


    * 1 Preface
          o 1.1 Everything you ever wanted to know about installing Arch, but were afraid to ask
          o 1.2 DON'T PANIC!
          o 1.3 The Arch Way
    * 2 Part I: Install the Base System
          o 2.4 Start the Installation
                + 2.4.1 Select an installation source
                + 2.4.2 FTP: Configure Network
                + 2.4.3 Prepare Hard Drive
                      # 2.4.3.1 Partition Info
                      # 2.4.3.2 Swap Partition
                      # 2.4.3.3 Partition Scheme
                      # 2.4.3.4 cfdisk
                      # 2.4.3.5 I have IDE devices, why do they look like SCSI devices?
                + 2.4.4 Set File system Mountpoints
                      # 2.4.4.1 Filesystem Types
          o 2.5 Select Packages
          o 2.6 Install Packages
          o 2.7 Configure The System
                + 2.7.1 Why doesn't the installer handle this more automatically?
                + 2.7.2 /etc/rc.conf
                + 2.7.3 About DAEMONS
                + 2.7.4 /etc/fstab
                + 2.7.5 /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and /etc/modprobe.conf
                + 2.7.6 /etc/resolv.conf (for Static IP)
                + 2.7.7 /etc/hosts
                + 2.7.8 /etc/hosts.deny and /etc/hosts.allow
                + 2.7.9 /etc/locale.gen
                + 2.7.10 Root password
                + 2.7.11 Pacman-Mirror
          o 2.8 Install Bootloader
          o 2.9 GRUB
    * 3 The Base System
          o 3.1 Configuring the network (if necessary)
                + 3.1.1 Wired LAN
                + 3.1.2 Wireless LAN
                + 3.1.3 Analog Modem
                + 3.1.4 ISDN
                + 3.1.5 DSL (PPPoE)
    * 4 Update, Sync and Upgrade the system with pacman
          o 4.1 What is pacman ?
          o 4.2 Configuring pacman
                + 4.2.1 Package Repositories and /etc/pacman.conf
                + 4.2.2 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
                      # 4.2.2.1 Ignoring packages
                      # 4.2.2.2 Ignoring Configuration Files
    * 5 Update System
          o 5.1 The beauty of the Arch rolling release model
          o 5.2 Get familiar with pacman
          o 5.3 Add a user and setup groups
                + 5.3.1 Install and setup Sudo
    * 6 Part II: Install X and configure ALSA
          o 6.1 Configure the audio card with alsamixer
                + 6.1.1 Sound Test
          o 6.2 Installing and configuring X
    * 7 Create /etc/X11/xorg.conf
          o 7.1 What is /etc/X11/xorg.conf?
          o 7.2 Alternative xorg.conf generation
          o 7.3 Using proprietary Graphics Driver (NVIDIA, ATI)
                + 7.3.1 NVIDIA Graphic Cards
                + 7.3.2 ATI Graphic Cards
          o 7.4 Simple baseline X test
                + 7.4.1 ~/.xinitrc
    * 8 Part III: Installing and configuring a Desktop Environment
          o 8.1 Install Fonts
          o 8.2 ~/.xinitrc (again)
          o 8.3 GNOME
                + 8.3.1 About GNOME
                + 8.3.2 Installation
                      # 8.3.2.1 Useful DAEMONS for GNOME
                + 8.3.3 Eye Candy
          o 8.4 KDE
                + 8.4.1 About KDE
                + 8.4.2 Installation
                + 8.4.3 Useful KDE DAEMONS
          o 8.5 Xfce
                + 8.5.1 About Xfce
                + 8.5.2 Installation
                + 8.5.3 Useful DAEMONS
          o 8.6 *box
                + 8.6.1 Fluxbox
                + 8.6.2 Openbox
          o 8.7 fvwm2
    * 9 APPENDIX
          o 9.1 Tweaks/Finishing touches
                + 9.1.1 Install Yaourt
                + 9.1.2 HAL
                + 9.1.3 Backgrounding DAEMONS on startup
                + 9.1.4 Beautifying Fonts for LCD's
                + 9.1.5 Adjusting Mouse for scroll wheel
                + 9.1.6 Get All Mouse Buttons Working
                + 9.1.7 Configuring Touchpad for Laptops
                + 9.1.8 Adjusting Keyboard Layout
                + 9.1.9 Additional tweaks for laptops
                + 9.1.10 Configuring CPU frequency scaling
                + 9.1.11 Pm-Utils
                + 9.1.12 Laptop-Mode
          o 9.2 File and directory explanation
          o 9.3 Boot Scripts
          o 9.4 Useful Applications
                + 9.4.1 Internet
                      # 9.4.1.1 Firefox
                + 9.4.2 Office
          o 9.5 Multimedia
                + 9.5.1 Video Player
                      # 9.5.1.1 VLC
                      # 9.5.1.2 Mplayer
                      # 9.5.1.3 Xine
                      # 9.5.1.4 GNOME
                            * 9.5.1.4.1 Totem
                      # 9.5.1.5 KDE
                            * 9.5.1.5.1 Kaffeine
                + 9.5.2 Audio Player
                      # 9.5.2.1 Gnome/Xfce
                            * 9.5.2.1.1 Exaile
                            * 9.5.2.1.2 Rhythmbox
                            * 9.5.2.1.3 Quod Libet
                      # 9.5.2.2 KDE
                            * 9.5.2.2.1 Amarok
                      # 9.5.2.3 Console
                      # 9.5.2.4 Other X-based
                + 9.5.3 Codecs and other multimedia content types (i686 only)
                      # 9.5.3.1 DVD
                      # 9.5.3.2 Flash
                      # 9.5.3.3 Quicktime
                      # 9.5.3.4 Realplayer
                + 9.5.4 CD and DVD Burning
                      # 9.5.4.1 GNOME
                            * 9.5.4.1.1 Brasero
                      # 9.5.4.2 KDE
                            * 9.5.4.2.1 K3b
                            * 9.5.4.2.2 (Todo) cdrecord, graveman...
                + 9.5.5 TV-Cards
                + 9.5.6 Digital Cameras
                + 9.5.7 USB Memory Sticks / Hard Disks
          o 9.6 Maintaining the system
                + 9.6.1 Pacman
                      # 9.6.1.1 Useful commands
                      # 9.6.1.2 Files
          o 9.7 Polishing & Further information
                + 9.7.1 FAQs
                + 9.7.2 Terminology
                + 9.7.3 Where to go from here?
          o 9.8 External links

