Installing An Arch Desktop

WARNING: Proceed carefully and verify everything until the author(s) of this article have had a chance to do so themselves.

Arch Linux is quite different from other distributions. It focuses on minimalism, ease of configuration, and keeping a hand-off approach. This can be daunting for those accustomed to other Linux distributions.

• Rather than maintaining fixed releases, Arch uses a rolling release system. There is no "Arch n.n"
• There is no branding whatsoever outside of the boot-up screen. And even then, it's only the unique way in which Arch brings up the system.
• The Arch installer presents only a base system. There are no pre-sets for common server types or desktop environments.
• Choices for piecing together your own system can be staggering.

One of the side-benefits from Arch's KISS approach is that it is relatively trivial to install Arch from an existing Arch system, including the installation ISO. For the sake of simplicity, this article will only cover the setup of an Arch system using SLiM and Compiz + Emerald. These are by no means the only choice for a desktop system.

Pre-Installation

Arch Install Scripts

If you are using the Arch Installation Media, the arch-install-scripts package is already installed. If you are installing from an existing installation, you can use pacman to install this script to the host machine.

pacman -Sy arch-install-scripts

The remmainder of thsi wiki article will assume that you have theses script installed.

Networking

By default, the Arch installation ISO will bring up and try to get a DHCP lease for all detected network devices. PXE boot will give the adapter an IP but no routing information. A fresh install of Arch does absolutely nothing with networking interfaces by default.

dhcpcd [interface]

If you do not use DHCP, you will have to use these commands to use static addressing:

ip addr $IPAD/$NMSK broacast $BCST dev eth0
ip route add default via $GTWY
ip link set dev $NDIF up

If you are using wifi, the Arch Installation Media has wifi-menu installed for easy CLI configuration of wifi.

Remote Setup Via SSH

If you are using the Arch Installation Media, you may want to use SSH to set up the machine remotely. The most common reason for this is so you can use another machine to look things up for you new installation, and so you can do other work while the Arch is being installed. If you are using an existing Arch system to set up another Arch system, there is no need for SSH.

By default, SSH will not allow password-less logins. The simplest fix is to run passwd and set one before enabling SSH

passwd && systemctl start sshd.service

Pacman Repository Selection

Once networking is up, you'll want to be sure you are using the fastest mirror. To do this, install reflector. You can safely skip upgrading pacman (for now -- this may change in the future.)

pacman -Sy reflector

You can now use reflector to automatically choose the fastest mirrors for you.

CNTY="United States" && reflector -l 5 -c "$CNTY" --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Creating Target Filesystem

Use parted and/or fdisk to create the target partition(s) for your installation. Then format and mount the partition(s).

TRGT=/dev/sda2 && FSYS=ext4
mkfs -t $FSYS $TRGT && mount $TRGT /mnt

Swap Space

SWPG=1 && SWPL=/mnt/swapfile
dd if=/dev/zero of=$SWPL bs=1M count=`expr 1024 \* $SWPG`
mkswap $SWPL && chmod 600 $SWPL && swapon $SWPL

Installing The System

You can pick and choose from the following lines.

