[arch-general] Little automation to install
Hello all, After some many years, I'm back to ArchLinux. One thing that took me time was to read the manuals and run all the commands for installation. That made me wonder on how automation might help things get easier and faster on install. Could you please tell the current works on that? The result of my work was this script: https://github.com/brauliobo/gitconfig/blob/master/histories/archinstall.sh cheers, bráulio -- "Lute pela sua ideologia. Seja um com sua ideologia. Viva pela sua ideologia. Morra por sua ideologia" P.R. Sarkar EITA - Educação, Informação e Tecnologias para Autogestão http://cirandas.net/brauliobo http://eita.org.br "Paramapurusha é meu pai e Parama Prakriti é minha mãe. O universo é meu lar e todos nós somos cidadãos deste cosmo. Este universo é a imaginação da Mente Macrocósmica, e todas as entidades estão sendo criadas, preservadas e destruídas nas fases de extroversão e introversão do fluxo imaginativo cósmico. No âmbito pessoal, quando uma pessoa imagina algo em sua mente, naquele momento, essa pessoa é a única proprietária daquilo que ela imagina, e ninguém mais. Quando um ser humano criado mentalmente caminha por um milharal também imaginado, a pessoa imaginada não é a propriedade desse milharal, pois ele pertence ao indivíduo que o está imaginando. Este universo foi criado na imaginação de Brahma, a Entidade Suprema, por isso a propriedade deste universo é de Brahma, e não dos microcosmos que também foram criados pela imaginação de Brahma. Nenhuma propriedade deste mundo, mutável ou imutável, pertence a um indivíduo em particular; tudo é o patrimônio comum de todos." Restante do texto em http://cirandas.net/brauliobo/blog/a-problematica-de-hoje-em-dia
On Wednesday, April 01, 2015 01:53:57 PM Bráulio Bhavamitra wrote:
Hello all,
After some many years, I'm back to ArchLinux. One thing that took me time was to read the manuals and run all the commands for installation.
That made me wonder on how automation might help things get easier and faster on install. Could you please tell the current works on that?
The result of my work was this script: https://github.com/brauliobo/gitconfig/blob/master/histories/archinstall.sh
cheers, bráulio
To Barulio, Interesting; but Arch is insistent on KISS for the system as a priority. Your script seems to specific to a particular wireless module (ath9k) and still requires some user interactions judging from your use of "nano". You can direct pacman to a different mount point with the -r <mount-point> option. That way you can edit a good deal of your new Arch Linux install without chrooting into it. Regards, Mark
I can go with that. Apart from that, the antergos project is trying to build an graphical installer, and it holds itself as close as possible to arch linux. -- Sent from my toaster
On Wednesday, April 01, 2015 07:11:29 PM Mateusz Lemusisk wrote:
I can go with that.
Apart from that, the antergos project is trying to build an graphical installer, and it holds itself as close as possible to arch linux. -- Sent from my toaster
I actually have a tool I use to create Arch Linux OS. It works pretty well for me. It's used to generate USB {H,S}DD OSes. <https://github.com/bluerider/mkportarch/blob/master/mkportarch> Regards, Mark
On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 2:00 PM, Mark Lee <mark@markelee.com> wrote:
On Wednesday, April 01, 2015 01:53:57 PM Bráulio Bhavamitra wrote:
Hello all,
After some many years, I'm back to ArchLinux. One thing that took me time was to read the manuals and run all the commands for installation.
That made me wonder on how automation might help things get easier and faster on install. Could you please tell the current works on that?
The result of my work was this script:
https://github.com/brauliobo/gitconfig/blob/master/histories/archinstall.sh
cheers, bráulio
To Barulio,
Interesting; but Arch is insistent on KISS for the system as a priority. Your script seems to specific to a particular wireless module (ath9k) and still requires some user interactions judging from your use of "nano".
About KISS, as I said it took some time and learning for me to understand and run commands, because there are MANY SIMPLE commands and configurations. Some automation would make it more KISS. Yeah, the script is specific. It was made to automate my installs, as I probably won't ever have time to make something general.
You can direct pacman to a different mount point with the -r <mount-point> option. That way you can edit a good deal of your new Arch Linux install without chrooting into it.
