Arch Linux Installation:What other web tutorials won't tell you.

Hey folks

If you are faithful to my blog you should know by now that i'm a great fan of  Debian, Slackware and OpenSuse. When i started linux i tried a bunch of  distros before settling into Debian and this cycle would start and end again. This past  week  I  wanted to try  Arch linux. I heard it was tougher than slackware; to people who still thinks slackware is tough lets just say they haven't tried Gentoo and by the way slackware is pretty straight forward than Arch is. So I  read some tutorials in the web about installing arch linux and here is what i found out.

0. Arch has a Rolling release model so download and use it at your own risk.
1. Download Arch linux iso
2. Create a bootable CD or USB drive.
3. Boot the installation.
4. Ping 8.8.8.8  [ or any random site you know]
5. If not run dhcpcd 

I don't know if its a problem with arch, every time i rebooted for a retry [yeah long story]  I had to reboot my modem router to get the internet working. The same problem occured also in Manjaro. Also make sure you have a wired connection not wifi we don't need to get frustrated now, do we?

5. So Rebooting your modem may help you a bit.
6. Again ping, if it works great, lets move on shall we
7. Run timedatectl status
8. set timedatectl set-ntp true
9. Now we need to partition our hard drive if your are a beginner use cfdisk
 even if you are not a beginner you can use cfdisk without getting judged.
run  the command cfdisk  you can set your partion and write the partition table

If you want to know the list of all partitions run fdisk -l 

10. Format our partition.: mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdaX  [X=1,2,3...]
11. mkswap  /dev/sdaX  [X=1,2,....]
12. swapon  /dev/sdaX  [X=1,2,....]
13. mount /dev/sdaX   /mnt

right now you should run the command pacman -Sy  
to those who don't know pacman is the package manager for archlinux just like apt-get or dpkg or slackpkg. This command will  update the package database. It will solve issues with packages integrity.

 
14. run pacstrap  /mnt base base-devel

Depending on your internet connection it will take a while. It will install all the basic packages you need. 

15.Create Fstab. genfstab >> /mnt/etc/fstab  check it with cat /mnt/etc/fstab

16. you need to chroot into your installed environment. run arch-chroot  /mnt

17.  edit /etc/locale.gen  run nano /etc/locale.gen  uncomment the necessary locales and run locale-gen

17.i. in /etc/locale.conf add the following line  LANG=en_US.UTF-8


18. run hwclock --systohc --utc

19. Make sure you are in correct time zone. for a list of time zones run  
 ls /usr/share/zoneinfo and run  
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City  /etc/localtime

this resulted in error telling me the file already exists

20. Create hostname in /etc/hostname run

                  echo hostname >> /etc/hostname

21. Install bootloader.

pacman  -S  grub os-prober fuse2

after installing run  grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

grub-install /dev/sda

Install Fuse2 if you are dual booting. It will  detect windows  and also make sure you have enabled the boot flag enabled in windows boot partition [for win 7 or later]

22. Enable dhcpcd. systemctl enable dhcpcd

23.a set root passwd by running command passwd

If you forgot to set root passwd it is not the end of the world it will let you login automatically.  by entering your username, i.e root.

23. exit, umount /mnt, systemctl reboot 

24. After booting  you will be  in root shell. you now proceed to install GUI.

25. after you booted for the first time run
pacman -Syu 
pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate archlinux

 The tutorials won't mention this step. But it is required to initialize the keyring.

25. Install Xorg. Pacman -S xorg

I later installed xfce4 including vlc,firefox,etc. and for the life of me  i couldn't correctly configure the display manager properly which led to successful failure [Operation success but the patient is dead] . After a while i gave up on configuring the display manager in arch and abandoned it. You just can't sit two days in a row and not have a fully functional system.So i again went back to Debian. Now i'm running Stretch.It's pretty smooth. I was reading about debootstrap method of installing debian and i'm reminded  archlinux installation is kind of like debootstrap. I think i'll give another shot another time after throughly reading about configuring about display managers.

