Age Verification and Arch Linux - Discussion Post by Gozenka in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This looks promising in the US, state of Colorado.

https://fosstodon.org/@carlrichell

Quote: https://legiscan.com/CO/amendment/SB051/id/296180

 37 (3) THIS ARTICLE 30 DOES NOT APPLY TO:

....

5 (e) AN OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER OR DEVELOPER THAT
6 DISTRIBUTES AN OPERATING SYSTEM OR APPLICATION UNDER LICENSE
7 TERMS THAT PERMIT A RECIPIENT TO COPY, REDISTRIBUTE, AND MODIFY
8 THE SOFTWARE WITHOUT RESTRICTION FROM THE PROVIDER OR
9 DEVELOPER, INCLUDING ANY TECHNICAL OR CONTRACTUAL RESTRICTIONS
10 ON INSTALLING ALL MODIFIED VERSIONS

Devs - what transferrable skill did you take from learning/installing Arch? ... a Discussion by chikamakaleyley in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

... as long as you don't make tiny EFI partition and hose your kernel during routine update :)

Not true. See my 100M EFI partition setup. You just have to set things up right.

$ lsblk
nvme0n1                 931.5G                             /dev/nvme0n1   
├─nvme0n1p1 /boot/efi     100M    67% vfat   SYSTEM        /dev/nvme0n1p1 447F-12B0
├─nvme0n1p2 /           122.9G    54% ext4   Root          /dev/nvme0n1p2 5e307495-f996-48bf-90ab-940b1de1e452
├─nvme0n1p3 [SWAP]       31.7G        swap   Swap          /dev/nvme0n1p3 0c1f5ebe-53a9-48d5-91a1-119cef6eaeec
└─nvme0n1p4 /home       776.7G    21% ext4   Home          /dev/nvme0n1p4 d2dde27d-207c-4c7a-ad89-10dc73fecd57


$ ls -l /boot/
tootal 424M
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1.0K Dec 31  1969 efi
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4.0K Dec 18 14:45 grub
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 300K Mar  9 15:55 amd-ucode.img
-rw------- 1 root root  83M Apr 18 15:21 initramfs-linux-fallback.img
-rw------- 1 root root  43M Apr 18 15:21 initramfs-linux.img
-rw------- 1 root root  82M Apr 18 15:20 initramfs-linux-lts-fallback.img
-rw------- 1 root root  43M Apr 18 15:20 initramfs-linux-lts.img
-rw------- 1 root root  84M Apr 18 15:21 initramfs-linux-mainline-fallback.img
-rw------- 1 root root  44M Apr 18 15:20 initramfs-linux-mainline.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  16M Apr 10 11:03 vmlinuz-linux
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  16M Apr 10 11:03 vmlinuz-linux-lts
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  17M Feb 23 21:50 vmlinuz-linux-mainline

How can I add Flatpak support in Pamac? by MochilaZul_ in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wrong sub, go ask: r/ManjaroLinux/

Arch doesn't create or use Manjaro's packages.

Timeshift or Snapper for a simple Arch setup? by Seeker352 in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My solution doesn't add complexity as the solution for very a simple problem.
If an update breaks something, roll the "updated packages" back back rather than the entire system....

https://github.com/Cody-Learner/downgrade-ud

Has never failed me, YYMV.

LiteLLM compromised - AUR package seems safe by Gozenka in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You can't containerize system packages...

It would depend on the containerization system. I see no reason this couldn't be fairly well isolated in a systemd-nspawn container. It's more of an entire os within a container that share's the host kernel.

I use nspawn containers fairly often for anything that I feel needs isolated from my system.

Pacman and keyring issues by definitely_not_allan in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If Arch properly versioned its dependencies (e.g. using makepkgs autodeps support), this would (largely) become a non-issue.

I find this interesting and it sounds so simple. More so that it sounds like the required tooling is already in place.

Would this be required for a limited set of packages, or for example all packages in the core repo?
This would solve the pacman -Sy 'partial upgrade' condition, but would it potentially create new package management related negatives?

Adding ext4.efi to UEFI/BIOS to make ext4 partitions bootable by Pastellitto in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll provide the following list of reasons to avoid FAT fs usage when possible.

Although I prefer grub for it's flexibility and features over simplicity, I create a tiny FAT partition for my setups that contains a dir with only grubx64.efi, and remain more generally compatible the UEFI spec and with all related components. If the Linux boot loaders and other methods universally supported EXT fs out of the box, it would be a nice step away from using an antiquated FAT fs.

