Mixu's tech blog

This is mostly just a reminder for myself – but I always learn new things when I read how other people set up their system. Leave a comment if you have a tip – that’s how I learned about wicd-gtk . Oh, and install my window manager (tiling, written in C++ and node.js, configurable using Javascript).

First steps

• do the basic arch setup first (or VMware, or Virtualbox)

Update the system (and install/setup sudo)

dhcpcd eth0 #if you did not add "interface=eth0" in rc.conf during setup
pacman -Syu

Fixes:

http://www.archlinux.org/news/initscripts-update-manual-intervention-required/

rm /etc/profile.d/locale.sh

http://www.archlinux.org/news/filesystem-upgrade-manual-intervention-required/

pacman -S filesystem --force

pacman -S sudo
vim /etc/sudoers # add yourself to sudoers
sudo vim /etc/pacman.conf # set SigLevel = Never TrustAll
sudo shutdown-r now

Install X11:

pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-utils xorg-server-utils xterm

If virtualized in VirtualBox, make copy-paste work first:

pacman -S virtualbox-archlinux-additions

Details

Create a new user

pacman -S zsh
useradd -m -g users -G audio,lp,optical,storage,video,games,power,scanner -s /bin/zsh USERNAME
su USERNAME
passwd

Add x11

pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-utils xorg-server-utils

Copy ssh keys over from old machine
Useful packages

pacman -S base-devel sudo python2 git libev mlocate mercurial nitrogen 
sakura wicd-gtk pcmanfm gnome-icon-theme htop unzip 
openssl chromium flashplugin bash-completion xterm 
epdfview mysql ruby tilda tmux wget redis xcursor-vanilla-dmz 
xarchiver gzip bzip2 zip unzip unrar p7zip 
meld ttf-ubuntu-font-family mpg123 alsa-utils redis mysql ruby libxslt

• base-devel and python2 for compiling node
• libev for nwm
• mlocate for locate command
• nitrogen is better than feh for multiple screens
• sakura is a nice terminal
• wicd-gtk is a simple wifi network gui
• pcmanfm gnome-icon-theme are for pcmanfm, a Nautilus alternative

Remember to visudo and remove the password requirement from wheel. And add dbus and wicd to /etc/rc.conf just like pacman tells you to.
Configuring X11

Add ~/.Xresources:

Xcursor.theme: vanilla-dmz
Xcursor.size:  16       !  32, 48 or 64 may also be good values

Configuring git

git config --global color.ui true

Configuring sakura

I want to use ctrl + Page_Up / Page_Down to switch tabs, so edit ~/.config/sakura/sakura.conf:

switch_tab_accelerator=4 # since GDK_CONTROL_MASK is 1 << 2, e.g. 4.
prev_tab_key=Page_Down
next_tab_key=Page_Up

Some basic niceties: whatprovides, service and chkconfig

pacman -S pkgtools

• pkgtools provides the pkgfile tool. It works like yum whatprovides (e.g. allows you to search for a particular command or dependency in all the pacman packages)
• “sudo pkgfile -u” to update the db
• “pgkfile zipinfo” to search for zipinfo

Arch don’t have a service and chkconfig, but we can make the new things curve a bit less steep by adding some functions to .bashrc:

function service() {
  sudo /etc/rc.d/$1 $2
}

alias chkconfig='cat /etc/rc.conf | grep DAEMONS && echo "cat + grep /etc/rc.conf"'

This makes service an alias for /etc/rc.d/ and prints out the enabled services from /etc/rc.conf. While we’re editing .bashrc, might as well add:

PS1="[W]$ " # my preferred bash prompt (e.g. only the current dirname).
ulimit -s 16400 # higher stack limit
# ssh-agent
SSH_ENV="$HOME/.ssh/environment"
function start_agent {
     echo "Initialising new SSH agent..."
     /usr/bin/ssh-agent | sed 's/^echo/#echo/' > "${SSH_ENV}"
     echo succeeded
     chmod 600 "${SSH_ENV}"
     . "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
     /usr/bin/ssh-add;
}
# Source SSH settings, if applicable
if [ -f "${SSH_ENV}" ]; then
     . "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
     #ps ${SSH_AGENT_PID} doesn't work under cywgin
     ps -ef | grep ${SSH_AGENT_PID} | grep ssh-agent$ > /dev/null || {
         start_agent;
     }
else
     start_agent;
fi

Installing Node and NPM

You can just do:

pacman -S nodejs

If you’re OK with that version, which seems to track the Node releases pretty well.