PKGS="acpid base cpupower lm_sensors ncdu ntp reflector sudo"
PKGS="$PKGS grub-bios os-prober"                                         # GRUB2 boot loader
PKGS="$PKGS alsa-utils alsa-plugins libsamplerate"                       # ALSA
PKGS="$PKGS dosfstools ntfsprogs"                                        # Microsoft filesystems 
PKGS="$PKGS hdparm parted smartmontools"                                 # Extra drive utils
PKGS="$PKGS hwdetect lshw"                                               # Extra hardware tools
PKGS="$PKGS arj lzop p7zip unrar unzip zip"                              # Compressed archives
PKGS="$PKGS base-devel wget"                                             # For compiling (AUR)
PKGS="$PKGS curl jshon git"         	                                 # For compiling packer
PKGS="$PKGS cups sane"                                                   # For printing/scanning
PKGS="$PKGS openssh"                                                     # For remote control
PKGS="$PKGS nfs-utils"                                                   # For NFS client/server
PKGS="$PKGS samba"                                                       # For Samba Server
PKGS="$PKGS rsync"                                                       # For remote file sync
PKGS="$PKGS xorg-server xorg-utils xorg-xinit xorg-xrandr"               # For GUI Desktop
PKGS="$PKGS xf86-video-vesa"                                             # Generic VESA driver
PKGS="$PKGS xf86-video-intel"                                            # Intel opensrc
PKGS="$PKGS xf86-video-ati"                                              # ATI opensrc
PKGS="$PKGS xf86-video-nouveau"                                          # NVIDIA opensrc
PKGS="$PKGS nvidia nvidia-utils vdpau-video"                             # NVIDIA closed all
PKGS="$PKGS ttf-droid ttf-ubuntu-font-family"                            # Extra fonts
PKGS="$PKGS gtk-engines librsvg lxappearance"                            # GTK2 Themes & Config
PKGS="$PKGS hplip pil"                                                   # HPLIP
PKGS="$PKGS python2-reportlab python2-notify python2-dbus python2-pyqt"  # HPLIP
PKGS="$PKGS xsane-gimp"                                                  # Scanner support
PKGS="$PKGS slim slim-themes archlinux-themes-slim"                      # SLIM Display Manager
PKGS="$PKGS compizconfig-backend-gconf compiz-fusion-plugins-extra"      # Compiz
PKGS="$PKGS ccsm emerald-themes"                                         # Compiz + Emerald
PKGS="$PKGS galculator gucharmap lxtask mcomix sakura viewnior xdialog"  # Miscellaneous
PKGS="$PKGS xfburn gnucash gtk-recordmydesktop"                          # Miscellaneous
PKGS="$PKGS virtualbox virtualbox-guest-iso wine_gecko"                  # Emulation
PKGS="$PKGS gksu gparted gsmartcontrol"                                  # GUI Frontends
PKGS="$PKGS audacity deadbeef"                                           # Audio
PKGS="$PKGS gimp-help-en inkscape"                                       # Graphics
PKGS="$PKGS avidemux-gtk libdvdcss mediainfo mencoder mkvtoolnix-gtk"    # Multimedia
PKGS="$PKGS chromium firefox flashplugin midori opera"                   # Browsers
PKGS="$PKGS epdfview geany"                                              # Doc View/Edit
PKGS="$PKGS libreoffice-calc libreoffice-en-US libreoffice-writer"       # LibreOffice
PKGS="$PKGS hunspell-en hyphen-en mythes-en aspell-en"                   # Dict,Thes,etc.
PKGS="$PKGS pidgin-libnotify purple-plugin-pack skype xchat"             # IM / Chat / VoIP
PKGS="$PKGS thunderbird"                                                 # Email
PKGS="$PKGS lib32-nvidia-utils lib32-alsa-plugins lib32-libsamplerate"   # 32-libs for 64-bit 

pacstrap /mnt $PKGS
genfstab -pL /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
echo -e "/swapfile\tnone\tswap\tdefaults\t0 0" >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt

Preliminary System Setup

DAEMONS Setup

 systemctl enable acpid.service lm_sensors.service smartd.service nfs-wait-online.service ntpd.service cups.service cronie.service cpupower.service slim.service

Hardware Clock

It is usually best to have the hardware clock set to UTC. If you aboslutely must have the hardware clock set to local time:

echo -e "0.0 0.0 0.0\n0\nLOCALTIME" > /etc/adjtime

Time Zone

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/[Country]/[City] /etc/localtime

NB: You can use [TAB] completion to help yourself out.

Host Name

read -p "Enter the host name of the new system: " NHST && echo $NHST > /etc/hostname

Locale

The system will bitch during mkinitcpio if this is not set up.

