Installing Arch in VB

[viking60]

I installed Arch in a VM today just to check out the documentation.
I found the Beginners guide harder to navigate than I can remember and with to many side leaps to cover all possibilities.

I was following the beginners guide and dropped the network part since the VM has a working connection.

So I jumped right to update "the system clock".

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timedatectl set-ntp true

The Arch wiki then suggested to test this out with

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timedatectl status

And this did not provide the correct time due to the wrong timezone so I did a:

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timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Oslo

After that the time was correct.

The Arch gurus say that this does not have to be 100% correct but I chose to set it anyway and I think it should be in the guide to avoid questions - that is where I and the gurus disagree.
They thought I should edit the "systemd-timesyncd" wiki instead.

doesn't have to be 100%, just close enough for gpg expiration dates, and the time zone is set later for the installed system. if you want to mention it somewhere, add it to systemd-timesyncd

Yeah I want to mention it... but in the beginners guide.. so..... nothing wrong with mentioning it in "systemd-timesyncd" in addition either but...

Anyway so far this has been simple enough moving on to preparing storing devices.

This part is not all that intuitive but what I did was simple enough:
I created one simple MBR partition to fill up the entire disk:

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parted /dev/sda

This put me in the parted mode (easy to see since the prompt is parted: )
And here I wrote 5 lines:

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mklabel  msdos

mkpart  primary  ext4  0%  100%

set 1 boot on

print

quit

The first line sets up the disk as an MBR partition type
The next line prepares the disk for a following primary ext4 file system setup (this % stuff does so that I do not have to fiddle with sectors and numbers).
The third line makes the partition bootable.
The 4th line is just a check that I have not fubared .
..and out we go.

Time to format it:

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mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1

Then I mounted it:

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mount  /dev/sda1  /mnt

Time to install the Arch base then:

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pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel

From here the Arch guide is good again according to my quirky logics...

So here I am with a fresh and basic Arch install time to fill it with some content.

The first thing I need to do is to create an unprivileged user account - being root all the time will not do....

[viking60]

It seems almost impossible to get a gui working on this thing at the moment:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=208652&p=2

Here I am at a fresh install and Lightdm will simply go to a black screen and freeze.
The solution was to install xorg-drivers

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sudo pacman -S xorg-drivers

Now LightDM fires nicely and logs me in to my openbox. I want to check out Lxqt though...

But first I need to install the virtualbox guest additions, to be able to copy and paste and get some good resolution.
Here the Arch Wiki lives up to its fame. The documentation is perfect and works like a charm

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Vi ... nux_guests

Installing lxqt and the only problem was that it picked the US keyboard - but that was easily fixed in the keyboard settings.
Testing it an letting you know.....

So far Lxqt resembles the good old Gnome2 I can drag icons directly from the menu to the panel I can add widgets.
Reboot and shutdown buttons work as they should and sound is perfectly fine.
And yes this thing is snappy too.

So in many ways it is much like Xfce4. It is easy to handle despite some websites claiming the opposite. It has pretty much most of what Xfce4 can offer like control panel etc.

And the big thing about lxqt is that it runs on only 128MB of RAM so it will fit everywhere. Impressive indeed.
As an Xfce4 user I feel pretty much at home with this one.

Lxqt is QT based while Xfce4 is GTK based and Xfce4 has a more conservative approach to things where Lxqt is heavily developed.
If you are low on resources then LXqt is a great alternative.

Anyway My fresh Arch install is thriving. Now I only have to make a swapfile because I skipped the swap part in the Arch beginners guide.

Here you have my data on the install:

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System:    Host: Arch Kernel: 4.5.1-1-ARCH x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: LXQt Distro: Arch Linux
Machine:   System: innotek product: VirtualBox v: 1.2
           Mobo: Oracle model: VirtualBox v: 1.2 Bios: innotek v: VirtualBox date: 12/01/2006
CPU:       Triple core Intel Core i7 920 (-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB
           clock speeds: max: 2672 MHz 1: 2672 MHz 2: 2672 MHz 3: 2672 MHz
Graphics:  Card: InnoTek Systemberatung VirtualBox Graphics Adapter
           Display Server: N/A drivers: (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 146x22
Audio:     Card Intel 82801AA AC'97 Audio Controller driver: snd_intel8x0 Sound: ALSA v: k4.5.1-1-ARCH
Network:   Card-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE] driver: pcnet32
           IF: enp0s3 state: unknown speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Intel 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: e1000
           IF: enp0s8 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 21.0GB (19.8% used) ID-1: /dev/sda model: VBOX_HARDDISK size: 21.0GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 20G used: 3.9G (22%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
Sensors:   None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?


Here are the boot times:

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[viking@Arch ~]$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 920ms (kernel) + 2.977s (userspace) = 3.897s

If I would recommend Arch to a Linux greenhorn? - No definitely not! Booting and ending up with a black screen is not what the doctor ordered for them.
After lots of and even more of I figured it out so I get to feel special

If you really want to learn Linux and crawl under the hood of it; then Arch is the best distro to do it with though

This does not mean that Arch is usually unstable - My wife had Arch on a Laptop for 6 years (Without knowing it was Arch) and it behaved well.
(But after 6 years the GUI went black after an update so I switched to Manjaro on that one due to lack of time.)
Every time I get annoyed with Arch I aka when there is trouble; I tend to do a fresh Arch install to shake of the dust...and I also tend to get re-impressed with Arch.

So it still is a favorite:

[viking60]

Update:
After my last update the boot time is:

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[viking@Arch ~]$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 674ms (kernel) + 896ms (userspace) = 1.571s


This thing is fast and good looking and..a favorite