Installed Archbang 2010.05 from git

Full image: http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/8021/201005261225461920x1200.png

I installed Archbang 2010.05 from git.
Created the iso from git this way:

packer -S base-devel git archiso-git
git clone git://gitorious.org/archbang/archbang.git
cd archbang

sudo make all

The resulting iso is about 470 mb and 64 bits.
After a successful live session using the nvidia option I installed the system in a before hand prepared logical partition in a multiboot setup.
Install went rather well' small issues time setting did not went well in ncurse; 15:34 instead of 11:34 also the gtm-1 option did not give the correct time.
I corrected the later but it still isn't correct after install It is now 9.54 instead of the real 13.54,
=====================
Solution time issue

Time issue is indeed there. Will take a look when I can.

Usually the best way to nip that problem is to install openntpd.
Code:

pacman -S openntpd

Then add openntpd to your daemons array in your /etc/rc.conf file so it will start with your next boot up, and then
Code:

/etc/rc.d/openntpd start

and your clock should be correct. This worked for me.
Decided it not to run as daemon because of the delay in booting and adding it to obautostart with

/etc/rc.d/openntpd start
===========================


The second issue was the bootloader install; I choose a grub2 install in the same partition as the new abinstall because I edit a menu.lst legacy grub in a different partition.
I gave an error that the bootloader couldnt be installed but it was instaled all the same.

Because I use the grub legacy on another partition I can't really check if the grub 2 would have done the job if necessary.
I did not install the plymouth splash screen, which I should have done for test purposes; but just forgot that because I was following my own preferences.

Internet (wired) is very slow and the webbrowser unresponsive.

Found the solution for the slow webbrowser

In Firefox adressbar type about:config
and search network.dns.disableIPv6 and set to true:
true disables IPv6 support - may not work for all networks,
but for me considerable speed increase maybe due to older router.

Other issues and adaptations>

First
tried to rankmirror my repository list;
rankmirrors will take a list of mirrors and arrange them in order of speed.
If you want to find the 5 fastest mirrors where you are, pass it your mirrorlist with servers near you uncommented
along with the "-n 5" option and redirect the output to a file, e.g.

Code:

cd /etc/pacman.d
cp mirrorlist mirrorlist.bak
rankmirrors -n 5 mirrorlist >mirrorlist

Got error message: get error: bash: mirrorlist: Permission denied, even if I sudo

Then update package list: pacman -Syy

Then error:

error: failed to synchronize any databases,

looked at the mirrorlist file and it was empty;
so made a handmade selection of servers and copied that from mirror.bak

My mistake was: had not installed reflector yet.

Installed packer
How to install packer in Arch?
Packer is a nice tool to build packages via the aur.

You need fakeroot and base-devel and git

pacman -S base-devel fakeroot git

2) get PKGBUILD: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=33378
3) run makepkg where you saved PKGBUILD
4) pacman -U packer-*.pkg.tar.xz


for instance: packer -S pcmanfm-mod

This is a stable version of pacmanfm

With pcmanfm I can easily access my other partitions.

Now I changed some looks:
The theme Madpablo and Madbox theme is copied as root from usr/share/themes and the icons Simple theme from usr/share/icons on another partition using pcmanfm as root. Copy fonts from other partition from usr/share/fonts/ttf to usr/share/fonts/ttf.

Installed geany as a nice test file editor: sudo pacman -S geany


Created Autologin:

/etc/inittab

Another way of circumventing display managers and booting straight into a preferred window manager or desktop environment involves editing /etc/inittab, changing:

id:3:initdefault:

[...]

x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/xdm -nodaemon

to:

id:5:initdefault:

[...]

x:5:once:/bin/su PREFERED_USER -l -c "/bin/bash --login -c /usr/bin/startx >/dev/null 2>&1"

changing PREFERED_USER as necessary.

How to build an iso from git

Building from git now should only need the following as of April 2010

Code

packer -S base-devel git archiso-git
git clone git://gitorious.org/archbang/archbang.git
cd archbang

sudo make all


Instead of using the aurscript you can now add the ArchBang repo so that you don't need to waste your precious time compiling manually!

Archbang Repo:
! You can now add it to your pacman.conf as:

Code

[archbang]
Server = http://www.archbang.org/repo/

This means you don't have to manually build packages.list.aur from AUR. You can just get it using pacman -Syyu
This will also help us push dist-upgrades in future.