LANG=en_US.UTF-8 && LCCL=POSIX
sed -i "s/#${LOCL:0:5}/${LOCL:0:5}/g" /etc/locale.gen
echo "LANG=$LANG\nLC_COLLATE=$LCCL" > /etc/locale.conf
locale-gen

Console Font

KYMP=us
echo -e "FONT=Lat2-Terminus16\nKEYMAP=$KYMP" > /etc/vconsole.conf

NFS

For servers ONLY:

sed -i 's/^STATD_OPTS=""/STATD_OPTS="--no-notify"/g' /etc/conf.d/nfs-common.conf

For clients ONLY:

sed -i 's/^NEED_STATD=""/NEED_STATD="no"/g' /etc/conf.d/nfs-common.conf
sed -i 's/^NEED_IDMAPD=""/NEED_IDMAPD="yes"/g' /etc/conf.d/nfs-common.conf

read -p "Enter NFS server IP: " NFIP &&
read -p "Enter NFS mount point: " NFMT &&
echo -e "$NFIP:/\t$NFMT\tnfs\tasync,rw,exec\t0 0" >> /etc/fstab

sed -i "s/network/network rpcbind nfs-common netfs/g" /etc/rc.conf

Netcfg

Netcfg is a more robust solution compared to using the settings available in rc.conf.

This will copy some examples to /etc/network.d to work with.

cp /mnt/etc/network.d/examples/ethernet-static /etc/network.d/${NHST}-net
cp /mnt/etc/network.d/examples/ethernet-static /etc/network.d/${NHST}-lan
cp /mnt/etc/network.d/examples/wireless-wpa-static /etc/network.d/${NHST}-air

This will disable the DNS and GATEWAY directives for ${HOSTNAME}-lan:

sed -i 's/^GATEWAY=/#GATEWAY=/g' /etc/network.d/${NHST}-lan
sed -i 's/^DNS=/#DNS=/g' /etc/network.d/${NHST}-lan

This will set the DNS and GATEWAY directives for ${HOSTNAME}-net and ${HOSTNAME}-air:

read -p "Enter router's IP address: " RTIP && \
sed -i 's/^GATEWAY=.*/GATEWAY="'$RTIP'"/g' /etc/network.d/${NHST}-net && \
sed -i 's/^GATEWAY=.*/GATEWAY="'$RTIP'"/g' /etc/network.d/${NHST}-air && \
sed -i 's/^DNS=.*/DNS=\("'$RTIP'"\)/g' /etc/network.d/${NHST}-net && \
sed -i 's/^DNS=.*/DNS=\("'$RTIP'"\)/g' /etc/network.d/${NHST}-air

This will set the IP addresses for all three connections:

read -p "Enter IP addresses for NET, LAN, and WPA: " -a IPAD && \
sed -i "s/^ADDR=.*/ADDR='${IPAD[0]}'/g" /etc/network.d/${NHST}-net && \
sed -i "s/^ADDR=.*/ADDR='${IPAD[1]}'/g" /etc/network.d/${NHST}-lan && \
sed -i "s/^ADDR=.*/ADDR='${IPAD[2]}'/g" /etc/network.d/${NHST}-air

To configure a wireless connection to a router:

read -p "Enter the wireless SSID: " -n ESID &&
read -p "Enter the wireless password: " -n WPSK &&
sed -i 's/^ESSID=.*/ESSID=''$ESID''/g' /etc/network.d/${NHST}-wpa &&
sed -i 's/^KEY=.*/KEY=''$WPSK''/g' /etc/network.d/${NNHST}-wpa

Now it's time to edit /etc/conf.d/netcfg and /etc/rc.conf.