Arch uses python3 as python. You need to change python to python2 (thanks Rob Searles!)

# node.js fix for arch (use python2) 
mkdir /tmp/bin
ln -s /usr/bin/python2 /tmp/bin/python
export PATH=/tmp/bin:$PATH

You can then do a regular node install:

git clone git://github.com/joyent/node.git

git checkout v0.4.12

./configure

make

sudo make install

Remember to install npm as well:

curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh

Installing my window manager and personal config

git clone git://github.com/mixu/nwm.git
cd nwm
node-waf clean || true && node-waf configure build
sudo npm link # add a global npm symlink to this repository - so nwm-user can find it (man npm link)
cd ..
git clone git://github.com/mixu/nwm-user.git
cd nwm-user
npm link nwm # now make a symlink to the nwm installation

Add it to ~/.xinitrc (change paths!!):

exec /usr/local/bin/node ~/mnt/nwm-user/nwm-user.js 2>~/nwm.err.log 1>~/nwm.log

And while we’re at it, lets add some other stuff:

VBoxClient-all &
export PATH=/tmp/bin:$PATH # for node-waf, too lazy to work on a better solution
xset +fp /usr/share/fonts/local
xset fp rehash

Run “startx” to start X11 with nwm.

Installing my mp3 player

First, we need to configure alsa (included by default):

pacman -S mpg123 alsa-utils

Run:

alsamixer

and turn on Master and PCM channels (by pressing m) as they are muted by default.

sudo alsactl store

Then continue:

git clone git://github.com/mixu/nplay.git

Run nplay with

node nplay.js

TODO: fix directory in source code and change backend from mpg321 to mpg123.

Switching the keyboard language in X11

I sometimes need to write emails in Finnish, so here is how to switch the layout:

setxkbmap -layout fi # revert back setxkbmap -layout us 

Install yaourt

Install dependencies

yaourt libpng12 gtk2-theme-dust

 

Install Sublime Text 2

Sublime Text needs libpng12, which you have to install from AUR:

wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/li/libpng12/libpng12.tar.gz
tar -xzvf libpng12.tar.gz
cd libpng12
makepkg
pacman -U ./libpng12-1.2.46-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

Then download and run Sublime Text 2.

Also, you might want to ger http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gt/gtk2-theme-dust/gtk2-theme-dust.tar.gz.

Configuring Sublime Text 2

locate Packages # returns ~/.config/sublime-text-2/Packages
cd ~/.config/sublime-text-2/Packages
git clone https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/ "Theme - Soda"
cd User
wget http://blog.mixu.net/files/2010/05/my_themes.zip # Install my themes
unzip my_themes
rm my_themes.zip

Base File settings

{
  // FONTS and COLORS
  "color_scheme": "Packages/User/Mixu Espresso.tmTheme",
  "font_size": 11,
  "tab_size": 2,
  // WHITESPACE
    // Set to true to insert spaces when tab is pressed
    "translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
    "trim_automatic_white_space": true,
    "trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": true,
    // Set to false to disable detection of tabs vs. spaces on load
    "detect_indentation": false,
  "shift_tab_unindent": true,
  // Set to false to disable highlighting any line with a caret
  "highlight_line": true,
  // Set to "none" to turn off drawing white space, "selection" to draw only the
  // white space within the selection, and "all" to draw all white space
  "draw_white_space": "selection",
  // Set to true to ensure the last line of the file ends in a newline
  // character when saving
  "ensure_newline_at_eof_on_save": true,
  "fold_buttons": false
}

Global Settings

{
  "theme": "Soda Light.sublime-theme"
}

Other tweaks

I put these in my usual “startup” command, nwm-setup.sh and run it manually:

xrandr --output VBOX0 --auto --left-of VBOX1 # Virtualbox displays
chromium & # start chromium
export PS1="[W]$ "
xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr # Set pointer
nitrogen --restore & # Restore desktop background using nitrogen

Other dependencies

pacman -S redis mysql ruby libxslt

Setting up ree:

cd
bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)
echo '[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && . "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM function' >> ~/.bashrc
source .bashrc
rvm install ree-1.8.7-2011.03

Installing REE will fail. You need torun the installer from /home/m/.rvm/src/ree-1.8.7-2011.03/installer manually:

./installer -no-tcmalloc

Then continue on:

rvm ree-1.8.7-2011.03 --default

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 10th, 2011 at 6:22 am and is filed under How-to, Technology. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.