Regards, Mark
-- "Lute pela sua ideologia. Seja um com sua ideologia. Viva pela sua ideologia. Morra por sua ideologia" P.R. Sarkar EITA - Educação, Informação e Tecnologias para Autogestão http://cirandas.net/brauliobo http://eita.org.br "Paramapurusha é meu pai e Parama Prakriti é minha mãe. O universo é meu lar e todos nós somos cidadãos deste cosmo. Este universo é a imaginação da Mente Macrocósmica, e todas as entidades estão sendo criadas, preservadas e destruídas nas fases de extroversão e introversão do fluxo imaginativo cósmico. No âmbito pessoal, quando uma pessoa imagina algo em sua mente, naquele momento, essa pessoa é a única proprietária daquilo que ela imagina, e ninguém mais. Quando um ser humano criado mentalmente caminha por um milharal também imaginado, a pessoa imaginada não é a propriedade desse milharal, pois ele pertence ao indivíduo que o está imaginando. Este universo foi criado na imaginação de Brahma, a Entidade Suprema, por isso a propriedade deste universo é de Brahma, e não dos microcosmos que também foram criados pela imaginação de Brahma. Nenhuma propriedade deste mundo, mutável ou imutável, pertence a um indivíduo em particular; tudo é o patrimônio comum de todos." Restante do texto em http://cirandas.net/brauliobo/blog/a-problematica-de-hoje-em-dia
On Wed, 1 Apr 2015 14:46:48 -0300 Bráulio Bhavamitra <braulio@eita.org.br> wrote:
On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 2:00 PM, Mark Lee <mark@markelee.com> wrote:
On Wednesday, April 01, 2015 01:53:57 PM Bráulio Bhavamitra wrote:
Hello all,
After some many years, I'm back to ArchLinux. One thing that took me time was to read the manuals and run all the commands for installation.
That made me wonder on how automation might help things get easier and faster on install. Could you please tell the current works on that?
The result of my work was this script:
https://github.com/brauliobo/gitconfig/blob/master/histories/archinstall.sh
cheers, bráulio
To Barulio,
Interesting; but Arch is insistent on KISS for the system as a priority. Your script seems to specific to a particular wireless module (ath9k) and still requires some user interactions judging from your use of "nano".
About KISS, as I said it took some time and learning for me to understand and run commands, because there are MANY SIMPLE commands and configurations. Some automation would make it more KISS.
That depends on how you define KISS. It could make it more simple for the user, but it makes the system more complex. If it's something that needs to be done exactly the same way over and over, a script makes sense (arch-chroot is a good example). For something that will vary from system to system and configuration to configuration, automation just gets in the way. Doug
On 01.04.2015 18:53, Bráulio Bhavamitra wrote:
That made me wonder on how automation might help things get easier and faster on install. Could you please tell the current works on that?
You should really only have to install once per machine and knowing what happens during installation teaches you how your system works therefore making debugging and extending the system easier. That's also why you can then fix problems rather than being forced to reinstall. If you install more often you can simply write down all the steps you do and you get yourself an install script like this[1]. It's highly specific to my use case, but it's really not too hard to create your own. (I've mainly linked this because your script needs user intervention while running and mine doesn't) [1] https://git.server-speed.net/users/flo/bin/tree/setup-arch-vm There might be people that find a manual setup complicated and useless, but then again reinstalling because something is broken also costs quite some time (you gotta copy all your data back, set everything up again, ...) and it will likely not be exactly the same as before. Reminds me of people getting non-stick pans and then failing horribly down the line because they have no idea what they are doing once the coating wears off. The learning experience is all worth it IMHO, but feel free to disagree and help those who are writing GUI installers. Just remember there are two sides to a coin.
2015-04-01 11:53 GMT-05:00 Bráulio Bhavamitra <brauliobo@gmail.com>:
After some many years, I'm back to ArchLinux. One thing that took me time was to read the manuals and run all the commands for installation.
