Raspberry-Pi get Arch Linux

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MyWorld

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Arch Linux is coming Raspberry-Pi.

After 6 months of development, Arch Linux ARM for Raspberry Pi is finally ready. Coming mere days after the sell-out launch of the tiny computer, Arch Linux ARM is the second operating system to be officially approved by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Click to expand...
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/news/raspberry-pi-gets-arch-linux/

So there you go, not a useless piece of hardware after all.
:D
 
Arch is the BEST distro out there, have always loved it and Debian is a close second!
 
I'm so happy with my Raspberry Pi!

I've been very busy lately and I haven't had much time to read tutorials. My first two or three days were a bit disappointing. No matter how hard I tried the first day, I couldn't get the thing to give me full resolution (1920x1080). The fix was simple though, I had to set disable_overscan to 1 in /boot/config.txt.

I tried Debian at first, but I couldn't get my wireless dongle to work, so I installed Arch and it worked out of the box. My cheap powered USB hub is a piece of **** and because of that, I have some difficulty using a mouse, keyboard and wireless adapter at the same time. Oh well, ssh and x11vnc to the rescue.

The next problem was getting it to play audio and video. I must have left out a few libraries or something. So, tonight I installed omxplayer from AUR, which pulled in some of the missing stuff, and it worked (omxplayer -o hdmi -pr <file>)!

SABnzbd also works perfectly.

As soon as I have more time, I'm going to try the Arch Linux Arm XBMC build...

Lots of fun! :)
 
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adrianx said:
I'm so happy with my Raspberry Pi!

I've been very busy lately and I haven't had much time to read tutorials. My first two or three days were a bit disappointing. No matter how hard I tried the first day, I couldn't get the thing to give me full resolution (1920x1080). The fix was simple though, I had to set disable_overscan to 1 in /boot/config.txt.

I tried Debian at first, but I couldn't get my wireless dongle to work, so I installed Arch and it worked out of the box. My cheap powered USB hub is a piece of **** and because of that, I have some difficulty using a mouse, keyboard and wireless adapter at the same time. Oh well, ssh and x11vnc to the rescue.

The next problem was getting it to play audio and video. I must have left out a few libraries or something. So, tonight I installed omxplayer from AUR, which pulled in some of the missing stuff, and it worked (omxplayer -o hdmi -pr <file>)!

SABnzbd also works perfectly.

As soon as I have more time, I'm going to try the Arch Linux Arm XBMC build...

Lots of fun! :)
Click to expand...

Will the Arch Linux XBMC build work better (quicker) than the RaspBMC build?
 
eehellfire said:
Will the Arch Linux XBMC build work better (quicker) than the RaspBMC build?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. At the moment, the Arch build doesn't even work properly for many. The main reason I want to stick with Arch is that I'm familiar with it and I want a more general purpose distro. I'm considering getting more SD cards so that I can try out OpenElec, RaspBMC and a few other distors.
 
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right, so i got debian and arch a while ago. the arch doesn't boot, but debian does. however, it doesn't go full screen on my tv (samsung 32" hd ready). i've fiddled with the config file and so far it either makes no difference or it stops booting, or it does boot, but doesn't display on the tv... it's hard to tell.

i've been a bit busy the last few weeks, so i haven't had a chance to fiddle some more. is "disable_overscan=1" the only thing i need to add in to get it going?

i have very little linux experience, so speak at me as a relative n00b. :)
 
Easter Bunny said:
right, so i got debian and arch a while ago. the arch doesn't boot, but debian does. however, it doesn't go full screen on my tv (samsung 32" hd ready). i've fiddled with the config file and so far it either makes no difference or it stops booting, or it does boot, but doesn't display on the tv... it's hard to tell.

i've been a bit busy the last few weeks, so i haven't had a chance to fiddle some more. is "disable_overscan=1" the only thing i need to add in to get it going?

i have very little linux experience, so speak at me as a relative n00b. :)
Click to expand...

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Find these and try changing if the fullscreen is close but short a few pixels:
Code: 
...
# uncomment the following to adjust overscan. Use positive numbers if console
# goes off screen, and negative if there is too much border
#overscan_left=16
#overscan_right=16
#overscan_top=16
#overscan_bottom=16
...

You could also hit the very next lines:
Code: 
# uncomment to force a console size. By default it will be display's size minus
# overscan.
#framebuffer_width=1280
#framebuffer_height=720

and lastly, try add the following line:
Code: 
hdmi_mode=4
also, try http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt for list of other modes. For HD-Ready, I think 5 may be appropriate.

Then, Ctrl-O then enter then Ctrl-X then restart
 
should have popped back here. :) i put in "disable_overscan=1" and that got it fullscreen. thanks for the help though. ;)

this is quite a nifty little toy and i'm getting myself going on learning linux and making a few notes as i learn. i bought a second sd card for arch, so i'll play with both of those.

i can do java and recently started learning a little foxpro for doing payroll scripts at work, so i'm going to learn python on the pi. who knows, maybe oneday i'll be able to make an led go on and off with my "skillz".

seeing as i use the wifi on my laptop to connect to my tablet for internets, is there a way i can use the laptop as a gateway for my pi?
 
