vuxu.org: Zorya

Zorya is an Acer Timeline 1810TZ running Arch Linux.

The naming

In Slavic mythology, the Zorya are the three guardian goddesses, known as the Auroras. They guard and watch over the doomsday hound that threatens to eat the constellation Ursa Minor, the ‘little bear.’ If the chain breaks loose and the constellation is devoured, the universe is said to end.

(And it’s a dual core!)

Rough setup

My main problem was that Arch 2009.08 didn’t support Ethernet for a netinstall, so I had to download the core packages manually and put them on a USB stick.

• Enter BIOS with F2: disable quiet boot, enable boot menu, disable d2d

• Boot Arch 2009.08-netinstall-x64.

• Since I wanted full disk encryption, shred the disk with random data:

  shred -n1 -v /dev/null
  

• Setup packages from a mounted USB stick

• Partition scheme:

  sda1 128mb /boot ext2
  sda2 rest dm_crypt named cryptpool, -c aes-xts-plain -y -s 512
    make lvm there, pool
    4g swap pool-swap
    15g root pool-root ext4
    160g home pool-home ext4
    rest remains free
  

• Install core, iwlwifi-1000-ucode and wireless_tools.

Base configuration

• Clear /etc/hosts.deny.

• Choose a server in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.

• DAEMONS: sshd

• grub.conf: Add resume=/dev/mapper/pool-swap.

Initial user

• adduser, groups: adm, wheel, games, audio, video, power, log

X11

• pacman -S xorg xf86-input-evdev xf86-input-synaptics xf86-video-intel mesa

• Add hal to DAEMONS.

• For two-finger scrolling, add to your .xinitrc:

  synclient EmulateTwoFingerMinW=20
  synclient EmulateTwoFingerMinZ=7
  synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=1
  

Power management

• /etc/fstab: Add noatime to /, /home.

• Add coretemp, acpi_cpufreq to MODULES.

• Install laptop-mode-tools.

Various packages

• Install packer.

  packer -S 9menu alsa-utils autocutsel bin32-skype-staticqt
  byacc-noconflict dmenu feh flashplugin gnu-netcat gtk-xfce-engine
  htop imagemagick lm_sensors ltrace mc mtr oxygen-icons powertop
  ruby ruby1.8 texlive-core tmux ttf-ms-fonts-lic unclutter
  xbindkeys xscreensaver
  

Postfix

I like having a real mail server.

• pacman -S postfix

• /etc/postfix/main.cf:

  inet_interfaces = 127.0.0.1
  relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587
  smtp_use_tls = yes
  smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/ssl/certs/cacert.org.pem
  smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:/var/lib/postfix/smtp_tls_session_cache
  smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
  smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
  smtpd_sasl_local_domain = $myhostname
  smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
  

• /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd:

  [smtp.gmail.com]:587 USERNAME@gmail.com:PASSWORD
  

Hacks

• I made /usr/bin/ruby Ruby 1.8 and /usr/bin/vi vim.

Not yet working

• Internal microphone (needs newer alsa-drivers).

• Crpto suspend (need to integrate into pm-suspend).