Making Archbang look like Madbox

I like the Madbox looks very much; modern without being too dark or obtrusive.
As I already have Madbox installed in another partition it is very easy to install the themes in Archbang. The theme Madbox is copied as root from usr/share/themes and the icons Simple theme from usr/share/icons. The theme I was using was Clearbooks theme (Pref, Openbox Config, Gui Config Tool, with BB windows (Pref, User Interface settings (=lxappearance))

Setting a mouse cursor theme in Archbang

First step: Copy icons theme folder unpacked to /usr/share/icons

Sudo update-alternatives as described below doesn' t work in Arch.
So try this:
The same is also accomplished if you edit /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme and add or adjust the following lines (using the cursor theme DMZ-White as an example):

 [Icon Theme]
 Inherits=DMZ-White

Make sure the name you specify in ~/.Xdefaults matches the name of the folder the theme is stored in (as always case sensitive). When you restart X, the new cursor theme should be applied. Restart X with oblogout or control alt backspace . If that last one doesn' t work:
IYou need to put the following in your .xinitrc:

setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp &

This is from http://urukrama.wordpress.com/openbox-guide/#Mousethemes

Mouse cursor themes

What do you do when you want to change the mouse cursor theme? You can do this in two ways: system-wide, or for a single user.

If you install an X cursor theme, such as dmz-cursor-theme, system-wide (in /usr/share/icons) you can change the default X cursor theme with the command: sudo update-alternatives –config x-cursor-theme, which will show you a list of available cursor themes. Select the one you like, and when you restart X the new cursor theme should be used. The same is also accomplished if you edit /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme and add or adjust the following lines (using the cursor theme DMZ-White as an example):

 [Icon Theme]
 Inherits=DMZ-White

You can also specify the mouse cursor theme in /home/USERNAME/.Xdefaults to change the theme for a single user only. To change the mouse cursor theme in this way, add the following to that file:

 Xcursor.theme:NAMEOFTHETHEME
 Xcursor.size:  SIZE #optional

Change the mouse Xcursor.theme to whatever your preferred theme is named. Some cursor themes support can display more than one size; if you use such a theme, you can specify the size with the second line (normal sizes are 32, 48 or 64). If the cursor theme only has a single size, this line is meaningless.

You can install cursor themes in /home/USERNAME/.icons or /usr/share/icons/. Make sure the name you specify in ~/.Xdefaults matches the name of the folder the theme is stored in (as always case sensitive). When you restart X, the new cursor theme should be applied.

If you prefer graphical tools, you could try out gcursor, a Gtk application to change cursor themes (with previews).

Install oblogout in Archbang

Had some hickups installing Oblogout

first install
packer -S python-imaging

Then


cd /tmp
wget http://assets.tensixtyone.com/releases/oblogout/openboxlogout-0.1-1.tar.gz
tar zxvf openboxlogout-0.1-1.tar.gz
cd openboxlogout-0.1
./oblogout

Then 
sudo ./setup.py install

found some important clues here.

Decided I didn' tlike these buttoms, installed Adcomp version copying oblogout to /usr/share/
adn creating a symbolic link to /usr/bin:
[paul@archbang ~]$ sudo ln -s  /usr/share/oblgout/oblogout /usr/bin/oblogout

Install glitches with ArchBang

First problem when using the ArchBang installer was that I was unable to create a new partition:
When I tried to partition unallocated space on the hard drive, I got a problem that I could not resize the extended partition in which I wanted to create a new partition for Arch. What happened is that the Archbang cd was using the swap partition on that extended partition. I had to swapoff the swap partition and only then the extended partition could be unmounted what is necessary for resizing. In the aftermath quite an obvious thing, but it took me some time to detect the problem.

Problems installing NVidia driver:
64 bits version
no luck with nvidia
trying to reinstall according to http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 04#p717804
but first solution gives nvidia package not found not found in sync db
Keeping nv gives
configuration failed
number of screens doesn t match number of detected devices.

Within 10 minute there was a fix from the kind ShyLock, who we are thankful for provding Archbang together with WillExtreme, who took the initiative of creating AB.
The reason you were getting "not found in sync db" error was coz repositories database needed to be created and updated for the first time!
So just use: pacman -Syy

But then another weird problem showed up>

Got this error doing pacman -Syy

Synchronizing package databases...
error: failed to update core (no servers configured for repository)
error: failed to update extra (no servers configured for repository)
error: failed to update community (no servers configured for repository)
error: failed to synchronize any databases

The solution to this problem was:

Check the mirrorlist under /etc/pacman.d/ and make sure it has some mirrors uncommented.

Then I was able to install the Nvidia drivers but still no show.
Error message> fatal server error no screen found
I tried to install the nvidia-beta drivers and nvidia-utils-beta but not found.
Installed the default and shows in the xorg.0.log: nvidia glx module 195.39.80 loaded. The xorg.conf file proved to be the problem.

Second guess was that there was a wrong xorg.conf. This proved the way to a solution;
replaced wrong setup with:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Change Cursors in Archbang/OpenBox

ArchWike has a great openbox page. That is how I found out about Arch in the first way

Mouse cursors

Extract the desired Xcursor theme to either /usr/share/icons (system-wide access) or ~/.icons (local user access). There are also a limited amount of themes available in the community repository that can be installed using pacman.

Add this to ~/.Xdefaults:

Xcursor.theme:   [name-of-cursor-theme]

where [name-of-cursor-theme] is the name of the cursor theme directory. For example:

Xcursor.theme: Vanilla-DMZ-AA

To change the size:

Xcursor.size: [size]

ArchBang howto install Slim login manager

Archang is a remake of Crunchbang like setup on top of the Arch Linux.

Archlinux is for the tinkerers, who want to know how exactly the systemsetup is done. It's highly configurable, has a rolling release and a very active and helpful community.
Archbang is not for the beginner but for the intermediate linux user.
If you think using Ubuntu for example is your bread and butter but want to expand your knowledge of Linux Arch is the way to go.
As I have written before, every distro using Openbox as window manager really interests me, because of its beautiful simpleness, The K.I.S.S. in a very successful form.

Any way why would you need a graphical login manager? It's superfuous and default it' s not there in Archbang which I like.
But wanted to know how you can install one.
In the splendid ArchWiki you will find under topic DisplayManager:
It is best practice, but not required, to choose the display manager that corresponds to your desktop environment. Typically SLiM is preferred if there is not a corresponding desktop environment.
And on the ArchWiki SLiM page: " SLiM is simple, lightweight and easily configurable. SLiM is used by some because it does not require the dependencies of GNOME or KDE and can help make a lighter system for users that like to use lightweight desktops like Xfce, Openbox, and Fluxbox."

Installation first

pacman -S slim

and then

pacman -S slim-themes archlinux-themes-slim

Now we have to edit /etc/inittab what I do as root using Geany, my fav configuration editor.
Check if

id:5:initdefault:

and edit out (add #, we can easily reverse things later this way)

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

and edit in (removing#)

x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/slim >& /dev/null

On Wikipedia we learn on init>
init (short for initialization) is the program on Unix and Unix-like systems that spawns all other processes. It runs as a daemon . Runlevel 3 is default in Arch and give a command line interface.
On the two Linux distributions defaulting to runlevel 5 in the table above, runlevel 5 is a multiuser graphical environment running the X Window System, usually with a display manager.

Now the only thing we have to do is choose a theme.
I did that by changing default to flower2 on the 'current_theme' line in /etc/slim.conf.

Look in the directory of /usr/share/slim/themes to see which themes are available.

Autologin
For those who want autologin, edit /etc/inittab according to this wiki: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Start_X_at_Boot.
Boot in 12 seconds from grub to conky this way!!

This will outline methods that do not involve a display manager.

~/.bash_profile

An alternative to a login manager is to add the following to the bottom of your ~/.bash_profile (if ~/.bash_profile does not yet exist, you can copy a skeleton version from /etc/skel/.bash_profile):

File: ~/.bash_profile

if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]; then
startx
logout
fi

/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.

Resizing an extend partition failed because of swap partition was active

Tried to reize an extend partition with gparted.
Didnt work bcause the live cd was using the swap partition, which was part of the extended partition. Partitions have to be unmounted to be able to work on them.
Selected te swap partition and choose swapoff.
After that ther was no problem resize the partition