Thought: Candle and Candidate

Candles and Candidates have things  in common

one: Both have the same root word - cand

Two: A candle's purpose is to glow, to shine, to give light in the darkness
and a candidate's purpose is to glow in his success and to give light in the dark world [be a more positive influence in the world ]

Three: Both can be replaced.

candle (s) (noun), candles (pl)

1. A molded piece of wax, tallow, or other fatty substance, usually cylindrical in shape, encasing a wick that is burned to provide light: Before the days of gas and electricity, candles were the main sources of light at night.
2. A unit of luminous intensity, defined as a fraction of the luminous intensity of a group of 45 carbon-filament lamps; used from 1909 to 1948 as the international standard.
3. Etymology: from Ole English candel, early church-word borrowing from Latin candela, "a light, a torch"; from candere, "to shine". Candles were unknown in ancient Greece where oil lamps were used, but they were common from early times among Romans and Etruscans.

candidate (s) (noun), candidates (pl)

1. A person who seeks to run for a political office: The conservative candidate promised to eliminate high taxes while the liberal candidate said he would strive to eliminate unemployment.
2. Etymology: from Latin candidus, "white" and candidatus, "clothed in white" from the white togas, which were long, shining, white cloaks that were worn by Romans who were seeking political offices. 

When a man ran for public office in ancient Rome, he obtained a toga which was a long, shining, white cloak.
With this "shining white" outfit, the candidate stood out in a crowd and the people might have considered him to be associated with purity and goodness because of the symbolism of the garment.

MEDITATION: THE IMPORTANCE OF PASSOVER

Passover the Jewish festival which symbolizes the liberation of Hebrews from Egypt to Israel as promised by God. How does it fit in this modern world? Have we not read in the bible that Egypt symbolizes slavery? when St Paul writes about Egypt and Zion he refers the former as the place of slavery and latter as the place of liberty.  
When Adam Sinned he sold himself and his progeny to Sin and Death and Through him the curse entered the world and is still in us and the whole world is still feeling the effects of the sin 

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned  Romans 5:12

 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope  that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Romans 8: 20-23

In layman term we become Bad guys that is why St Paul says 

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die   Romans 5:7

so What can we say about us? That we were some how the misunderstood bad guys but has good in his heart. No. The bible says that God created Man good  but humans discovered  evil ways. So what can we say, That while we are still bound to Death and sin that our Heavenly Father loved us so much He gave us his son Jesus Christ as the passover lamb to be slaughtered for our sins. 

For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

 It is not our love to him but it his love that saved us from sin. 

 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged  on a tree” Galatians  3:13

 Christ took our Curse so that we may become free from Death and sin and become the passover lamb.  

So Let us pray to our Lord Jesus Christ that we may be liberated from Sin. In the name of the Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit, Amen.

How to add image to audio file for uploading to youtube

1.First make sure you have FFmpeg installed.
2. Goto Terminal
3. Type the following command

ffmpeg -r 1 -loop 1 -i p1.jpg -i comp.mp3 -acodec copy -r 1 -shortest comp.flv

4. The output container may be Mp4, AVI,MOV,3GP, etc it depends on your choice.
5. Finally your output file will be in your working directory
6. Optionally you can use the -scale operator to crop or scale the image.

How to add album art to your audio using VLC

1. Start VLC.
2. Goto Tools -----------> Media information
3. Change the metadata
4. Goto the general tab and you will find the logo of VLC or it may have already downloaded the album art for you.
5. Right click the VLC image and select ------> Add cover art from File and click OK.
6. That's it Now you have changed your album art using VLC.

systemd; External hard drive time-out problem during boot.

If you have an external hard drive that is plugged in all the time but on one fine day you boot your system without the external hard  drive and  your system drops to a maintenance shell after looking through the syslog i.e journald  you find out your system got into a loop trying to mount the external hard disk. So what is the solution?
It lies in  the fstab file. In the /dev/sdb line add

nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=1ms

and do not set it to zero it will go into infinte loop.

for more info check:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/fstab#External_devices

Fixing NTFS partition in Debian using ntfsfix

Today my external hard drive suddenly become RAW meaning i couldn't mount it in windows or even in linux and worse I couldn't even run chkdsk utility in windows then i came across this utily called ntfsfix  while searching  for the solution.

The following is from the ntfsfix manpage:

ntfsfix  is a utility that fixes some common NTFS problems.ntfsfix is NOT a Linux version of chkdsk.  It only repairs some  fundamental  NTFS inconsistencies,  resets  the  NTFS  journal file and schedules an NTFS consistency check for the first boot into Windows. You may run ntfsfix on an NTFS volume if you think it  was  damaged  by Windows or some other way and it cannot be mounted.

so to run ntfsfix become root and give the following command

# ntfsfix -d /dev/sdb1

it will fix the most common errors in the NTFS partition.

sources:
1. http://askubuntu.com/questions/47700/fix-corrupt-ntfs-partition-without-windows
2. http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201205/page06.html