 Preface

 Everything you ever wanted to know about installing Arch, but were afraid to ask

Welcome. This document will guide you through the process of installing and configuring Arch Linux; a simple, agile and lightweight GNU/Linux distribution, UNIX-like operating system. It is more than an installation guide; Arch Linux requires a certain level of intimate knowledge of its configuration and of UNIX-like system methodology and for this reason, extra explanatory information is included along the way. It is aimed at new Arch users, but strives to serve as a strong reference and informative base for all. While this guide intends to show how to gain a fully configured Arch Linux system (a graphical desktop environment, the ability to view DVDs, browse the internet, work with emails, and listen to music), it is impossible to show (or even anticipate) all possibilities and options. By design, this guide must focus on some critically useful steps; you may want to dig deeper using the Arch Linux Wiki or the Arch Linux Forums. You are also encouraged to read The Arch Way, which outlines the underlying principles of the Arch Linux distribution.

Since Arch Linux and all UNIX-like operating systems are fundamentally 'modular' by design, the article is logically broken up into 3 main parts:

Part I: Installing the Base system

Part II: Installing X and configuring ALSA

Part III: Installing a Desktop Environment
 DON'T PANIC!

Please realize that the Arch Linux installation method and procedure may be very different from other GNU/Linux distributions you have tried, especially if you are a beginner. Typically, GNU/Linux distributions bundle together large quantities of software onto a CD, or set of CD's, (or even DVD's) including a default desktop environment, default programs and settings, hardware autoconfiguration and a graphical installer, all of which are chosen for you. In contrast, the Arch Linux system is built up by the user, from an ncurses installer and base system with nothing more than a bash shell and basic command line tools. This is The Arch Way. Unlike the more rigid structures of most other distributions, there are no default environments nor configurations chosen for the user. To put it simply; Arch waits for your input. From the command line, you will add packages from the Arch repositories using the pacman tool via your internet connection and manually configure your installation until your system is customized to your requirements. This method allows for maximum flexibility, choice, and system resource control from the base up. Because you assemble and configure it, you will invariably know the nuts and bolts of your system, and become familiar with what is under the hood.

