi-user.target"
. Thissystemd.unit
specification is required because at some point after installing graphical packages (probably a window manager), the start-up target gets set to graphical and this causes the console to break during boot because we don't have an X11 server and/or GDM/xdm installed. The biosdevname/ifnames settings mean we get "eth0" instead of something like "ensX".- Replace MODULES line with
MODULES=(virtio virtio_blk virtio_pci virtio_net)
in/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
and runmkinitcpio -p linux
to build a newinitramfs
with virtio modules for qemu devices
timedatectl set-ntp true
pacman -S pkgfile
and thenpkgfile -u
- Install
bind-tools
,net-tools
,strace
,lsof
pacman -S openssh
, change PermitRootLogin to "yes" in/etc/ssh/sshd_config
, thensystemctl enable/start sshd
- Xorg packages to install:
xorg-bdftopcf xorg-font-util xorg-font-utils xorg-fonts-100dpi xorg-fonts-75dpi xorg-fonts-alias xorg-fonts-encodings xorg-fonts-misc xorg-fonts-type1 xorg-luit xorg-mkfontdir xorg-mkfontscale xorg-oclock xorg-twm xorg-xauth xorg-xcalc xorg-xclock xorg-xev xorg-xeyes xorg-xload xorg-xset xorg-xsetroot xorg-xwininfo
- Important packages:
tcl
,rsync
- Packages for academics:
gcc
,clang
,make
,gdb
,ghc
,python3
- Install and configure
openldap
,nss_ldap
- Install
autofs
andnfs-utils
(to getmount.nfs
which performs the actual home directory NFS mounts) - Install
xterm
,fvwm
andarandr
- Install
libreoffice-fresh
,libreoffice-fresh-en-GB
,libepoxy
- Install
nedit
andgedit
- Install
lyx
,ghostscript
andxpdf
- Install
firefox
- Problem:
man: command exited with status 159: /usr/lib/man-db/zsoelim | /usr/lib/man-db/manconv -f UTF-8:ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8//IGNORE | preconv -e UTF-8 | tbl | nroff -mandoc -rLL=113n -rLT=113n -Tascii
Solution:
The problem happens whenman
is run without theSHELL
environment variable set. We can fix it by creating a/etc/bash.bashrc
containing onlyexport SHELL
. This exports a useful value into the environment of the shell and, hence,man
- Install
postgresql
- Reflect deeply on the consequences of installing Gnome + KDE + Xfce4 + Fluxbox = more than 3 GB of space required
Configuration notes
- The Gnome (desktop) environment requires
systemd
which isn't available in the archlinux64 environment and, hence, it can't be used.
Snapshot details
Snapshot name/ID | Contains |
base | Base Arch Linux installation with networking and SSH configured |
usersync | tcl, rsync, autofs, nfs-utils, cronie, postfix - environment configured to sychronise with conformary, allow use of runarch64env by users with working automount |
xstuff | xorg-bdftopcf, xorg-font-util, xorg-font-utils, xorg-fonts-100dpi, xorg-fonts-75dpi, xorg-fonts-alias, xorg-fonts-encodings, xorg-fonts-misc, xorg-fonts-type1, xorg-luit, xorg-mkfontdir, xorg-mkfontscale, xorg-oclock, xorg-twm, xorg-xauth, xorg-xcalc, xorg-xclock, xorg-xev, xorg-xeyes, xorg-xload, xorg-xset, xorg-xsetroot, xorg-xwininfo, xterm, fvwm, arandr, libreoffice-fresh, libreoffice-fresh-en-GB, libepoxy, nedit, gedit, lyx, ghostscript, xpdf, firefox |
chromium | chromium |
dev | gcc, clang, make, gdb, ghc, emacs, postgresql, r |
dev2 | meson, m4, gperf, valgrind, libxslt, docbook-xsl |
otherwm | fluxbox, xfce4 |
xmessage | xorg-xmessage |
- | eclipse-cpp, eclipse-common (pulls in java/jdk, sound and multimedia libraries, 677MB installed), gst-plugins-bad, qiv, nomacs, ristretto, xloadimage |