Some years ago we have had installed Archlinux in an external hard disk. When we were working on doing our first PKGBUILD, this external hard disk came to the rescue. We copied /boot and /root to repair our development laptop. You know, we have the common practice to take notes about some uncommon procedures like this one, but we have lost that group of notes when losing an 8 Gb pendrive. Also, we did not have a backup. Inside this pendrive We had the requirements for our inventory system.
One and a half years ago we had installed ArchBang, one issue we faced was that our Wifi/USB1 was not recognized. At That time we did not spend much time on it, and we connected to the network by an ethernet cable. Also we noticed ArchBang did not implemented a persistence filesystem2, that's an annoyance because other distros implement it. At that time we read that the alternative is to install ArchBang on an usb pendrive.
By the way after installing ArchBang, indirectly we are going to get a clean ArchLinux for testing the requirements for our inventory system. That's the reason we are installing ArchBang on a 2 Gb pendrive.
Before starting, download the ArchBang iso3. After booting the iso4. We must follow the steps on the ArchBang official installation guide5.
Partition the usb pendrive manually6 using ext4 filesystem as follows:
- 32 Mb boot
- 1755 Mb root
- 211 Mb home
Omit the swap7.
When installing. It should shows up a menu for changing some files. There we must change on the file /etc/mkinitcpio.conf Replace this line HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata filesystems"
with this line HOOKS="base udev usb autodetect pata scsi sata filesystems"
After that on a terminal run the next instruction mkinitcpio -c /root/etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/kernerl26.img
Finally modify the GRUB menu. On the file /grub/menu.lst8 change the lines9 10:
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/4518f7a9-6946-4cc5-9011-f24f4b668e44 ro quiet rootfstype=ext4
With that change. We can boot our brand new ArchBang.
The space left on the root is almost zero bytes. In our case we removed the packages Abiword and Gnumeric, for getting some more space, we also could remove the chromium and replace it with conkeror that is lighter.
As expected this release does not have the driver for our USB/Wifi, after looking the firmware11 and installed it manually our wireless started to work.
Wellcome new archers, You can start to enjoy Archlinux on its flavor ArchBang. The ArchBang configuration is very similar to the one we use for development on our inshape laptop (OpenBox + Archlinux). The most notable difference is stalonetray.
1. It is a TPLINK model TL-WN322G.
2. It permits us to install our most used packages. When restarting our installed packages are there.
3. When writing this article. The last ArchBang version is Symbiosis.
4. We Install the iso on another USB with the command. dd if=Archbang_Symbiosis-2011.01.24-i686.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=8M. Use <code>fdisk -l to see the list of devices (your pendrive is going to be probablf /dev/sdb)
5. Open a terminal window with [super+t] after typing sudo abinstall and follow the 5 easy steps that end when installing GRUB
6. Partition using parted, If You have problems using parted, You can also use gparted that must be done before starting the installation process.
7. We do not have more space for swap partition.
8. Inside the /boot partition.
9. After installing GRUB we can modify It.
10. The root must be hd0, and on the kernel line add rootfstype=ext4.
11. zd1211-firmware. Installed with sudo pacman -U .
Last change: 22.11.2011 20:03 |
