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InstallFest Fall '09


V.T. Eric Layton

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securitybreach

There is a graphical conky config app in AUR. Hold on I will find it for you. http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=26600 Not like gkrellm since conky is mainly a text configuration but it does help some. You should look at the link for the "Conky Configs and Screenshots" link I posted. It helped me greatly to figure out conky.Thanks

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V.T. Eric Layton

Oh, and why is Firefox called "Shiretoko" in Arch?Thanks for the Conky help. I'll tackle it again tomorrow. :)

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securitybreach
Oh, and why is Firefox called "Shiretoko" in Arch?
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox
The Firefox package in Arch Linux is compiled without official branding. This means that when you start Firefox it will use a blue globe for its icon and will be named after its release series' codename. This has to be done because a distribution may use the name "Firefox" and its artwork only if there are no unofficial modifications (i.e. no custom patches).
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securitybreach

Ok this is all I can remember of what I wrote last night for you Eric since we lost yesterday's forum posts. There is no need for 32-bit libs in Archlinux 64. All the plugins for Firefox work on Archlinux64: Flashplugin, mplayer-plugin, and jre. The Arch wiki entry on 64bit is a little outdated, there is no need for 32bit libs anymore. To install the plugins type:

#  pacman -S flashplugin mplayer-plugin jre

To install the the Firefox build from Mozilla instead of the patched Arch one, go here and download the tar.gz: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=18019Then extract and as user type:

makepkg

and as root:

pacman -U compiledpackage.pkg.tar.gz

to install it. Either install Firefox first or reinstall the plugin packages to put the plugins in the directories or you can manually do it with ln -s.Let me know if I missed anything from Yesterday.Thanks

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V.T. Eric Layton

Thanks, SB. I think you also posted a link to the non-Arch (regular Moz version) of FF in the AUR repos. If you can't remember, that's OK. I'll find it. I need to activate those repos anyway. :yes:Hmm... just got a IPS server error. Got a couple late last night too. :(Man! We lost a lot of posts from last night in this thread. That vacuums! :)

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securitybreach
Thanks, SB. I think you also posted a link to the non-Arch (regular Moz version) of FF in the AUR repos. If you can't remember, that's OK. I'll find it. I need to activate those repos anyway. :) Hmm... just got a IPS server error. Got a couple late last night too. :D Man! We lost a lot of posts from last night in this thread. That vacuums! B)
That is the one above.
Standalone web browser from mozilla.org.A firefox build with the official logos and icons enabled.Tested on both x86_64 & i686.
As far as adding repos, you use yaourt for AUR builds. The syntax is the same as pacman; http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=5863 To update both pacman packages and AUR packages you:
 $ yaourt -Syu --aur

as user not root. Thanks

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V.T. Eric Layton

SB, I'm going to try to stay with the 64 bit Arch-FF for now. I'm installing the plugins as you suggested right now. If all works, I think I can use this browser without any major issues. I'll stick with the 32 bit TB, though. It's working fine in Arch 64 right now. The Arch-64 version did not play well with my profile for TB.I have a minor sound issue, but I think I can solve that pretty easily.Anyway, off I go...Urmie! :)I've sure missed you around these parts! Hope you'll be coming back a bit more often. Will things slow down for you once Helsinki becomes a big ice cube?

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securitybreach
Plugins a SUCCESS! Thanks, securitybreech! You are the Arch Guru here at ATL! :)
Cool!!!!! :) :D B) I never used Thunderbird much so I could not tell you what is wrong but I am thrilled you got everything working. If you cannot fix the sound issue, let me know.Thanks alot, I feel special. At ATL anyway B) B) B) Thanks Edited by securitybreach
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securitybreach

Have you tried mounting a usb drive or anything? The reason I am asking is there used to be a problem with Hal and Policykit.conf when mounting devices. The workaround is to make your /etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf look like this:

													  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- -*- XML -*- --><!DOCTYPE pkconfig PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD PolicyKit Configuration 1.0//EN""http://hal.freedesktop.org/releases/PolicyKit/1.0/config.dtd"><!-- See the manual page PolicyKit.conf(5) for file format --><config version="0.1"><match action="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-removable">	<return result="yes" />  </match>  <match action="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.eject-removable">	<return result="yes" />  </match>  <match action="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-fixed">	<return result="yes"/>  </match>  <match action="hal-storage-mount-fixed-extra-options">	<return result="yes"/>  </match>  <match action="hal-storage-mount-removable-extra-options">	<return result="yes"/>  </match>

Thanks

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V.T. Eric Layton

I've got lots of sound... just don't have any for alerts in TB. I think it might be a 32/64 bit issue, though. I'm not going to sweat it. I just set TB for visual alerts (pop up in system area of panel) instead.I also fixed the branding of the Shiretoko FF. I just copied the en-US.jar from the Moz package over to the Arch installed package. All's well now. It says Mozilla Firefox in my title bar. I don't know why that bothered me. *shrugging* ;)Playing with this and that now... looking for bugs. :) Will try the USB... now, actually. OK, no auto-mount for USB. No biggie... will play around with it later. Hopefully, these posts won't disappear again. :(Progress has been made. Maybe I can live with 64 bit after all. We'll see... off to watch some TV now. :' />

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securitybreach

I would not think mixing 32/64 bit would be the cause of not getting alerts, but who knows.Arch strived to make everything worked in a mixed architechture because previously flash and others did not work properly in 64bit . You can also make x86 chroot inside arch64: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch64...ed_32bit_system NOTE: I have never attempted it but have heard it works fine. It basically runs everything 32bit from a folder in a chroot and does not disturb the 64bit system. Therefore making it cleaner:

This howto is just for those who really need to run 32 bit apps and to install it easily. As Arch64 tries to be a pure 64 bit distro, it seems the devs won't provide any compatibility libs, this system seems to me the cleaner.
I personally would never mix architechures if possible since it seems more like a hack than a fix. I try to not even mix libraries like gnome and kde. I use some gtk apps so I have some gnome-libs installed but only the bare minimal. I will not even mix QT apps with GTK since I like to have a cleaner system, if that makes sense. Even though I have tons of diskspace, I still like to keep my / as minimal as possible.But if mixing libs works for you, cool. As far as mounting, just add what I posted above to /etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf and it will fix it perfectly. No need to reboot, just
[root@Venus comhack]# /etc/rc.d/hal restart

The problem has somthing to do with hal and udev, if I remember correctly. It is not a Archlinux problem but an issue with the new version of Hal. ThanksBTW I was looking at your profile and I was wondering will Archlinux will replace Debian as your secondary OS? :' /> :teehee: :)

Edited by securitybreach
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V.T. Eric Layton

Well, sad InstallFest news, friends...My fun with Arch has come to a temporary end. I was having some issues with Xfce - one in particular... it seems that in the rush to get 4.6.1 released, a few things were left out. One of great importance, I think... the graphic menu editor. Can't add/remove apps from the main Xfce menu in 4.6. Hmm... wha? Huh? Have to manually edit a config file as root to change menu items. I don't think so. That was the last straw for me and Xfce in Arch. I completely removed it using "# pacman -R -s xfce4". All gone.Next, I reinstalled KDE4. It was still in the cache, so it installed quickly... no downloading necessary. Spent about an hour customizing and setting up my preferences in KDE4, then WHAMMO! No more settings. No preferences. KDE lost all my settings that I had just spent an hour changing. They just reverted to default. To add insult to injury, KDE decided to clean out my /home directory also... or something did, anyway. That wiped all my config files for all my apps, of course.That was it for me. I whipped out my trusty Ubuntu Live CD with gparted and plowed the Arch partitions under. I will reinstall some version of Arch in the near future. I need to step back from it for a while. Don't want to sling my system out the window, you know. ;)I'm going to go play with KDE4 in Slack13-64 for a few days to see if it's just as buggy in that distro as it was in Arch. Of course, with all the installing and removing going on in Arch the past few days, I may have corrupted the installation. Oh well, not Arch's fault.I did manage to update Debian, CentOS, and Ark Linux today, so the day wasn't totally wasted. :)Off I go...