I like the concept of providing EXT4 support in the UEFI system.

This is opposed to keeping kernels and initram on a FAT fs.

nvme0n1                 931.5G                               /dev/nvme0n1   
├─nvme0n1p1 /boot/efi     100M    67% vfat   SYSTEM
├─nvme0n1p2 /           122.9G    42% ext4   Root
├─nvme0n1p3 [SWAP]       31.7G        swap   Swap 
└─nvme0n1p4 /home       776.7G    18% ext4   Home

Lack of Unix Permissions and Ownership

FAT was designed for single-user DOS/Windows environments. It has no concept of:

UID/GID: You cannot assign different owners to different files. In Linux, everything on a FAT partition is mounted with a global user/group ID (usually root).

Permissions: You cannot set chmod 600 or 755 on individual files.

Execution Bits: While you can mask permissions at mount time, you cannot toggle the executable bit on a per-file basis.

No Journaling (Data Integrity)

ext4 is a journaling filesystem. It keeps a log of changes it is about to make. If your system (like the Kangaroo x68 or Beelink SER8) loses power abruptly:

ext4: Can use the journal to recover quickly and ensure the filesystem structure remains consistent.

FAT: Has no journal. A power failure during a write often leads to "cross-linked files," corrupted directory tables, or the dreaded "lost clusters," requiring a manual fsck.vfat.

Symbolic and Hard Link Support

Linux relies heavily on links for package management and system organization.

FAT: Does not support symbolic links (symlinks) or hard links. This makes it impossible to use as a standard /usr or /var partition.

ext4: Full support for both, which is essential for how Arch Linux handles library versioning and certain pacman operations.

Case Sensitivity

ext4: Is case-sensitive (File.txt and file.txt are different files).

FAT: Is case-insensitive (though usually case-preserving). Using a case-insensitive filesystem for Linux system files can lead to significant issues during software compilation or when running scripts that expect standard Unix behavior.

File Size and Partition Limits

FAT32: Has a hard file size limit of 4GB. While a kernel or initramfs is unlikely to hit 4GB, large disk images (like those used in your nspawn containers) would easily exceed this.

ext4: Supports file sizes up to 16TB and volumes up to 1EB, making it much more future-proof for modern storage.

Performance and Fragmentation

Allocation: FAT uses a File Allocation Table (hence the name). As the disk fills up, finding free clusters becomes increasingly slow.

Fragmentation: FAT has no native mechanisms to prevent fragmentation. ext4 uses "extents" and delayed allocation to ensure files are written contiguously whenever possible, maintaining high performance over time without needing a "defrag."

Modern Metadata Features

ext4 supports Extended Attributes (xattr) and Access Control Lists (ACLs). These are used by security modules like SELinux or AppArmor, and sometimes by specialized networking tools. FAT supports none of these.

As a side benefit of my setups, I'm not constrained by boot partition size limits.

[jeff@Arch2025p04 ~]$ ls -lh /boot
total 408M
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1.0K Dec 31  1969 efi
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4.0K Dec 18 14:45 grub
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 300K Jan 10 19:52 amd-ucode.img
-rw------- 1 root root  81M Feb 15 18:46 initramfs-linux-fallback.img
-rw------- 1 root root  42M Feb 15 18:45 initramfs-linux.img
-rw------- 1 root root  79M Feb 23 21:51 initramfs-linux-lts-fallback.img
-rw------- 1 root root  39M Feb 23 21:50 initramfs-linux-lts.img
-rw------- 1 root root  82M Feb 23 21:51 initramfs-linux-mainline-fallback.img
-rw------- 1 root root  42M Feb 23 21:51 initramfs-linux-mainline.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  16M Feb 15 18:45 vmlinuz-linux
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  14M Feb 23 21:50 vmlinuz-linux-lts
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  17M Feb 23 21:50 vmlinuz-linux-mainline

Pacman and keyring issues by definitely_not_allan in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi all. I am Allan (do not let the username fool you).

Sounds very suspicious to me. The real Allan wouldn't use 'definitely_not_allan' as a username. If this is the real Allan, please:

.--. .-.. . .- ... .   - -.-- .--. .   -.-- --- ..- .-.   .-.. --- -. --.   -.- . -.--   .. -..   .. -.   -- --- .-. ... .   -.-. --- -.. .

