Arch Linux

[viking60]

Yeah but this should be fairly safe according to this:

Plymouth isn't done yet. It's still under active development, but is used in several popular distros already, including Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu and others

They have well functioning splashscreens...

[dedanna1029]

Aye, I remember when Mandriva switched to plymouth.

[viking60]

Heavy duty network update in Arch now - If you do not feel like diving under the hood then you should not update today
Basically the config data should be moved out of /etc/rc.conf and into /etc/conf.d/netcfg.
That is basically a walk in the park but then you have to leave interface=wlan0 in rc.conf to make rc.d restart network actually restart your network.
My wpa_supplicant was protesting a bit, and Archassistant does not start anything anymore...
How to autostart netcfg profiles every time etc ...
Now that had a negative impact on my dnscrypt settings and resolv.conf...... you get it. Do the update one day you have an hour or two to spare. It is not rocket science but it takes time.

[viking60]

The Arch package verification is now in place and it works perfectly.

pacman's package verification features were turned off by default while we were figuring out the details of our public-key infrastructure.
They have finally been enabled in pacman-4.0.3-2

I had set up the keyring with the trusted developers already while I was eagerly waiting for this to happen - so it was only a matter of merging the new pacman.conf with pacman.conf.pacnew.

The .pacnew files are automatically provided when important conf files are updated and it is up to me to merge them. Installing meld takes care of the merging.

[rolf]

Like signing an rpm with a gpg key? I like the sound of 'meld'. Knowing how things work at system configuration level is something that, after 12 years, this guy doesn't seem to have an expert-level handle on what to do with these files, akin to rpmnew and rpmsave files, iianm.

[viking60]

You are on the Guru level! Stop being modest! So yes it is pretty much like that gpg-key thing
I may have sounded very smart here but Arch really is way easier to handle on the config level. The config file for the package manager is pacman.conf; this conatins my settings so Arch will not overwrite it but present a vanilla pacman.conf.pacnew . And meld compares the two and shows the difference. If I have started meld as root I can take over the data I like from pacman.conf.pacnew and save the now altered pacman.conf. Arch has a few but powerful files like that.

It all sounds brilliant and makes me look smart and sophisticated. pacman conf may contain my mirrors directly or as a reference to a mirrorlist.

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[core]
SigLevel = PackageRequired
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[extra]
SigLevel = PackageRequired
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

#[community-testing]
#SigLevel = PackageRequired
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[community]
SigLevel = PackageRequired
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist


And alle the merge and meld talk above could equally well have been put like this:
"I uncommented the line #SigLevel = PackageRequired for each repo". That was the only important change in the pacman.conf.pacnew file.
The seccond thing is what happens if you forget to merge the .conf and conf.pacnew files?
Probably nothing!

In this case it made the signature thing work. And for milestones like this, there will always be an info on the Arch frontpage

OTOH there is no denying that Arch has made me learn more about Linux than any other distro...

[viking60]

Grr that last update left my Laptop completely without wifi. Going into fixing mode ... can't talk..

[viking60]

So here is the deal: I could not connect anything successfully.
Tried wifi-select and it found my wp2 protected nettwork and "connected" but did not provide an ip. Tried wifi-radar - same thing indicated that my profile was up but no IP. Looking furhter it complained about ipv6.

netcfg my_profile always stopped with a wpa_supplicant complaint but nothing I did to the WPA_suplicant helped. Getting seriously PO I connected the cable only to discover that eth0 did not play along either.
Caramba! .. is the word. And it is time to fix this bersek style:

Code: Select all

downgrade linux

This provided me with a list of my 9 latest installed kernels and I picked no. 2 on the list: linux-3.3.7-1 to replace my current linux-3.3.8-1
rebooted and guess what? It all worked.
It remains to be seen what I have to do to my network settings to get that other kernel to work - I think i will just wait for the next one.

My network stuff:

Code: Select all

inxi -nz
Network:   Card-1: Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) driver: ath9k
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Atheros AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet driver: atl1c
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>

My /etc/network.d/My_netcfg_data (cultofthedeadcow)

Code: Select all

CONNECTION="wireless"
DESCRIPTION="Profile generated by arch assistant instant connection wizard"
INTERFACE="wlan0"
HOSTNAME="heidi-lap"
IP="dhcp"
IFOPTS="dhcp"
# Wireless Settings
SECURITY="wpa"
ESSID="cultofthedeadcow"
KEY="d995334e223b10224aeb3a2120a965c728ff4a67184624ed135ea5b38e91eb84"
SCAN="no"
update_config=1
MAC_ADDRESS="00:14:7f:d9:0b:57"


My /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

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network={
   ctrl_interface=DIR=/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=network
   ssid="cultofthedeadcow"
   proto=RSN
   key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
   pairwise=CCMP TKIP
        group=CCMP TKIP
   psk=d995334e223b10224aeb3a2120a965c728ff4a67184624ed135ea5b38e91eb84
   update_config=1
   fast_reauth=1

[rolf]

ipv6 looks like a serious road-bump, straight ahead.

Modems, routers, firmware, browsers, OS, and kernels will have to get with the program. I shouldn't think a new kernel would foul up backward-compatibility but

[viking60]

The ipv6 is deactivated wherever I can do it. It seems like ipv4 is totally fubared.
I already have this strange behavior on the lap; that it freezes completly when I use networkmanager. So this might be a driver thing.
I have to agree though, that we should expect improvments when we install a new kernel - not .. this
I will upgrade a 64bit box now to check if this is isolated to the other HW....
And that works, so it is HW related (not all that surprisingly with a kernel).

[dedanna1029]

Grr that last update left my Laptop completely without wifi. Going into fixing mode ... can't talk..

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=139270

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=141591

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/27406

I've told you about this I don't know how many times, and that it's the reason I won't put Arch on the netbook. It's an ongoing issue, many more bugs have been filed on it from the kernel on up and down.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup :

In kernel since 2.6.29 and requires no extra packages. It can be configured using the standard wpa_supplicant and iwconfig tools. Unfortunately this does not go for Arch. In order to get it to work, blacklist the following kernel modules:

rt2800pci
rt61pci
rt2x00pci
rt2800usb
rt2800lib
rt2x00usb
rt2x00lib

Might be good to re-read this page. It includes known issues, and ways to get wireless to work, but I haven't seen a whole lot of success with any of it when it comes to atheros. However, it is quite an extensive page, and covers all of the issues known to them up to that point.
The quote I've put here, I did to let you know how long issues have been going on, and is something to try even with the new kernels.

Also read this from Arch news...

[viking60]

I am pretty sure you have not told me to "many times" about a problem that occurred two days ago.
Checking out the links now....
Edit.
There is no need to check anymore Arch had a new kernel update today to kernel 3.4.2-2 so I upgraded to it. And Voila everything works.
Might have been a kernel bug in kernel 3.3.8-1.