Burning with Arch

Sometimes it may be necessary to graant you the necessary permissions:

Setting permissions

Users that should be able to use CD/DVD burning devices must have permissions to access the devices. If you are using udev (which is default in Arch Linux kernels), you only need to add the user(s) to the optical group:

# gpasswd -a  optical

Log out and back in for the changes to take effect.

source: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CD_Burning

Downgrading a package in Arch

source: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Downgrading_Packages

The Details

However, the user must keep in mind the following points. First, there is going to be the need to consider the dependencies of each program. The required libraries and such often change with each version, and the functionality of associated files may be completely different from previous ones. The solution will require changing these to earlier versions as well.

Second, one must consider if the necessary files have been removed from the system and are even going to be available from any source. Arch Linux's rolling release system of repositories are automatically upgraded without saving any older versions. See more about this problem below.

Third, we must be careful with changes to configuration files and scripts. At this point in time, we will rely upon pacman to handle this for us, as long as we do not bypass any safeguards it contains.

Please keep in mind that this issue brings us to the cutting edge of pacman package management development. The Arch Rollback Machine concept is being developed and awaiting useful incorporation into pacman. Once that occurs, this will become automated. Until then, please follow the instructions following this.

How to downgrade a package

• Q: I just ran pacman -Syu and package XYZ was upgraded to version N from version M. This package is causing problems on my computer, how can I downgrade from version N to the older version M?
• A: You may be able to downgrade the package trivially by visiting /var/cache/pacman/pkg on your system and seeing if the older version of the package is stored there. (If you have not run pacman -Scc recently, it should be there). If the package is there, you can install that version using pacman -U pkgname-olderpkgver.pkg.tar.gz after you moved to /var/cache/pacman/pkg.

This process will remove the current package, it will carefully calculate all of the dependency changes, and it will install the older version you have chosen with the proper dependencies down the line.

Via internet use http://arm.konnichi.com/2011/

In case of Kernel Panic or a roll back to a previous kernel

source: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_Panics

Reinstall kernel

Reinstalling the kernel is probably the best bet when no other major system modifications have taken place recently.

Start from the installation CD

The first step is booting the installation CD. Once booted, do not select to login with "arch", like you would when installing arch. Instead, you'll first want to login with "root".

# root

Mount your partitions

When booted, you are in a minimal but functional live GNU/Linux environment with some basic tools. Now, you have to mount your normal root disk (or partition) to /mnt.

# mount /dev/sdXY /mnt

If you are using legacy IDE setup, then use the command:

# mount /dev/hdXY /mnt

If you use a separate boot partition, don't forget to mount it with:

# mount /dev/sdXZ /mnt/boot

Gather your files for later troubleshooting

This is a good point to stop and gather your information onto another drive or partition so that it can be analyzed and/or emailed for outside viewing before the files change again. Simply create a separate directory on your main partition or mount a usb drive to contain the files. Then you may copy any files you will need to keep unchanged during the next boot with your new kernel.

Configure your chroot environment

Newer kernels use an initial ramdisk to set up the kernel environment. When you reinstall a kernel, that initial ramdisk will be regenerated with mkinitcpio. One of mkinitcpio's features is that it does autodetection to find out what kernel modules are required for starting up your computer. For this autodetection to work, /dev, /sys and /proc need to mounted in your chroot:

# mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
# mount -t sysfs none /mnt/sys
# mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev

Chroot to your normal root

Now, we will chroot to this disk:

# chroot /mnt

Roll back to previous kernel version

If you keep your downloaded pacman packages, you now can easily roll back. If you didn't keep them, you have to find a way to get a previous kernel version on your system now.

Let's suppose you kept the previous versions. We will now install the last working one.

# pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/kernel26-2.6.23.xx-x.pkg.tar.gz

(Of course, make sure that you adapt this line to your own kernel version. You can find the ones you still have in your cache by examining the directory above.)

Otherwise, check the install CD for a package. For example, the version 2008.06 i686 CD contains addons/core-pkgs/kernel26-2.6.25.6-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz.

Reboot

Now is the time to reboot and see if the system modifications have stopped the panic. If reverting to an older kernel works, don't forget to check the arch-newspage to check what went wrong with the kernel build. If there is no mention of the problem there, then go to the bug reporting area and search for it there. If you still don't find it, open a new bug report and attach those files you saved during the troubleshooting step above.

Speechsynthesis using Espeak and Mbrola

Did this in Ubuntu 9.10
With Synaptic install Espeak and mbrola packages.