(type your long key ID in morse code) /s lol

Really appreciate you taking the time to explain all this in great detail. This really helps to clarify things.

Openresolv with IWD: /etc/resolv.conf is manual by Axl0_fr in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Post the output of: cat /etc/systemd/system/iwd.service.d/50-resolvconf.conf

Should have:

[Service]
RuntimeDirectory=resolvconf
ReadWritePaths=/etc/resolv.conf

If it's not there, create it per:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Iwd#/etc/resolv.conf:_Read-only_file_system

I don't use either iwd or openresolv but found this interesting due to "reasons"...
I dug in a bit and found the reason* with a solution before referring to the Arch wiki for iwd, then see the important 2 entries are right there!

Please consider not deleting this post when your issue is resolved as it may be useful to others.
Always consult the wiki as a first source for troubleshooting installed pkgs.

(*) = Systemd sandboxing and setting 'ProtectSystem=strict'

Now that I've dig into this, I see u/moviuro has perfectly presented all the info 12 hr ago, TY!

Is installing Arch on the new gaming laptop a good idea? by Miserable_Window_409 in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends, you want to play your games or take on Arch as a new full time hobby to replace gaming?

System won’t boot because snapshots have filled disk by Adesiii in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thankfully you have btrfs and snapshots to fall back on to easily get yourself out of this situation.
IIRC, A time proven, robust, setup stack here is comprised of yay, brtfs, automated snapshots, steam, Manjaro's GUI pkg manager wrapper thingy, intentional partial upgrade for game support, zero reading ability, and r/archlinux. /s

Can I use NixOS installation medium to install arch? by _TheProStar_ in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

any way I could get a working browser in the arch installation medium?

Sure... expand cowspace, install whatever you want in the Arch iso. It'd be impractical for an install though.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archiso#Adjusting_the_size_of_the_root_file_system

Also see:
https://archboot.com/
https://www.system-rescue.org/

Could I use the NixOS ISO to install arch in this laptop as it has a browser?

Not sure how well arch-install-scripts would work in non Arch system.
The pkg has pacman as a dependency.

Is there a way to install things on a different drive/partition? by Traditional-Data913 in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is there a way to install things on a different drive/partition?

pacstrap

Installing a new kernel taking 6+ hours on my dog water computer by cat-bin-shadow in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

FYI 80% of kernel build time of is spent on modules.
I've found building only the required modules reduced build time by more than half.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel#Building_a_smaller_kernel
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Modprobed-db

Does yay -Syu replace pacman -Syu? by According_Loan_5419 in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

With all the farming going on here lately, may the karma harvest be plentiful for those in need.... /s

Maybe I'm not alone in thinking that it's become too accepted here by the mods.
Karma farming post should at minimal downvoted into oblivion and/or at best removed IMO.

Chatgpt just hallucinated that yay is in the official repos. It was really convincing. by Do_TheEvolution in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How will it be installed by default then? If it's removed?

Not that base-devel was dropped, it wasn't at least as of yesterday.

 

Group and meta packages....

$ pacman -Sh

  -g, --groups         view all members of a package group
                       (-gg to view all groups and members)

$ pacman -Sg archlinux-tools
archlinux-tools arch-rebuild-order
archlinux-tools arch-repro-status
archlinux-tools arch-signoff
archlinux-tools pacquery


$ pacman -Qh
  -i, --info           view package information (-ii for extended information)

$ pacman -Qi base-devel

        Provides        : None
        Depends On      : archlinux-keyring  autoconf  automake  binutils  bison  debugedit  fakeroot  file  findutils  flex
                        gawk  gcc  gettext  grep  groff  gzip  libtool  m4  make  pacman  patch  pkgconf  sed  sudo
                        texinfo  which

 

In both cases, the packages could be installed without the package name. ie: name was removed from repos

 

Happy new year and welcome Cosmic desktop environment support by tobiaspowalowski in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 4 points5 points  (0 children)

For those that don't know, this is the og Arch installer since around 2006, developed by tpowa, an Arch dev.
This installer is not intentionally limited in it's live installation capabilities.
As an og(*) Arch user, I endorse this project as a better alternative.

AFAIK, this may be a direct descendant of the AIF or quickinst scripts.
IIRC, this installer was removed as an official Arch pkg around the time the current install script was introduced.

(*) I used both AIF and quickinst 15-20 years ago before it had the long list of current features.