The Arch Linux system is configured by editing text files. It offers no GUI tools and will not hold your hand during setup and customization, but nor will it get in your way by design. Remember also, that Arch Linux is aimed at competent GNU/Linux users who desire minimal 'code separation' from their machine and software, as well as users who are willing to invest the time to learn about the underlying mechanics of the system.

Arch is a tool to be molded by the user.
 The Arch Way

The design principles behind Arch are aimed at keeping it simple.

Note that 'simple' does not mean 'easy' nor 'user-friendly' in this context, but rather; 'without unnecessary additions, modifications, or complications'. In short; an elegant, minimalist approach.

"Simple' is defined from a technical standpoint, not a usability standpoint. It is better to be technically elegant with a higher learning curve, than to be easy to use, and technically crap." -Aaron Griffin

"The extraordinary part of [my method] lies in its simplicity..I have always believed that the simple way is the right way." - Bruce Lee

Occam's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." The term razor refers to the act of shaving away unnecessary assumptions and complications to get to the simplest explanation, method or theory.


Part I: Installing the Arch Linux base system

If you have a non-US keyboard layout do:

loadkeys <your keyboard>

at the prompt.
 Start the Installation

Enter

/arch/setup 

to start the installation.


 Select an installation source

After a welcome screen, you will be prompted for an installation source. Choose CD if you are using a core ISO, or choose FTP if you are using the FTP ISO.

    * If you chose the CORE-ISO, continue below with Prepare Hard Drive.
    * FTP Only: If using FTP, you will be prompted to load ethernet drivers manually, if desired. Udev is quite effective at loading the required modules, so you may assume it has already done so. You may verify this by invoking ifconfig -a from vc2. (Select OK to continue.) 

 FTP: Configure Network

Available Interfaces will be presented. If an interface and HWaddr is listed, then your module has already been loaded. If your interface is not listed, you may probe it from the installer, or manually do so from another virtual console.

The following screen will prompt you to Select the interface, Probe, or Cancel. Choose the appropriate interface and continue.

The installer will then ask if you wish to use DHCP. Choosing Yes will run dhcpcd to discover an available gateway and request an IP address; Choosing No will prompt you for your static IP, netmask, broadcast, gateway DNS IP, HTTP proxy, and FTP proxy. Lastly, you will be presented with an overview to ensure your entries are correct.

Continue with Prepare Hard Drive
 Prepare Hard Drive

Select the first menu entry "Prepare Hard Drive".

    * Option 1: Auto Prepare 

Auto-Prepare divides your disk into the following configuration:

    * ext2 /boot partition, default size 32MB. You will be prompted to modify the size to you requirement.
    * swap partition, default size 256MB. You will be prompted to modify the size to you requirement.
    * A Separate / and /home partition, (sizes can also be specified). You may choose from ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs and jfs, but both / and /home must share the same fs type. 

Be warned that Auto-prepare will completely erase the chosen hard drive. Read the warning presented by the installer very carefully, and make sure the correct device is about to be partitioned.

Of course, if you have but one hard drive in your system and have decided to dedicate it to Arch, you have nothing to worry about.

    * Option 2: (Recommended) Partition Hard Drives (with cfdisk) 

Select the hard drive you wish to install to (/dev/sdx).

At this point, more advanced GNU/Linux users who are familiar and comfortable with manually partitioning may wish to skip down to Select Packages below.
 Partition Info

Partitioning a hard disk drive defines specific areas (the partitions) within the disk, that will each appear and behave as a separate disk and upon which a filesystem may be created (formatted). Partitions are broken up into "Primary", "Extended", and "Logical".

Primary partitions can be bootable, and are limited to 4. Beyond 4 partitions, we are forced to use an extended partition which will contain logical partitions.

Extended partitions are not usable by themselves; they are merely a "container" for logical partitions. A hard disk may contain only one extended partition; which can then be sub-divided into logical partitions.

