Arch Linux on the Raspberry Pi - Part 1

As part of diagnosing my camera issues (previous post) I decided to try an installation of Arch Linux on the RPi.    My first two observations are that it is a LOT more complicated than Wheezy.   My second observation is that it boots REALLY FAST.   I decided at that point that I needed to try it for the 'bot where speed matter.

Here is my install procedure (in multiple installments):

Log in to the system as root, password root, upgrade your base system and catalogs to current revision levels:

pacman -Syu

This is crucial for finding the later packages to be installed!   I ran this from the console as it takes a while.   Once this is done you can use dfconfig to find the ip address so you can ssh in from your normal workstation.

Now configure some base stuff starting with an ftp server first (and have it start automatically):

pacman -S proftpd

systemctl enable proftpd.service

Then let's add the pi user:

useradd -m -g users -G \

audio,lp,optical,storage,video,wheel,games,power,scanner,ftp \

-s /bin/bash pi

passwd pi

Install sudo so we can use pi rather than root and maybe save our selves some future pain:

pacman -S sudo

Now run visudo and add pi with all rights.   Escape : x to save the file.

##
## User privilege specification
##
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
pi ALL=(ALL) ALL

Now for the wireless network to auto start.   First install the network configuration tool:

pacman -S netcfg

Edit /etc/conf.d/netcfg as shown below (using your names of course!):

# Network profiles are found in /etc/network.d
NETWORKS=("ethernet-eth0" "wlan0-Daysleeper")

# Specify the name of your wired interface for net-auto-wired
WIRED_INTERFACE=("ethernet-eth0")

# Specify the name of your wireless interface for net-auto-wireless
#WIRELESS_INTERFACE=("wlan0-Daysleeper")

Create a network profile (in my case wlan0-Daysleeper) in /etc/network.d:

CONNECTION='wireless'
DESCRIPTION='Automatically generated profile by wifi-menu'
INTERFACE='wlan0'
SECURITY='wpa'
ESSID=Daysleeper
IP='dhcp'
KEY=Password

As you can see, this profile was generated by wifi-menu which is part of the netcfg package and can be run as "sudo wifi-menu wlan0" to build a profile for a wireless network.

Now make sure that the network configuration we have just created starts automagically:

sudo systemctl enable netcfg

More at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Netcfg#Net-Profiles

Time for a backup.   More to come as I continue to build an Arch Linux image to replace my current Wheezy image that runs the 'Bot.

On to Part 2