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Arch Linux

Getting back to basics with Arch Linux

ARCH SIMPLICITY
If youre looking for a fast, stable system without the GUI goo, try Arch Linux.
BY JON KENT
new to Linux. The Arch philosophy is to scribes a few of Archs more interesting keep the user close to the underlying features. system. Users are expected to tinker diInstallation rectly with configuration files (like in the old days). But Arch also provides some Unlike most major distributions, Archs advantages over other simplicity distros installation program is text based. If you such as Slackware, including hotplug inhave installed Slackware or Debian, this novations and a more versatile package text-based installation will be very familmanagement system. Also, because Arch is specifically optimized for the i686 chip, it offers performance benefits over distros designed for a broader range of architectures. Fans of Arch say it provides the stability and simplicity of Slackware and the speed of Gentoo [2]. The box titled Arch on Arch gives an indication of how the Arch developers compare their own product with other distributions. Although it may seem that a distribution like Arch would be more difficult for a beginning user to learn to use, the advantage of a system like Arch is that, once you learn it, you really know something about Linux. This Figure 1: Arch expects you to configure your system the article helps you get started old fashioned way: through text-based configuration with Arch Linux and defiles.

he recent emphasis of the Linux community has been on desktop distros that make it easy to install and configure the system without venturing beyond the GUI. Despite the success of these beginner-friendly systems, a significant segment of the Linux population prefers a simpler approach. These back-to-basics users want clarity, stability, and speed, and they do not care about the proliferation of redundant tools and glossy configuration helpers that populate the GUI-based systems. In the past, no-frills Linux users gravitated to systems such as Slackware, Gentoo, or Debian, but another back-to-basics distro is gaining favor among the Linux faithful: Arch Linux. Arch Linux [1] was started by Judd Vinet in 2001 when he discovered that he couldnt find any other distribution that met his ideals. Arch has taken ideas from Debian, Gentoo and Slackware, and has gradually evolved into a simple, powerful, and stable distribution with an active user and developer population. Arch provides few configuration tools and is not designed for users who are

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iar. Arch will happily install alongside any other operating systems you have installed already, although you should always back up any important data. It is worth having access to another PC to view, or print out, the well written installation documentation [4] on Archs web site. As with most installations, you first need to partition your disk, which is performed using cfdisk, or you can let Arch take over the entire disk if you wish. Once you have created the partitions and set the mount points, the next task is to select the packages to install. It is recommended that you install the base packages only at this stage and install any remaining packages once the system is running correctly. Once the base system is installed, select a kernel configured for IDE or SCSI (which youll need if you have any SATA devices), or you can even build your own kernel if you wish. However, at this stage, it is probably more sensible to select a kernel rather than build you own, as it is best to have a fully operating system before making a fundamental change. Make sure you select a udev kernel, not a devfs kernel, as Arch has now moved from devfs to udev. The last stage in the installation process is to configure the system, and this is where access to the documentation will come in handy.

Listing 1: Arch init Start Scripts

01 /etc/rc.sysinit - takes care of loading and setting up the system. 02 /etc/rc.single - script file for single user system level 03 /etc/rc.multi - script file for multiple users system level 04 /etc/rc.local - script file for local-multi users system level 05 /etc/rc.shutdown - script file for shutdown system level 06 /etc/rc.d/* - configured deamons for the system.

You are presented with a list of configuration files that need to be edited. There are useful comments inside these files, but it does help to have an understanding of their function. These files will be familiar to users who have configured Linux systems without the help of a GUI installer. For instance, youll use the rc.conf file to configure the network, hostname, kernel modules to load, and services to start. You will need to be able to use a text editor such as vi or nano to edit these files.

The order of the services in rc.conf is important, as they are started in the exact order entered. There is no checking to verify any dependences, so if a service does not start up as expected, it is worth checking that the order is correct. Lastly, it is worth double checking the configuration changes you have made, and that you have made all the required modifications, as the installer will allow you to carry on even if you have not edited all the files. When you are finished with the installation, reboot the system, and you should have a minimal Arch system. The next step is to update your system via the pacman tool (outlined later) to ensure the system is up to date before adding additional packages. If you selected udev over devfs, this upgrade will be straight forward, but if you used devfs, youll find you need to perform additional steps to convert from devfs to udev.

System Startup
The main philosophy of Arch is to give you complete control over the configuration. As you will have seen during installation, nothing is configured automatically for you and no services are switched on unless you have configured them to be. This approach means that you come to understand the Arch system, and Linux itself, very quickly.

Arch on Arch
A page at the Arch Linux website compares Arch with other popular Linux distributions [3]. The comparison, of course, is courtesy of Arch, and the other distros may see it differently, but this summary (which is excerpted below) provides some insights on the goals and context for Arch Linux. Arch vs. Gentoo Gentoo has more packages. Arch allows both binary and source based distribution. PKGBUILDs are easier to create than ebuilds. Gentoo is more portable out of the box, as packages will get compiled to your specific architecture, whereas as Arch is i686 only (although i586 and x64 user-based spinoff projects are underway). There is no documented proof that Gentoo is any faster than Arch. Arch vs. Crux Arch Linux is descended from Crux. Judd once summarized the differences: I used Crux before starting Arch. Arch started out as Crux, pretty much. Then I wrote pacman and makepkg to replace my bash pseudo packaging scripts. (I built Arch as an LFS system.) So the two are completely separate distros, but technically, theyre almost the same. We have dependency support (officially) for example, although Crux has a community that provides other features. CLCs prt-get will do rudimentary dependency logic. Crux gets to ignore lots of problems we have too, since its a very minimalistic package set, basically what Per uses and nothing else. Arch vs. Slackware Slackware and Arch are both simple distributions. Both use BSD-style init scripts. Arch supplies a much more robust package management system in pacman, which, unlike Slackwares standard tools, allows simple automatic system upgrades. Slackware is seen as more conservative in its release cycle, preferring proven stable packages. Arch is much more bleeding edge in this respect. Arch is i686 only, whereas Slackware can run on i486 systems. Arch is a very good system for Slack users who want more robust package management or more current packages. Arch vs. Debian Arch is simpler than Debian. Arch has fewer packages. Arch provides better support for building your own packages than Debian does. Arch is more lenient when it comes to non-free packages, as defined by GNU. Arch is i686 optimized. Arch packages are more bleeding edge than Debian packages. Arch vs. Graphical Distros The graphical distros have a lot of similarities, and Arch is very different from any of them. Arch is text based and command-line oriented. Arch is a better distro if you want to truly learn Linux. Graphical-based distros tend to ship with GUI installers (like Fedoras Anaconda) and GUI system configuration tools (like Suses Yast).

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and so on. pacman provides an easy way to manage and install packages from either the official Arch repositories or from user repositories. User repositories, referred to as AUR (Arch User Repositories) are a very useful feature of Arch, allowing a user to supply a Figure 2: Although Arch emphasizes text file-based configuration, package not found you can still use it with a desktop like Gnome or KDE. in the standard Arch repositories. Arch has chosen to use a BSD style A good example of this is the fouiny_ init system, which is also used with repo repository, which provides packSlackware. For some, this is the true init ages for the E17 version of Enlightensystem, although others prefer the Sysment. In addition, you can create your tem V init approach used by a high proown local repository for any packages portion of Linux distributions. That you want to control. aside, you can still use System V init Like any good package manager, pacscripts, which are located in /etc/rc.d. man allows you to easily update your system. You simply synchronize the Binary Package package list held on your system, and if Management you ask pacman to synchronize and upArch provides the binary package mandate, pacman will then update all packagement tool pacman, which is analoages to the latest version. Installing gous to Debians apt-get tool. pacman packages is equally simple; pacman will uses tar.gz files as a package format and download any dependencies that the maintains a text-based package database. package requires. As with apt-get, pacman provides you Pacman is configured via the configuwith the ability to install and remove ration file packages, query installation status of a /etc/pacman.conf. Within this configurapackage, update the package database, tion file, you specify the repositories you

wish to synchronize against. You can also specify the configuration files that are not to be modified by a package installation. Additionally if you wish to freeze a package at the current version, you can configure pacman to put a package on hold within this file.
NoUpgrade etc/passwd etc/shadow HoldPkg = U etc/group U etc/sudoers = pacman glibc

In the repository section, you define which repositories to use. You can define these repositories directly or include them from another file. The latter option is useful for the official repositories, which have a lot of mirrors.

Source Package Management

Arch also provides a source management tool ABS (Arch Build System), which is almost like Gentoos emerge. ABS is designed to package new software that is not yet available elsewhere, customize existing packages to your requirements, or even re-build the entire system using your compiler flags. When you use ABS, it builds a package that can be installed via the pacman tool. You do not need to use ABS to have a fully functional system, but it does give you the ability to tune software packages to your liking. ABS uses the cvsup and wget packages, so these need to be installed before ABS can be used:
pacman -Sy cvsup wget

