Dr Small’s Blog

As of Monday, May 4th, 2008, I completely wiped my perfectly healthy Ubuntu installation, where there was no problems, no errors, I had all the software I wanted, everything worked, the system looked beautiful, and overwrote it all with ArchLinux. That was a huge step of fear, uncertainty and doubt… (oops.. FUD. lol).

Anyhow, I had the laptop setting beside me on my bed, running Ubuntu 7.04 with the ArchLinux Wiki at the Beginners Guide for ArchLinux loaded in Firefox. It really wasn’t too hard setting the wireless networking up, and from there I began to install different things such as Xorg, wmii and gFTP (so I could download my backups from the server).

As time progressed, the small fonts and the tiling window manager gave me a throbbing headache, so I was forced to install IceWM. I am now running that back on my old default settings, and have conky, firefox, xchat, pidgin, gimp and vlc installed. I really enjoy the ease of pacman and how easy it is to use. Although I would not consider it easier than apt.

I began digging around and discovered AUR (I had absolutely no idea what this was… but soon found out) and installed pidgin-otr with makepkg, as the first package from the AUR. I then later installed tor, bzflag and armagetron, and neither of them worked. Bzflag was super sluggish with high quality graphics enabled, so I immediately understood that it was a driver problem.

I read some more on the ArchLinux Wiki and got the nvidia driver installed for Xorg, which then required a system upgrade for the 2.6.24 Kernel, and fixed my nvidia driver problem, bzflag graphics problem, tor tsocks problem, and armagetron to work. So in the end, I was a happy camper

So now, here I am, a true ArchLinux user, complete to the core… erm. I mean kernel.
As a final note, Arch is not that hard as others make it out to believe. It just takes some time. effort and a brain to figure out what is going on, and how to fix it. There is alot of documentation on the Wiki that is very helpful from fellow Archers, and should be regarded with high esteem.

Unless you have a fair knowledge on how linux works in general, Arch would be quite difficult for you, even after following the guides. Mainly because you wouldn’t be understanding what is going on around you, and what you are doing. If you can understand that, then there is nothing stopping you from trying and using Arch as your base system.

PS to fellow readers:
There is a big storm coming through tonight.. Mycroft may have to be shutdown.

Dr Small

Ever since I placed my bootloader on a floppy, I have been more adventures to the ways of GRUB, and less scared that I could potentially lock myself out of my system (although it should have been the other way around)…

Anyhow, I designed a bootsplash image for Grub, simply by taking a screenshot of my terminal, and adding a ArchLinux logo. It’s not very original, but it suits me, and it could for you too.

I have enclosed in my archive below, the splashimage called “new_arch.xpm.gz” along with the xcf and a desktop wallpaper of it. It’s less than half a meg, so check it out.

Also, some custom commands for your /boot/grub/menu.lst that will help make the splashimage for grub look better.
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/new_archer.xpm.gz
viewport 4 0 70 20
foreground ffffff
background 008080

ArchSplash.tar.gz

Dr Small

I was bored so I thought of trying this last night, to basically break GRUB on the computer so the computer will not boot, and have GRUB on a floppy disc that will boot the computer.

A somewhat added sense of security, because now the system won’t boot unless you have the floppy in the drive. So even if you did break the BIOS boot password, you wouldn’t be able to finish the boot without finding my floppy first.

Ok, ok. Onto the guide…
A List of basic requirements you will need to complete this project:

A Floppy Drive
A Floppy Ribbon Cable
A Floppy Disc
A brain
and GRUB.

I will assume that you already have a floppy drive connected to the ribbon cable (which is connected to the motherboard) and you have a blank floppy in your hand, this way we can continue.

The mount device your this example will be /dev/fd0
If that is not what it is for your floppy, then find out and remember it.

We will now create a new directory called /mnt/floppy and mount the floppy drive there:
sudo mkdir /mnt/floppy; sudo mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

You should hear your floppy drive grunting and groaning as it mounts. This is a good sign. Now we need to create the boot structure:
cd /mnt/floppy; sudo mkdir -p boot/grub

Next we need to copy the GRUB boot stages one and two to /mnt/floppy/boot/grub

sudo cp /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/stage1 boot/grub/
sudo cp /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/stage2 boot/grub/

Double check to make sure everything went as planned:
ls boot/grub

Now, we need to setup GRUB:
grub

You will then be taken to the GRUB prompt. Enter the following commands there:
root (fd0)
setup (fd0)
quit

Now, copy your default GRUB menu.lst file to your floppy:
sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst boot/grub/

I would recommend editing this file (on the floppy) so it is not identical to the one on the hard drive. This way you will know for sure if everything is honky-dory when you boot from the floppy disc. I usually just edit the title entries in there, so they are different.

Also, if you run into a problem when booting, and the first entry spits back an Error 15, File Not Found, you may have to remove the following lines from the first grub entry:
quiet
savedefault

If you notice, I had the same problem here, but solved it within a matter of minutes.
Now, if you can boot properly with the floppy disc in (verify several times for added comfort!) you can move grub on your hard drive so if someone tries to boot your computer without the floppy disc, the boot will fail.

To do this, as I found out from several attempts and multiple reboots, you run:
sudo mv /boot/grub /boot/grub_bak

As long as it can not find the GRUB directory, it should spill out an error saying it could not find the file and the boot should halt. Notice though, if you do this and ever lose your floppy, it would take some time to repeat this guide again and get your menu.lst back on to the floppy from another computer or livecd.

Well, have fun. Don’t come all hotheaded to me if you break something. This isn’t ment for n00bz. I just thought it was a fun way to make a portable GRUB disc and something like a keyfile to boot my system

Dr Small

I wrote this simple script to minimize my time for viewing and editing GPG Encrypted files that were encrypted with my Public Key.

It basically prompts you for the path to the encrypted file, prompts for your private key password, and then opens the file with your favorite editor.

It does have a few dependencies though, but you should have one, and the other can easily be retrieved.
gpg
dialog

Dialog is what is powering the display for it all, with the pretty colors. You can install it real fast by running:
sudo apt-get install dialog

Once you get Ged, simply run the file and follow the prompts. It will setup a configuration file (which can be edited later) and ask you for your GPG Key and Editor.

After you set this up, it will not prompt you for this again. To quickly download, run this:
wget http://php.8ez.com/drsmall/blog/wp-content/ged

For the sake of security, it won’t execute with the above command. (I don’t want to be accused of anything.)

Try it out, and leave me some feedback on it, so I can see if I can improve it

Dr Small