For desktops with constant connections, edit the NETWORKS array to bring up all interfaces at boot time.

sed -i "s/NETWORKS=.*/NETWORKS=$NHST-lan $NHST-net $NHST-air/g" /etc/conf.d/netcfg
sed -i 's/network/net-profiles/g' /etc/rc.conf

For laptops with connections that are not guaranteed, all you need to touch (by default) is the AUTO_PROFILES string.

sed -i 's/#WIRED_INTERFACE.*/WIRED_INTERFACE="'$NHST'-net"/g' /etc/conf.d/netcfg
sed -i 's/#WIRELESS_INTERFACE.*/WIRELESS_INTERFACE="'$NHST'-air"/g' /etc/conf.d/netcfg
sed -i 's/#AUTO_PROFILES.*/AUTO_PROFILES="\('$NHST'-net '$NHST'-air\)"/g' /etc/conf.d/netcfg
sed -i 's/network/net-auto-wired net-auto-wireless/g' /etc/rc.conf

mkinitcpio

The default HOOKS should work fine. Just need to add the consolefont and keymap hooks.

eval $(cat /etc/mkinitcpio.conf | grep ^HOOKS)
$HOOKS+=" consolefont keymap"
sed -i "s/^HOOKS=.*/HOOKS=\"$HOOKS\"/g" /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

makepkg

The first thing to do to optimize compiled code is to specify that we're using the PC architecture.

sed -i 's/-unknown-linux-gnu/-pc-linux-gnu/g' /etc/makepkg.conf

Next, allow GCC to auto-detect CPU features.

sed -i 's/-march=\S* -mtune=generic/-march=native/g' /etc/makepkg.conf

Lastly, take advantage of SMP if available.

CORS=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -i cpu\ cores | uniq | cut -d: -f2`
sed -i 's/#MAKEFLAGS=.*/MAKEFLAGS="-j'`expr 1 + $CORS`'"/g' /etc/makepkg.conf

Enable [multilib] on 64-bit systems

CPUTYPE=`lscpu | grep Architecture | cut -d: -f2 | sed 's/[ \t]*//g'`
[[ $CPUTPYE == x86_64 ]] &&
sed -i ':a;N;$!ba;s/#\[multilib\]\n#SigLevel\(.*\)\n#Include\(.*\)/\[multilib\]\nSigLevel\1\nInclude\2/g' /etc/pacman.conf

Sudo

This will configure sudo to give members of the wheel group access and also configure it to request root's password instead of your own. (So you don't have to use a very strong password for your primary login and worry about it being an access point for hackers.)

sed -i 's/# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL/%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL/g' /etc/sudoers
echo 'Defaults rootpw' >> /etc/sudoers

SLiM (GUI Only)

sed -i 's/exec \/bin\/bash/exec dbus-launch \/bin\/bash/g' /etc/slim.conf

Make InitRAM Images

mkinitcpio -P

Install GRUB2

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-install ${TRGT:0:8}

Stuff That Can Only Be Done If Current Machine Is Installation Target

Persistent Network Names

By default Arch lets detection order determine device name order. Even if you specify the order to load network modules in, you still have a 1% chance that the order changes. The only guaranteed way is to use udev rules.

for DEVICE in /sys/class/net/*; do
  MACADDR=`udevadm info -a -p $DEVICE | grep address | cut -d'"' -f2 | tr [A-E] [a-e]`
  DEVNAME=`echo $DEVICE | cut -d/ -f5`
  [ "$DEVNAME" != "lo" ] &&
    echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="net", ATTR{address}=="'$MACADDR'", NAME="'$DEVNAME'"' >> \
    /etc/udev/rules.d/10-network.rules
 done

CPU Frequency Scaling

AFD="acpi-cpufreq"
[ "`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep AMD`" != "" ] &&
  AFD="powernow-k8 powernow-k7 cpufreq-nforce2"
[ "`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep Intel`" != "" ] &&
  AFD="acpi-cpufreq speedstep-centrino speedstep-ich speedstep-smi p4-clockmod"

for CFD in $AFD; do
  modprobe $CFD 2> /dev/null && [ $? == 0 ] && WFD=$CFD && break
done
 