Listing 2: pacman Command Options

01 pacman -Sy - synchronize local packages database 02 pacman -S package_name - installing, reinstalling or upgrading a package 03 pacman -S extra/package_name - install package from extra repository 04 pacman -Su - upgrade all packages installed if required 05 pacman -A /<path to package>/package_name-version.pkg.tar.gz installing a local package 06 07 pacman -R package_name - remove package 08 pacman -Rs package_name - remove package and its dependencies if it is safe to do so 09 10 pacman -Ss package - search for a package 11 pacman -Si package - display package information 12 pacman -Scc - clear all downloaded file from pacman's cache -

It is always sensible to use the -Sy flag when installing any software to ensure that you are installing the latest version, as this option updates your package list before starting any installation. Run the abs command to synchronize the ABS tree with the arch server using CVS, which is then mirrored into /var/ abs. The directory structure is straight forward. The base level of /var/abs represents each category, and the next level has directories for each package. Each directory contains a PKGBUILD file for the package. To install software from ABS, change to the directory of the software package in the ABS tree and then execute the

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makepkg command. The makepkg command expects the PKGBUILD file to be in the local directory. Once the source code is compiled, you can then install the new software tree via pacman as follows:
Install new new package: pacman -A U [package name].pkg.tar.gz Upgrade an existing package: pacman -U U [package name].pkg.tar.gz

In addition to these directories, there is a directory called local below /var/abs. This is for you to create your own packages, rather than modifying the PKGBUILD files you have synchronized. If the current PKGBUILD file does not have the settings you require, create a directory under local, copy the file to this directory, add or remove settings, and then run the makepkg command to compile and install the software. To control which gcc optimizations you will use, makepkg has a configuration file called /etc/makepkg.conf. If you have used Gentoo, the options within this file will make sense. By default, Arch uses -march=i686 -O2 -pipe gcc flags, but if you prefer to live dangerously, you could change this to -O3. As Arch is firmly i686 based, it makes little sense to change the -march option unless you are feeling very adventurous.

hwd
By default, Arch uses the hotplug hardware detection scripts used in most Linux distributions. Hotplug simplifies the module configuration, autodetects hardware, and loads necessary modules. However Archs developers felt that hotplug was too slow and set about developing their own approach, which they call hwd. Unlike hotplug, hwd executes modprobe in child processes, so it does

not have to wait for modprobe to load each module before it can continue. hwd is for both devfs and udev device systems. Because hwd is not a configuration utility, it does not change configuration files, as that would go Figure 3: hwd detects hardware and displays system information. against Arch philosophy. Instead hwd detects hardware and provides inwhich you can use to create your final X formation how to manually configure configuration. your hardware. Desktop You do not have to install hwd if you are happy with hotplug: as with all Arch uses X.org as its X-Server and has things Arch, use of hwd is completely packages for all major desktops. For optional. If you rarely reboot your syseach desktop, you will find all of the tem, or if you can live with the slight inmajor applications, including non-free crease in boot up time, there is no reaapplications such as Flash and Acrobat. son why you cannot stay with hotplug. Some applications will add themselves Installing hwd is easy: to the desktop menu, while others will require you to manually add them. In pacman -Sy hwd lshwd this area there does not seem to be a standard for Arch, which can be a bit anEven though hwd is now installed, you noying. However, the speed at which still need to configure the hwd service to GNOME or E17 run is quite impressive, start at boot time and disable hotplug. and this must be due in part to the focus As youd expect, this option is controlled on i686 as the standard base for all Arch. within the rc.conf file and is simply a Conclusion case of adding the following line to this file: Arch Linux is a fast and lightweight distribution that takes the stripped down !hotplug hwd approach and is the better for it. Even if you have little Linux experience, you The ! in front of hotplug disables the should be able to get Arch up and runhotplug service. The next step is to ning, and the knowledge you gain tindownload the latest pci/pcmcia tables, kering with Arch will deepen your unwhich hwd uses to identify the hardderstanding of Linux. ware, by running:
hwd -u

INFO

Listing 3: /etc/pacman.conf entries

01 [repository-name] 02 Server = ftp://server.net/repo 03 [current] 04 # Add your preferred servers here, they will be used first 05 Include = /etc/pacman.d/ current

Now when you reboot your system, hwd will run instead of hotplug. In addition to hardware detection, hwd and lshwd can also be used to setup an initial X configuration file or to help you set up X.
hwd -x

[1] Arch Linux main site: Arch Linux: http://www.archlinux.org [2] http://michael-and-mary.net/intro/ node/260/380 [3] Arch vs. Others: http://wiki.archlinux. org/index.php/Arch_vs_Others [4] Arch installation guide: http://archlinux.org/docs/en/guide/ install/arch-install-guide.html [5] Arch forums: http://bbs.archlinux.org [6] Arch user contributions: http://user-contributions.org/home/ index.php

This command will create a sample X.org configuration file in /etc/X11,

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