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V.T. Eric Layton

Oh, and about Arch replacing Debian as my secondary OS... you never know. However, I'm going to have to figure out a windows manager that plays well with Arch first. Must be VERY STABLE to bump Debian from that #2 spot, you know. B)

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securitybreach

Well be warned, I have read countless times of KDE4 corrupting or removing configs from tons of distro including Arch. That is why I asked for you to install KDEMod which is patched according to Arch startards, only necessary patches for stability. If I am not mistaken, I read the other week of someone here having issues with kde settings getting deleted. Also, you might want to check the changelogs for XFCE 4.6 from the XFCE website since they have totally revamped XFCE from previous releases? What you call an error is just the how the new version of XFCE works.

About the only outstanding issue I have with it is that there is no graphical menu editor. At first, I couldn't get a satisfactory menu even editing the XML file by hand; it was just too different from the old one. So my menu was cluttered with useless toplevel entries, such as Web Browser, File Manager, and so on. Fortunately, Mike pointed me to the solution, so now all offending stuff has been cleared out. Right now my menu works just fine, so I only really need a graphical menu editor for convenience's sake.
http://blog.xfce.org/2009/04/27/
Unfortunately, no menu editor is included and, with menu merging not being supported yet, using an alternative menu editor like Alacarte won't work either. It's manually editing the files or making do with the menu as-is, for now.
XFCE making great strides with version 4.6Most of the time, if something has changed for an application or in this case a window manager, it is best to check the app's webpage for their changelog since Arch rarely patches packages and usually stays vanilla. Remember with most distros, you hear about the changes weeks before a distro incoporates a window manager. That is because they have actual releases instead of a continuous update. With Archlinux you have to check the actual package's website for changes or either the Archlinux forums if you notice something odd or buggy. Most of the time it is best to check bug reports or post one yourself if it has not been reported. You do not have to completely follow every package but it helps to understand that they might have incorporated changes. If nothing there, someone at the Arch forums have definetly patched or complained about the packege being buggy, so it helps to search before giving up. Remember that Archlinux use the newest stable packages of the package maintainer's website. Unlike most distros, Archlinux only patches if there is an extreme problem with the package as far as stability or other. Archlinux does not patch for usability only stability. Some distros change the way the application acts just to suite the distro, not with Archlinux. With Archlinux, bleeding-edge does not mean "testing" versions of application but the newest stable versions of the apps.People often complain that the Archlinux forums are elitest because most forum users are coders/devs and there are not many beginner Linux users. I have heard countless times of people wondering why a package does not act like it did before and getting a "You need to read the changelogs for the updated package from the the archlinux homepage". Since Archlinux uses the stable versions that the acual package developers released, there are really no Arch-specific bugs just normal upstream application bugs. This does not happen much and when it does Archlinux devs patch so called "stable" versions of software to provide stability not change. It also helps that whenever a configuration change has been made from updating or upgrading, Archlinux automatically backs up the config file, usually as config.backup in case of a stable release causing problems or being buggy. Also Archlinux tends to follow stable releases. if a release says it is stable but is really not (in the case of most KDE 4x releases), then really it is not an issue with Archlinux. I could understand if Arch used alpha or testing applications, but 99.9% of the time they use the vanilla stable releases of the applications. For instance, I have Gnome running on one of my Archlinux machines and every release works as it should and if something changes I either read about it on package changelog from http://www.archlinux.org or from the Gnome website. But others like KDE4 are buggy even using their stable release. So before completely giving up next time, check the Archlinux forums for changes or issues: http://bbs.archlinux.org Archlinux is sorta like Slackware, where you have to follow the changelog for issues or changes. I have only had problems maybe once a year with Archlinux, of course I do not run KDE4. I also check forums and changelogs if something seems different in another window manager or application. The last time something happen was when the new Xorg was released and it was a simple fix. Sorry for the rant but I think you are confused about how Archlinux handles updates/upgrades from application's source tree.Thanks Edited by securitybreach
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Sorry to read about your Arch adventures Eric . . . . it looked so promising ! I hope another windowmanager will solve the stability problems.B) Bruno