[ "$WFD" != "" ] && 
  sed -i 's/^#governor=.*/governor=ondemand/g' /etc/conf.d/cpupower
  sed -i 's/@crond/@crond cpupower/g' /etc/rc.conf
  echo 'echo -n "50" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold' >> /etc/rc.local
  echo 'echo -n "10" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor' >> /etc/rc.local

Finish System Setup

exit
umount /mnt
reboot

Post-Installation

Sensors

Sensors cannot be configured in chroot. It must be done once the target installation machine has booted the new system.

sensors-detect

GUI Configuration

ATI Video Drivers

ATI is a little...special...when it comes to the proprietary driver. As ATI is slow to adopt new revisions of Xorg, the proprietary driver is NOT in the official repositories.

sed -i 's/\[core\]/\[catalyst\]
SigLevel = Never
Server = http:\/\/catalyst.apocalypsus.net\/repo\/catalyst\/\$arch
\n[core\]/g' /etc/pacman.conf

pacman -S --noconfirm catalyst catalyst-utils xvba-video lib32-catalyst-utils

aticonfig --initial

GTK Themes

The defaults are not going to be pretty outside of the GNOME desktop environment. You may want to install some packages and set some defaults for GTK.

echo 'gtk-theme-name="Clearlooks"
gtk-icon-theme-name="elementary"
gtk-font-name="Droid Sans 10"' > ~/.gtkrc-2.0

echo '[Settings]
gtk-application-prefer-dark-theme = false
gtk-theme-name = Clearlooks-Phenix
gtk-icon-theme = elementary' > ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

Fixes

AWN Network Error In Weather

The Weather Channel changed the HTML on its web site and broke the script.

sed -i 's/outlook\/travel\/businesstraveler/weather/g' \
/usr/share/avant-window-navigator/applets/weather/weather.py

sed -i 's/IMG/img/g' /usr/share/avant-window-navigator/applets/weather/weather.py 
sed -i 's/SRC/src/g' /usr/share/avant-window-navigator/applets/weather/weather.py
sed -i 's/NAME/name/g' /usr/share/avant-window-navigator/applets/weather/weather.py
sed -i 's/WIDTH=/width="/g' /usr/share/avant-window-navigator/applets/weather/weather.py
sed -i 's/ HEIGHT=/" height="/g' /usr/share/avant-window-navigator/applets/weather/weather.py
sed -i 's/ BORDER/" border/g' /usr/share/avant-window-navigator/applets/weather/weather.py

sed -i 's/xoap\.weather/xml\.weather/g' /usr/share/avant-window-navigator/applets/weather/weather.py

Nautilus Video Previews

The default setting for Nautilus is to use the GStreamer backend for previews. However, if you don't have the full-fledged GNOME desktop, nothing is set up. Instead of trying to mess around with GStreamer plugins, you can use ffmpegthumbnailer.

Make use you have the requirements

pacman -Sy --needed gconf ffmpegthumbnailer

Now run this script (can be copy-pasted into a terminal):

VIDEO_EXTENSIONS="video@flv video@webm video@mkv video@mp4 video@mpeg \
video@avi video@ogg video@quicktime video@x-avi video@x-flv video@x-mp4 \
video@x-mpeg video@x-webm video@x-mkv application@x-extension-webm \
video@x-matroska video@x-ms-wmv video@x-msvideo video@x-msvideo@avi \
video@x-theora@ogg video@x-theora@ogv video@x-ms-asf video@x-m4v"

THUMBNAIL_COMMAND="/usr/bin/ffmpegthumbnailer -s %s -i %i -o %o -c png -f -t 10"

for i in $VIDEO_EXTENSIONS; do
   gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/$i/command" -t string "$THUMBNAIL_COMMAND"
   gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/$i/enable" -t boolean 'true'
done

Pacman Cleanup

To clear out orphaned packages (useful for purging stuff needed to build but not run AUR packages):

pacman -Rcss $(pacman -Qtdq)

To clear the cache of all packages save the ones that are currently installed on the machine:

pacman -Sc