Revivendo um netbook com linux

Installation steps

1. Download the image via torrent: https://archlinux.org/download/

2. Flash to USB using the ISO as is: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB_flash_installation_medium#Using_macOS_dd

3. Boot the live environment from the USB

   • Inserted the pendrive, booted the PC and used F12 to select the pendrive as the boot device.
   • At this step the screen went black after selecting “Arch Linux Install medium”
   • Added nomodeset to the kernel parameter, as pointed out by https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/727978. This is done, on the arch linux boot loader menu, by pressing and writing nomodeset, then pressing enter.

4. Set the console keyboard layout and font

   • loadkeys br-abnt2

5. Verify the boot mode

   • the /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size file does not exist, indicating that the system booted in BIOS (as expected).

6. Connecting to the internet

   • used ip link and verified that my wlan0 adapter is listed
   • used iwctl to connect to wifi

7. Update the system clock

   • used timedatectl set-timezone America/Sao_Paulo

8. Partition the disks

   • I didn’t have to to anything as my disk was already layed out as

       /dev/sda1 2G --> Linux swap
       /dev/sda2 976M --> Extended
       /dev/sda3 295G --> Linux
       /dev/sda5 976M --> Linux swap
     

     and I’m going to install arch in sda3.

9. Formatting the partitions

   • used mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3 and mkswap /dev/sda1.

10. Mounting the file systems

    • used mount /dev/sda3 and swapon /dev/sda1.

11. Install the base package, Linux kernel and firmware

    • used pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware.
    • noticed my download speed was too slow (~200KiB/s)
    • CTRL^C to stop the current process (it will resume where stopped later on)
    • ran cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup
    • ran reflector --verbose --latest 5 --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
    • retry the downloads with pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware with speeds closer to 2Mib/s

12. Install vim with packmang -S vim.

13. Generated an fstab file.

14. Changed root to the new system.

15. Set the timezone.

16. Set the localization.

    • Uncommented en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and pt_BR.UTF-8 UTF-8 lines
    • ran locale-gen
    • created /etc/locale.conf with LANG=en_US.UTF-8.
    • persist keyboard layout by creating /etc/vconsole.conf with KEYMAP=br-abnt2

17. Set the hostname with echo whitearchie > /etc/hostname.

18. Set the hostname in the /etc/hosts file.

    127.0.0.1 localhost
    ::1       localhost
    127.0.0.1 whitearchie.localdomain whitearchie
    

19. Complete the network configuration by installing NetworkManager with pacman -S networkmanager and systemctl enable NetworkManager.

20. Set the root password with passwd.

21. Configure the bootloader (assuming we are a non UEFI install, or MBR):

    • run pacman -S grub

    • run grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda

      where i386-pc is deliberately used regardless of your actual architecture, and /dev/sdX is the disk (not a partition) where GRUB is to be installed. For example /dev/sda or /dev/nvme0n1, or /dev/mmcblk0

    • generate the grub configuration file with grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

22. Reboot the machine by

    • exiting the chroot environment with exit
    • unmounting all the partitions with umount -R /mnt
    • reboot with reboot
    • remove the pendrive and turn computer on
    • login with previously created root password

23. Initial config is done!

Additional sources:

• https://www.arcolinuxd.com/5-the-actual-installation-of-arch-linux-phase-1-uefi/
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#Master_Boot_Record_(MBR)_specific_instructions

Setting up the environment

These are necessary house keeping tasks in order to run arch with an internet connection, graphical interface and non privileged user accounts.

Parallel downloads for pacman

We’ll start by enabling parallel downloads with pacman. Edit the /etc/pacman.conf file and search for ParallelDownloads under [options]. To enable it, remove the comment (#) from the beginning of the line.

I’ve left the default value of 5.

Setting the internet connection back

You will notice that after the first reboot, you won’t be able to access iwctl, and won’t have a connection.

Since we installed networkmanager, we have the nmcli utility installed.

Start by making sure the NetworkManager.service is started and enabled:

systemctl status NetworkManager
# if not running
systemctl start NetworkManager
# if not enabled
systemctl enable NetworkManager

If you’re not sure that network manager is the only network package you’ve installed, you can check by running:

systemctl --type=service

and stopping any other network related service in order to avoid conflicts.

List existing wifi networks with nmcli device wifi list and connect to your desired network with nmcli device wifi connect SSDID password my_new_password.

System time synchronization via NTP

Check the current time settings with timedatectl status.

If System clock synchronized shows no, activate it with

timedatectl set-ntp true

Setting up the GUI with i3

Turns out I love tilling window managers. They automatically allocate new windows by dividing existing screen space between applications.

You can also switch between different workspaces, each with its own set of apps.

i3 is very similar to other TWM such as Xmonad, awesome or yabai (for macOS).

I’ll be using i3 as its what I’m used to on other distros such as Ubuntu, but most X compatible window managers should share the same steps for installation and setting up.

Since arch comes with only the cli by default, let’s start by installing X, which is on the xorg-server package. We’ll include the xorg-init package which contains the helper script startx which is used to start X on demand.

pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit

Now we add the i3 related packages with

pacman -S i3-wm i3status dmenu xterm

• An application launcher (we’ll use dmenu)
• A terminal emulator (we’ll use xterm)

…and that’s about it.

If prompted to choose a set of fonts, any will do (I’m going with the default gnu-free-fonts).

Now we need to inform our system to start X by default, and that X should load the i3 WM. This is done by creating a ~/.xinitrc file with a single line stating exec i3.

Start i3 by running startx.

On your first launch, you’ll be prompted to generate a config file at ~/.config/i3/config. Press enter to accept it. you can also choose between the win (power) key and alt as your modifier (key used to run i3 commands).

Setting up the keyboard layout on i3

While previously we’ve set the layout using /etc/vconsole.conf, in order to apply it to i3, we need to add the following to our i3 config file (defaults to ~/.config/i3/config):

echo 'exec "setxkbmap -layout br,us"' >> ~/.config/i3/config

You can go back to the cli with $mod + shift + e.

References:

• https://www.debugpoint.com/xmonad-arch-linux-setup/
• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=66701
• https://suay.site/?p=610
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/i3
• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=140448

Setting up a non root user

It might be sensible to set up a non root user to perform day to day activities on the computer.

In order to allow regular users to escalate privileges when necessary (such as installing a package), we need the sudo package.

pacman -S sudo

Now we can add our new user by running

useradd -m -G wheel user_name

The -G wheel option adds the newly created user to the wheel group.

We now need to allow users in the wheel group to run commands using sudo. This is done by uncommenting (removing the #) from the /etc/sudoers file.

#%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

The last step is setting a password for your new user.

passwd new_user

Our last step is setting the default configuration files to our new user.

cp ~/.xinitrc /home/new_user/.xinitrc
mkdir -p /home/new_user/.config/i3
cp ~/.config/i3/config /home/new_user/.config/i3/config
echo startx >> /home/new_user/.bash_profile # optional!

Now you can safely reboot your machine and, this time, log in with your non root user.

Enabling audio

After a fresh install, arch linux might have sound playback disabled.

The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) is the part of the Linux kernel that manages the sound devices on your system.

The alsa related commands are installed with the alsa-utils package.

sudo pacman -S alsa-utils

After that, you can enable output with

amixer sset Master unmute
amixer sset Speaker unmute
amixer sset Headphone unmute

If you are still receiving no sound output, set up the volume with:

amixer sset Master 100%
amixer sset Speaker 100%
amixer sset Headphone 100%

source: https://davidtsadler.com/posts/arch/2020-08-31/enabling-audio-in-arch-linux/