David C. Rankin wrote:
David Rosenstrauch wrote:
Try this:
* kill the kdm instance (if any)
* kill the X instance (if any)
You should now be at a command line.
Instead of starting everything using "startx", use "/etc/rc.d/kdm start".
If that doesn't work, pls post back the xorg log.
DR
With the '3' mod
Damn that is a good looking desktop!! Woohoo! Success!
Nice!!! Glad to hear you're up and running!
Cool -- somebody else sets menu hiding as default for konsole. One question,
"how do I get the colors back for the shell?" You know the file colors that
show different different file types and permissions when you do an 'ls -al'?
Add this to your ~/.bashrc:
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
DR, thanks a million.
No prob. And glad to hear you're set. I remember well all the help
I've gotten here over the years, so I'm just "paying it forward".
Now, how do I create the permanent config that will
allow me to boot into runlevel 3, and still access kde when I need it?
Obviously, I could just -- do nothing, and then call "/etc/rc.d/kdm3 start"
when kde was wanted, but is there a better "Arch preferred" method?
For always booting to kde I understand from your prior help that kdm3 in the
MODULES in rc.conf is an option
FYI, it goes in DAEMONS, not MODULES. MODULES is for kernel modules you
need to load.
as well as creating runlevels 3 and 5 in
inittab. I can setup the inittab, but I don't want to have build custom
runlevels /etc/rc3.d /etc/rc5.d and all the Sxx and Kxx scripts if that can be
avoided.
Not really sure. I'd think the options are either put kdm3 in the
DAEMONS line, which will boot you to X, or take it out, which will boot
you to the command line. (Whereby you could then later start kdm3 from
the command line.)
One thing to keep in mind, which I think you're getting confused by, is
that the concept of runlevels is largely removed/hidden in Arch. (See
here for more details:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_boot_process). So there's
not really much distinction between runlevel 3 and 5, there's no Sxx and
Kxx symlinks to set (if you want to start a daemon, just add it to the
DAEMONS list in rc.conf), etc. And this is also why I've never really
needed to mess with inittab.
So if I want to start in what would be the equivalent of runlevel "5", I
just start kdm3 (or slim) as a daemon, and Arch starts X for me at boot.
If I want to start in level "3", I remove the DAEMON entry and Arch
starts me at a command line. If I want level "1", I either boot the
kernel with the "single" parameter, or issue "sudo telinit s" from a
command line. I guess, frankly, I never really know or pay attention to
what runlevel I'm in at any given time with Arch.
Also, why does my kde3 install have the kde4 look and feel?? It has the dull
grey window decor on all apps?? I'm just wondering if this is a side effect of
loading k9copy and it pulling in the kde4 runtime base as a dependency. What
say the gurus?
No idea. Maybe you need to change the default theme that the KDEMod
guys chose? Monkey around in kcontrol a bit. You're definitely NOT
stuck with any particular look, obviously. (Here's mine, if you're
curious: http://darose.net/DaroseDesktop.png)
Again, thanks a *lot* for all the hand holding that was required to get me up
and running with kde. I think most of the problem was due to the stuck kdm
process that I guess was created when I tried to start kde with ../rc.d/kdm3
while I had a bad xorg.conf.
NP. Yeah, when I saw that there was an instance of KDM running while
you still weren't able to get X working, I thought that was suspicious.
Lastly, are there any Arch Linux specific gui tools I should be aware of? Like
for package config, etc..
Get to know the AUR, abs, and the makepkg tool. You'll be using makepkg
a lot, as there's a pretty sizable number of packages in Arch that the
devs don't maintain in the "core" or "extra" repos. In these cases,
although sometimes it might still be available as a binary package in
the "community" repo (which is maintained by Arch Trusted Users), more
often than not it'll be available as a PKGBUILD script in the AUR, in
which case you'll need to build the package yourself from source using
"makepkg". Many packages are available from source only like this, and
it's really not a big deal to deal with, once you get used to it. (Plus
once you get comfortable with Arch, you'll probably want to start
creating your own PKGBUILDs for packages that don't exist yet anywhere
in Arch.)
As far as other Arch-specific tools, there's really not many. But I do
use these from time to time:
netcfg - a command-line utility that takes care of much of the hard work
of connecting to a network. You set up a profile for, for example, a
wifi network, and you can then connect to it with a simple command "sudo
netcfg <your_wifi_network_profile>"
hwdetect - very useful in auto-detecting the correct kernel modules for
your hardware. e.g. "sudo hwdetect --show-modules"
You probably need to install them; I don't think they come preinstalled:
sudo pacman -S netcfg hwdetect abs fakeroot
Now to -- kick the tires a bit on this Arch Linux kde3 desktop...
Have fun! Arch is a great distro! I started using it probably about 6
years ago, and it's been my main distro ever since!
DR