Now go to this site and download your favourite voice:
http://www.tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/mbrola/mbrcopybin.html
I downloaded a Dutch voice

• nl2: Dutch Male (13Mb) Arthur Dirksen

Unzipped it and created a folder named mbrola in usr/share/
Copied the big language file in the root of that folder usr/share/mbrola (in a subfolder it won't be found).

Now can we give espeak teh command to read it.
Open the terminal in a folder where you have a txt file to be spoken:
espeak -v mb-nl2 -f test.txt | mbrola -e /usr/share/mbrola/nl2 - - | aplay -r16000 -fS16

To make a wav file of it:
espeak -v mb-nl2 -f test.txt | mbrola -e /usr/share/mbrola/nl2 - test.wav

WriteType

In the area of adaptive software the linux arternatives are not very strong and convincing.
Write type looks like a promising application though.
It combines auditive support and wordprediction when typing and is in this way very useful for visually impaired or dyslectic people.
Lets hope it will take off and develop well
More info: WriteType is an application designed specifically for students who have difficulty typing. As you type, WriteType will offer suggestions for words. It also has TTS (text-to-speech) abilities to read text back to the author. WriteType is Free Software available under the GPL. It has only undergone small-scale field testing so far, and should therefore be considered beta.
http://bernsteinforpresident.com/software/writetype

How about internationalizing the app by adding the option to change dictionaries (and voice)?
It would just require different word lists. As it is right now, TTS (via eSpeak), spellcheck, and the interface can be easily internationalized. In fact, there is a (currently useless) option in the config file to specify the language. Word completion would would take only a little bit of code, but would require a list of words in the desired language. If you (or anyone) is interested in submitting a translation, I would be more than happy to fully make translations available.


Tried to isntall this in Arch and wnet well with sudo python2 setup.py install
But when running it got an error; aspell-en was not installed.
To use a different locale, word prediction list interface and espeak voice, use writetype -l nl_NL

Adapting an outdated PKGBUILD -Arch

When you download a PKGBUILd and do: makepkg -sci PKGBUILD
this will be normally enought but with an outdated PKGBUILD you will have to change
some variables
Lets take this packagebuild as example

# $Id: PKGBUILD,v 1.00 2009/05/31 01:00 darkbaboon Exp $
# Contributor: Ronan Rabouin 

pkgname=adeskbar
pkgver=0.1.7.4
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="A Quick Application Launcher"
arch=('i686' 'x86_64')
url="http://www.ad-comp.be/index.php?category/ADesk-Bar"
license=('GPL3')
depends=('python')
provides=($pkgname)
conflicts=($pkgname-bzr)
source=(http://www.ad-comp.be/public/projets/ADeskBar/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.bz2)
md5sums=('9d07f253905fda8f986795415f684550')

build() {
cd $srcdir
install -d $pkgdir/usr/{bin,share/$pkgname,share/pixmaps,share/applications}
cp -a $srcdir/$pkgname-$pkgver/src/* $pkgdir/usr/share/$pkgname
install -m 644 $srcdir/$pkgname-$pkgver/$pkgname.png $pkgdir/usr/share/pixmaps/
install -m 644 $srcdir/$pkgname-$pkgver/$pkgname.desktop $pkgdir/usr/share/applications/

echo -e "#!/bin/bash\nif [ -f ~/.config/$pkgname/config ]; then\n/usr/share/$pkgname/$pkgname\nelse\n \
/usr/share/$pkgname/$pkgname-conf\n/usr/share/$pkgname/$pkgname\nfi" >$pkgdir/usr/bin/$pkgname
chmod 755 $pkgdir/usr/bin/$pkgname
}

What had to be changed??
pkgver=0.1.7.4 had to become pkgver=0.2

source=(http://www.ad-comp.be/public/projets/ADeskBar/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.bz2) did not work because in the version 0.2 there was suddenly an underscore in the name
so had to be changed to>
source=(http://www.ad-comp.be/public/projets/ADeskBar/adeskbar_0.2.tar.bz2)

Third the validity check was negative because the file size has changed.
So determine md5sum of the now downloaded file:
Open in terminal the folder were it is and
md5sum adeskbar_0.2.tar.bz2
which gives e71f44e1a76054af9f2d2c939c1f6d3b
So change
md5sums=('9d07f253905fda8f986795415f684550')
to
md5sums=('e71f44e1a76054af9f2d2c939c1f6d3b')

Now we can do again:
makepkg -sci PKGBUILD

And all should go well.

This last md5sum problem can also be solved by
makepkg -g >> PKGBUILD

And then:
makepkg -sci PKGBUILD