Just got my Pi yesterday and I want it for a few simple things, but getting a decent GUI seems to be a bit of a task.

I was almost settled on Arch, but had some trouble once I actually got a GUI going so I started from scratch with what appeared to be a very good guide (http://www.mybiteofpi.com/guides.html), problem was I could not get very far. Could not get any of the updates to run, would not resolve the servers, ping was working lan and internet so I know that part of it was A ok.

About to try OpenElec as it seems to at least do exactly what I need, XBMC, Sickbeard, Couch Potato and Sabnzbd, all things arc would of given me and probably much more had I gotten it working.
 
It is interesting to see so many people struggling to get Arch going on the RaspberryPi.

May I ask, are the people failing with Arch seasoned Linux users?
What does the log files say is failing/wrong/error?
 
MyWorld said:
It is interesting to see so many people struggling to get Arch going on the RaspberryPi.

May I ask, are the people failing with Arch seasoned Linux users?
What does the log files say is failing/wrong/error?
Click to expand...

I am only a notch or 2 above novice, i have some ubuntu experience and then a few weeks on a unix server using tunnel. Personally prefer tunnel to cpanel for servers.
Restarted with Arch and skipped 1 step from that guide and all the updates have just finished. will see if I can get this going well.
 
Can anyone help me get SickBeard and CouchPotato V2 working.

I see its on Arch repository or whatever its called but pacman is not finding them. I can only get sanbzbd and couch potato v1, can live without CP2 but sickbeard is the missing puzzle piece to make it the download server, some research has shown me xbmc with those 3 is a bit of a pipe dread, Sabnzbd takes too much out of it when its extracting some users even reported stand alone it can crash the system if you do not limit its CPU threshold.

Will get another Pi for teh XBMC, not really in the mood for trying to program a WMC remote for linux now anyway.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=36115
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=58651

Was however impressed with XBian it playing my 1080p copy of avatar which is a 12mbps rip. Needed to buffer often but in its defense it only had a 2GB class 4 and was at stock speeds.
Not quite ready to rip the working Arch off my Class 10 super speed to see if it works better.
 
CranialBlaze,

Pacman does not work with aur. In order to use pacman you have to download the tarball from aur, build the package with makepkg and then install the created package with pacman.

If you want a simpler method install a aurhelper app like packer, meric etc which is a wrapper for pacman & aur and you can then use it to install stuff from both the repos & aur.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=88115
https://github.com/bruenig/packer/wiki

You will have to install packer the way I mentioned at the beginning of the post, download tarball, makepkg, pacman <package name>
See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR#Installing_packages

You only have to do this once as any future updates to packer will be installed with packer.

AUR is not a official Arch repo and does not have binary packages hence no official support from pacman. Arch User Repository (AUR) is so users can contribute their own stuff to the arch community kind like PPAs in Ubuntu. Someone will create a package build which is basically a text file telling makepkg where to download the original source binary from and how to build a binary package for arch.
 
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ponder said:
CranialBlaze,

Pacman does not work with aur. In order to use pacman you have to download the tarball from aur, build the package with makepkg and then install the created package with pacman.

If you want a simpler method install a aurhelper app like packer, meric etc which is a wrapper for pacman & aur and you can then use it to install stuff from both the repos & aur.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=88115
https://github.com/bruenig/packer/wiki

You will have to install packer the way I mentioned at the beginning of the post, download tarball, makepkg, pacman <package name>
See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR#Installing_packages

You only have to do this once as any future updates to packer will be installed with packer.

AUR is not a official Arch repo and does not have binary packages hence no official support from pacman. Arch User Repository (AUR) is so users can contribute their own stuff to the arch community kind like PPAs in Ubuntu. Someone will create a package build which is basically a text file telling makepkg where to download the original source binary from and how to build a binary package for arch.
Click to expand...

I declare u Legend...

Worked like a charm, that packer-color sucks though, took me 3 attempts before I realized saying yes tot he yellow text was bad.
Got CP 2, Sabnzbd and Sickbeard ready to work. Now I have buggered this up a few times already so now its working I want to know if its possible to do a sort of "Ghost" backup, basically like the img files I started with, except updated with all my stuff. I have installed and run them but not actually confirmed so its a pretty good recovery point and chances are some friends will be getting Pi's soon too.

Also want to give Bodhi a try quick and the only other SD card I have is too small. Just to see what its like, but my geek side will probably keep me on arch anyway.

Also I read soemthing about partitions but when listening to it broke everything so skipped the next time round, but it appears as if Arch is only using ~2gb of my 16GB card. Is it too late to expand it, can I maybe just create another partition with the balance of the space?

Thanks again.
 
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