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V.T. Eric Layton

I don't think this was anything to do with Arch. I do search and read quite a bit when researching bugs and other problems online. I found quite a few bad reviews about the "new" Xfce. As to the solutions for menu editing posted around the net... most are slightly less fun than sticking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. I like EASY! I'm too old to be wasting time editing 63 lines of XML in a text editor just to add my gkrellm entry to a menu.Plowing Arch under is no big thing. Nothing lost. All the experience and knowledge I gained from playing around with it is still in my head and my Linux note book. I'll reinstall in a few days and pick a better windows manager. Maybe I'll try the KDEMod you mentioned, SB. Anyway, as much stuff as I tweaked, added, removed, modified, re-modified, etc. in Arch, I just felt better off with a nice new installation. I've learned that distros that have been played with too much like that sometimes become a bit buggy... corrupted libs and all that. It's best to start new.If KDE4 is that bad in Slack 13, I definitely will NOT be upgrading. I'll stick with my nice, stable KDE3.5 and Slack12.2. :)Anyway... I'll keep ya' posted on upcoming plans and progress. Can't learn if I don't push the buttons, you know. ;)Later...

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If KDE4 is that bad in Slack 13, I definitely will NOT be upgrading. I'll stick with my nice, stable KDE3.5 and Slack12.2. :)
Actually, I think KDE4 in Slack 13.0 is pretty good . . . runs smooth, no issues at all B) B) Bruno
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Frustrating and sad for you Eric but I note you have mellowed. Instead of throwing the computer out the window or tap dancing on it, you merely shut it off and walk away. Quite well done!Chalk it up to another learning experience. Lately, I've had a few of those unplanned ones myself. At one point, I thought I might have to revert my old notebook from 2001 back to the ME restore/recovery - shivers went up and down my spine. I walked away, worried for two days until I came up with a plan A, B and C. Three guesses where a ME install from 2001 fit into those plans. B)

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V.T. Eric Layton

@ Bruno... good news! B) We'll see...@ Liz... well, I'm normally a very patient person. You have to be to be a component level electronics technician for as long as I was (20+ years). Can't be throwing BIG COMPANY customer's $2000 Motorola radio system out in the parking lot and running it over with the delivery truck, you know. :) That being said... WHEW! That was a frustrating time back in '06 when I could not resolve the issues I was having with data corruption on that brand new Seagate hard drive. The Irish jig on the box on the kitchen floor did not solve the issue, I'll grant you that, but is SURE DID FEEL GOOD at the time. B)=====I thought of the solution to my Arch dilemma last night just before falling asleep. I will be reinstalling and rocking and rolling with Arch before the day is over. I'll explain once I confirm that it works. ;)

Edited by V.T. Eric Layton
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securitybreach
I thought of the solution to my Arch dilemma last night just before falling asleep. I will be reinstalling and rocking and rolling with Arch before the day is over. I'll explain once I confirm that it works. B)
SWEET. I will be here if ya need me.Thanks Edited by securitybreach
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That being said... WHEW! That was a frustrating time back in '06 when I could not resolve the issues I was having with data corruption on that brand new Seagate hard drive. The Irish jig on the box on the kitchen floor did not solve the issue, I'll grant you that, but is SURE DID FEEL GOOD at the time. :hysterical:
After all these years, I still remember reading your post when that happened!
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Guest LilBambi
After all these years, I still remember reading your post when that happened!
Me too! Come a long way since then Eric! And weirdness like you experienced back then would try the patience of a saint!
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V.T. Eric Layton

Yeah... that was and will always be my last Seagate drive, too! NEVER again. NEVER, I tells ya'! ;)=====OK...What's up? I'll tell you what's up. I'm posting this from a brand new Arch Linux installation that is smooth and stable and HAPPY! Why is it happy? Because it's running with what is probably the most stable windows manager known to the penguin community...GNOME!GNOME2.pngThat's right, folks. I'm an old X-Gnomie, anyway. It's old hat to me to set up and customize Gnome. :)Now for the next step in the Arch process... I have to install all my apps and goodies. YAY! Should be no tribbles at all. :hysterical:-----The baseball game (Game 4 ALCS) starts in a few minutes. I'll be tweaking and twiddling with Arch while I watch. Off I go...

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securitybreach

Good Job!!Welcome new Archer!!!I just noticed you put 64 on top of the 64 distros in your signature. Nice.Thanks

Edited by securitybreach
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