I find that I run into this problem everytime I reinstall Arch, so I figured it was time to document those pesky missing peices. Considering Arch Linux is more of a “do-it-yourself” distribution there are more peices to the puzzle than you might find in Ubuntu or similar. In this short article I’ll outline everything required to playback DVDs on Arch Linux. Required Packages As is the problem with any major Linux distribution, DVD playback can’t be enabled by default for “potential patent issues“. The required packages have to be installed manually. This is done using the command: sudo pacman -S libdvdcss libdvdread Required Groups In order to have required access to the audio, video and optical devices the user needs to be in the required groups. You can ensure your user is in the required groups for DVD playback with the command: sudo gpasswd -a username audio,video,optical Read more

I’ve been spending some time building packages for Arch Linux (very easy, btw!). I’ve put together a package for Origami, the Folding@Home management tool, as I wrote about recently. I’m also now maintaining the Chromium Browser package for Arch Linux in AUR, which has been a lot of fun. Also, just last nite, I built a flashplugin-universal package, which installs both 64bit and 32bit flashplayer. I found that I needed this because I’m running x86_64 but I’m running both 32bit and 64bit browsers regularly. Having both flashplayer architectures installed allows me to have flash in any of the browsers, which is nice. Some of you Arch64 users might find it useful. I’d love any feedback anyone can give me on the packages, particularly with PKGBUILD standards, efficiency and dependencies. Thank you.

As I’m sure you’ve all heard, today is April Fools and the day that the conficker worm is set to… well, do something. I haven’t read any reports on just exactly what it has done, if anything today, but I was able to come up with a solution that will allow you to scan for it using Arch Linux and the latest-greatest build of nmap. I just ran a scan on my home network and didn’t find anything (granted I only have Arch Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X machines here), but the same steps can be used to scan your office networks if you’re still wondering about being vulnerable. I will outline below how to install the Arch Build System (ABS), update the PKGBUILD for nmap to install the latest nmap and finally how to scan a range of networks for the conficker worm. Installation via ABS To build the latest-greatest copy of nmap we’ll use the ABS and simply update the PKGBUILD information. Read more

If you’ve been following my other blog (ubuntu-tutorials.com) you know I’ve developed a management tool for running Folding@Home clients on Linux distributions. It started out a bit Red Hat specific, but has since been ported to Debian families and finally Arch Linux. I just finished applying my latest patches and put together a PKGBUILD for it. I’m happy to be able to say that origami is now available to the general public in the community repository. If you’re interested in trying it out, there are two methods you can use to install it: Method 1 (manual): wget -c http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/origami/origami/PKGBUILD<br /> makepkg -si<br /> Method 2 (yaourt): yaourt -S origami I would probably suggest the yaourt method, as it is a little more automated and will provide the dependencies you might need. One of the dependencies (lsb-release) is only available via the AUR so, again, yaourt will take care of that for you. Read more

Update: I’ve submitted a patch to the existing PKGBUILD in the AUR which brings the Chromium Browser up to yesterdays nightly build. Much improved from the previous. I saw a post recently on the Planet Ubuntu Users, again by Stefano Forenza, regarding installing and testing the latest daily Chromium browser builds. That got me curious so I started poking around and found an available package for Arch Linux by way of the Arch User Repository. Installation was simple enough and the browser works, but I should mention that it is *very* alpha quality. None of the menu buttons worked for me and I wasn’t able to make use of tab functionality. It is nice to see that some progress is being made though on the Linux platform. Download the chromium-browser tarfile from the Arch User Repository. tar xf chromium-browser.tar.gz cd chromium-browser/ makepkg -i At the time of this writing the Arch User Repository package is marked as out of date. Read more

I read a blog post recently outlining how to install the ttf-droid package — Android Fonts — on Ubuntu. Because I’m using Arch Linux on my two machines at work I decided to look into the possibility of installing them on that platform. Turns out, thankfully, the ttf-droid package is available in the Arch User Repository. I’ve now switched both of my office machines to this new font set and I really enjoy it. It has a very clean, crisp look. It’s not boxy or thick like a lot of other fonts I’ve seen used (I’m looking at you, Fedora). Here are the instructions on installing the ttf-droid fonts on your Arch Linux machine: Yet Another User Repository Tool (yaourt) If you are using the unfortunately named yaourt package management frontend you can install directly from the AUR using the command: yaourt -S ttf-droid If you are simply using pacman you’ll need to grab the PKGBUILD from the AUR and manually install. Read more

I setup a new Desktop at work today and I thought I’d try out Arch again. I’ve had it running on my work Laptop for a few months now, but there were some things I wanted to figure out and learn, “The Arch Way”. One of the little tips that I found in my continued reading and setting up was the use of the rankmirrors tool. Rankmirrors will find and configure your system to use the fastest repository mirrors for your connection. Getting Started Let’s assume you’re on a fresh installation. If not, the steps are really the same, you just likely don’t have to worry about resolving the dependencies. So, on that note, the only dependency for the tool is python. If you don’t have python installed (which is likely only the case if you’re on a fresh installation), you’ll need to install it: pacman -S python<br /> Read more