Hi! Like everyone else, I'll share my automation -- I target only MATE but it's not hard to change, everything is built to be modular and built to gracefully fail and pick back up. It supports BIOS and UEFI, Virtualbox host and guest. https://github.com/troyengel/scripts/blob/master/archmate.sh As all packages are in variables it becomes pretty easy to maintain and tweak once you get a baseline that you're happy with. I've used it primarily on Dell devices (multiple laptops and desktops) and as a Virtualbox guest, all using the standard video modules and no custom ATI/Nvidia/etc. It's a very quick way to help someone get an Arch install up and running without having to invest a lot of time. Hope this helps! Please note that I do a few things you may not like -- for instance I disable the kernel config that prevents strace from attaching to other PIDs, disabling coredumps to the journal and other minor tweaks to change things that annoy me. Please review the code completely before just running it. :) -te
On 04/01/2015 06:53 PM, Bráulio Bhavamitra wrote:
Hello all,
After some many years, I'm back to ArchLinux. One thing that took me time was to read the manuals and run all the commands for installation.
That made me wonder on how automation might help things get easier and faster on install. Could you please tell the current works on that?
I think it's for the best that the installation stays like this. Archlinux has always strived for minimalism and simplicity. It's really not that hard to install, although it does require some basic shell knowledge and the wiki does a pretty good job of explaining how to install. I believe this is by design, and should remain like this. I'm always telling people that Archlinux is NOT for complete novices or people who want to click-solve everything and are afraid of the console. This is what makes archlinux stand out, there are plenty of distros that have fancy python/whatever graphical installers. I don't use them anymore, but I respect them, and should be around if we want Linux to be adopted more.
On 04/01/2015 06:53 PM, Bráulio Bhavamitra wrote:
Hello all,
After some many years, I'm back to ArchLinux. One thing that took me time was to read the manuals and run all the commands for installation.
That made me wonder on how automation might help things get easier and faster on install. Could you please tell the current works on that?
I think it's for the best that the installation stays like this. Archlinux has always strived for minimalism and simplicity. It's really not that hard to install, although it does require some basic shell knowledge and the wiki does a pretty good job of explaining how to install. I believe this is by design, and should remain like this. I'm always telling people that Archlinux is NOT for complete novices or people who want to click-solve everything and are afraid of the console.
This is what makes archlinux stand out, there are plenty of distros that have fancy python/whatever graphical installers. I don't use them anymore, but I respect them, and should be around if we want Linux to be adopted more. Indeed. I'm impressed by the graphical installers, but arch's installation is actually very easy.
The 'hardest' part is remembering which basic configs to change (e.g., locale, hostname, timezone). Otherwise, installing pretty much just involves: 1) Partitioning the drive using gdisk/fdisk/cfdisk/cgdisk 2) Formatting each partition 3) Mount each partition 4) pacstrap /mnt all of your packages here 5) arch-chroot /mnt; install bootloader and genfstab; change hostname or do any preconfiguration 6) Reboot into new arch installation. Same steps as the graphical installers, really, except that you get to easily preinstall several packages. My hdd began failing this past weekend. All I had to do was back up my configs, dump a list of installed packages (pacman -Qqe), install arch, and pacstrap the list of installed packages. I was up and running within 1.5 hours. It's hard to beat that simplicity. --Stephen
# brauliobo@gmail.com / 2015-04-01 13:53:57 -0300:
Hello all,
After some many years, I'm back to ArchLinux. One thing that took me time was to read the manuals and run all the commands for installation.
That made me wonder on how automation might help things get easier and faster on install. Could you please tell the current works on that?
The result of my work was this script: https://github.com/brauliobo/gitconfig/blob/master/histories/archinstall.sh
everybody and their mother has written one: https://github.com/roman-neuhauser/anarchinst current situation is suboptimal, yet it's miles better to have little automation and all options open than a blessed tool that does not fit your needs. -- roman
On 04/04/15 at 06:47pm, Roman Neuhauser wrote:
# brauliobo@gmail.com / 2015-04-01 13:53:57 -0300: Hello all,
After some many years, I'm back to ArchLinux. One thing that took me time was to read the manuals and run all the commands for installation.
That made me wonder on how automation might help things get easier and faster on install. Could you please tell the current works on that?
The result of my work was this script: https://github.com/brauliobo/gitconfig/blob/master/histories/archinstall.sh
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FAQ , Judd Vinet "Arch is what you make it"
participants (11)
-
Aaron Caffrey
-
Bráulio Bhavamitra
-
Bráulio Bhavamitra
-
Doug Newgard
-
Florian Pritz
-
Mark Lee
-
Mateusz Lemusisk
-
Roman Neuhauser
-
Stephen Martin
-
Troy Engel
-
Vladimir Nikšić