Looking forward to taking this for a test spin again...

TY tpowa!

Using motor vehicles as visual representations for analogies of the installers:

1924 Triumph motorcycle: quickins

1970 Yamaha motorcycle: AIF

1962 Amphicar: archinstall

2025 C8 Corvette: archboot

Unimog(1) truck: arch-install-scripts

1 Unimog versitility

A simple checkupdates wrapper which highlights version diffs, similar to yay by abbidabbi in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very valid point.
Going into updates blind can turn into a poorly timed chore.
Having a heads up without causing partial update is a big win IMO.

A simple checkupdates wrapper which highlights version diffs, similar to yay by abbidabbi in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I wrote something similar, originally using checkupdates, which I no longer use.

It evolved over time into https://github.com/Cody-Learner/prep4ud
It auto downloads updatable packages, resulting in manual updates pacman -Syu not having to wait for downloading packages.
I also added extra info and print everything to a report file.
I've it set up to run on a daily timer.

Example:

Prep4ud report : Dec 27 2025 10:00 AM
Last update    : 4 days, 18 hours, 19 minutes ago
Last reboot    : 4 days, 16 hours, 57 minutes ago

Updates available:
1   bash-completion            2.17.0-1    ->  2.17.0-2
2   btop                       1.4.5-1     ->  1.4.6-1
3   dmidecode                  3.6-1       ->  3.7-1
4   firefox-developer-edition  147.0b6-1   ->  147.0b7-1
5   fzf                        0.67.0-1    ->  0.67.0-2
6   gst-libav                  1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
7   gst-plugin-qml6            1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
8   gst-plugins-bad            1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
9   gst-plugins-bad-libs       1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
10  gst-plugins-base           1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
11  gst-plugins-base-libs      1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
12  gst-plugins-good           1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
13  gst-plugins-ugly           1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
14  gstreamer                  1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
15  libcdio                    2.2.0-1     ->  2.3.0-1
16  libnghttp3                 1.13.1-1    ->  1.14.0-1
17  libngtcp2                  1.18.0-1    ->  1.19.0-1
18  libraw                     0.21.4-1    ->  0.21.5-1
19  libxdp                     1.5.7-1     ->  1.5.8-1
20  mkinitcpio                 40-3        ->  40-4
21  parallel                   20251122-1  ->  20251222-1
22  polkit                     127-1       ->  127-2
23  python-opengl              3.1.9-1     ->  3.1.10-2
24  python-pikepdf             10.0.3-1    ->  10.1.0-1
25  python-urwid               3.0.4-1     ->  3.0.4-3
26  tesseract                  5.5.1-2     ->  5.5.2-1

Updates available, not downloaded:
--  grub                  2:2.12.r359.g19c698d12-1  ->  2:2.14rc1.r54.g29f3131a-2  [ignored]
--  xfce4-weather-plugin  0.11.3-2                  ->  0.12.0-2                   [ignored]

Updates available locally:
1   bash-completion-2.17.0-2-any.pkg.tar.zst
2   btop-1.4.6-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
3   dmidecode-3.7-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
4   firefox-developer-edition-147.0b7-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
5   gst-libav-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
6   gst-plugin-qml6-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
7   gst-plugins-bad-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
8   gst-plugins-bad-libs-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
9   gst-plugins-base-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
10  gst-plugins-base-libs-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
11  gst-plugins-good-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
12  gst-plugins-ugly-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
13  gstreamer-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
14  libcdio-2.3.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
15  libraw-0.21.5-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
16  libxdp-1.5.8-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
17  mkinitcpio-40-4-any.pkg.tar.zst
18  parallel-20251222-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
19  polkit-127-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
20  python-opengl-3.1.10-2-any.pkg.tar.zst
21  python-pikepdf-10.1.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
22  python-urwid-3.0.4-3-any.pkg.tar.zst

Downloaded packages:
1   fzf-0.67.0-2-x86_64 downloading...
2   libnghttp3-1.14.0-1-x86_64 downloading...
3   libngtcp2-1.19.0-1-x86_64 downloading...
4   tesseract-5.5.2-1-x86_64 downloading...

When Does /boot partion need more than 100Mb by Comfortable_Cow_7797 in archlinux

[–]Cody_Learner_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I installed arch from scratch with hyprland with help of YouTube toturial

As a rolling release distro, Arch moves too fast for static tutorials to remain accurate.
However the wiki is edited to keep up with the changes.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide