Category: Software

The Arch Linux Installation Guide gets X11 up and running in fairly short order, leaving you with a bare xterm session. That handled a single screen, so I copied the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file I’d hand-carved for Xubuntu, restarted X, and by gosh-and-golly, it worked perfectly!

The right-hand screen is still in landscape mode while physically rotated to portrait, but that’s fixable with xrandr.

For future reference…

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "RotatedPortrait"
    Screen      0  "Landscape" 0 0
    Screen      1  "Portrait" RightOf "Landscape"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
#   Load           "type1"
#   Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Dell2001FP"
    VendorName     "Dell"
    ModelName      "DELL 2001FP"
    HorizSync       31.0 - 80.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 76.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Dell2005FP"
    VendorName     "Dell"
    ModelName      "DELL 2005FPW"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 75.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "GF9400_0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 9400 GT"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "GF9400_1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 9400 GT"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Landscape"
    Device         "GF9400_0"
    Monitor        "Dell2001FP"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-0: 1600x1200 +0+0"
    Option         "NoLogo" "Off"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Portrait"
    Device         "GF9400_1"
    Monitor        "Dell2005FP"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-1: 1680x1050 +0+0"
    Option         "NoLogo" "Off"
    Option         "RandRRotation" "On"
#    Option         "Rotate" "CCW"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

With that in hand, the Install Guide gets you through setting up XFCE4 with no problems at all; consult the XFCE guide for more details.. It handles both screens, lets you install panels on both with no complaint, and generally Just Works.

Useful widgets:

• clipman
• cpugraph
• datetime
• netload
• screenshooter
• time-out (wish it knew about screensaver timeouts)

Add xscreensaver which politely blanks both screens. Timeout in 5 minutes, lock after 1 more, then power saving stages in at 7/8/9 minutes.

Herewith, some general notes on getting Arch Linux installed & tweaked on my rather bizarre set of desktop hardware. The bottom line is that it pretty much works, with very few quirks, right out of the carton. Search for previous posts detailing most of the things discussed here.

Hard drive partitioning on /dev/sda:

1. Dell Utility
2. Windows XP
3. Dell Restore
4. Logical -> Extended
5. Swap
6. Xubuntu 9.10 (recently installed desktop)
7. Xubuntu 8.10 (last year’s desktop)
8. Arch Linux installation (replacing Ubuntu 9.10 trial install)

The trick is to have enough partitions lying around that you can do a complete installation without clobbering your previous version. Then, when you’re happy the new one works, just change the Grub boot default and you’re off & running.

Follow the Installation & User Guides, which walk you through most of the choices and situations.

I did not allow it to install Grub, as I already had it set up and didn’t mind some manual tweakage.

After the installation, I added this stanza to the existing Xubuntu 9.10 grub.cfg file to boot the new Arch installation; the old menu.lst file has vanished with the new Grub. On a 1600×200 LCD, I need VGA=792 in what used to be the kernel line to get readable characters.

menuentry "Arch Linux on /dev/sda8" {
	insmod ext2
	set root=(hd0,8)
	search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 108a6b1b-1628-47dd-ab84-7a13be82590b
	linux /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda8 ro vga=792
	initrd /boot/kernel26.img
}

The Arch installation completes with a reboot to a naked root command prompt. Everything beyond that happens only at your command.

Add your personal user, add the wheel group to your ID, then uncomment that line to enable super powers when you edit /etc/sudoers.

I had to do pacman -Syy before any installs worked. I found no advantage to powerpill rather than pacman.

Various programs:

• rpcbind & nfs-common
• alsa-utils
• cups

The modified entries in /etc/rc.conf, which is where much of the system configuration & daemon startup occurs:

LOCALE="en_US.UTF-8"
HARDWARECLOCK="localtime"
TIMEZONE="America/New_York"
KEYMAP="us"
CONSOLEFONT="Lat2-Terminus16.psfu.gz"
...
eth0="eth0 192.168.1.3 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255"
INTERFACES=(eth0)
...
gateway="default gw 192.168.1.1"
ROUTES=(gateway)
...
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng hal network rpcbind netfs nfs-common cups crond)

The Terminus font looks better than whatever the default is, but maybe that’s just me.

The eth0 line is all it takes to set up a static IP address. Zowie!

The gateway line aims all Internet traffic at my firewall router.

The DAEMONS line starts up a variety of services. I have these:

• hal – required for XFCE and others
• rpcbind – for nfs network file shares
• netfs – similarly
• nfs-common – nfs client
• cups – network printing

I added my usual nfs mounts to /etc/fstab, got the service startup order correct in rc.conf, and it’s all good.