When partitioning a disk, one can see this numbering scheme by creating primary partitions sda1-3 followed by creating an extended partition, sda4, and subsequently creating logical partition(s) within the extended partition; sda5, sda6, and so on.
 Swap Partition

A swap partition is a place on your hard drive where "virtual ram" resides, allowing the kernel to easily use disk storage for data that does not fit into physical RAM.

Historically, the general rule for swap partition size was 2x the amount of physical RAM. Over time, as computers have gained ever larger memory capacities, this rule has become increasingly deprecated. Generally, on machines with up to 512MB RAM, the 2x rule is usually sufficient. On machines with 1GB RAM, generally a 1x rule is adequate. If you have gratuitous amounts of RAM (more than 1024 MB) it may be possible to completely forgo a swap partition altogether, though this is not recommended. We will create a 1 GB swap partition in this example.


Note: If you plan on using suspend-to-disk, (hibernate) you must have a swap partition at least equal in size to the amount of physical RAM, and some users even recommend oversizing it beyond the amount of physical RAM by 15% to allow for possible bad sectors.


 Partition Scheme

A disk partitioning scheme is a very personalized preference. Each user's choices will be unique to their own computing habits and requirements. What you need at the least is one primary partition which contains the root Filesystem ( / ) and one for swap. Other candidates for separate partitions include /boot (which mainly contains the kernel) /var, and /home (which contains the user data). It is generally considered good practice and more versatile to have / and /home on separate partitions. In this example, we shall use one partition for /, one partition for /home, and a swap partition.
 cfdisk

Let's start by creating the primary partition that will contain the root, (/) filesystem.

Choose New -> Primary and enter the size you want (something between 4 and 12 GB is a good choice for a full-featured Linux system). Put the partition at the beginning of the disk. Select the newly created partition and choose Bootable to make this partition bootable.

Also choose the Type by designating it as '83 Linux'. The created / partition should appear as sda1.

Next, create a partition for swap. Select a size between 512 MB and 1 GB and change the Type to 82 (Linux swap / Solaris). The created swap partition should appear as sda2.

Lastly, another partition for your /home directory. Choose another primary partition and set the size to a value you like. The size really depends on what your users store in their home directories, so I cannot make any suggestions. The size may vary between a few hundred megabytes for some office documents up to hundreds of gigabytes for videos and MP3s. If you want to use the entire remaining space on your hard disc, remember to reserve a quantity for the swap partition. (1 GB, or 1024MB, in our example)

Likewise, select the Type as 83 Linux. The created /home partition should appear as sda3.


This is what your Layout should look like (size may vary depending on your decisions):

Name    Flags  Part Type   FS Type         [Label]         Size (MB)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
sda1    Boot       Primary     Linux                         (4096 - 8192)
sda2               Primary     Linux swap / Solaris          (512 - 1024)
sda3               Primary     Linux                         (> 100 or remaining space)

Choose Write and type 'yes'. Beware that this operation may destroy data on your disk if you deleted partitions. Choose Quit to leave the partitioner. Choose Done to leave this menu and continue with "Set Filesystem Mountpoints".
 I have IDE devices, why do they look like SCSI devices?

Since the latest developments of the Linux kernel which include the libata and PATA modules, all IDE, SATA and SCSI drives have adopted the sdx naming scheme. This is perfectly normal and should not be a concern.
 Set File system Mountpoints

First you will be asked for your swap partition. Choose the appropriate partition (sda3 in this example). You will be asked if you want to create a swap filesystem; select yes. Next, choose where to mount the / (root) directory (sda1 in the example). You will be asked what kind of filesystem you want.
 Filesystem Types

Again, a filesystem type is a very subjective matter which comes down to personal preference. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages, and differences in performance are often more likely to be attributable to placebo than to human-perceivable measurements. Here is a very brief overview of supported filesystems:

1. ext2 - Old, reliable GNU/Linux filesystem. Very stable, but without journaling support. May be inconvenient for root (/) and /home, due to very long fsck's. An ext2 filesystem can easily be converted to ext3.

2. ext3 - Essentially the ext2 system, but with journaling support. ext3 is completely compatible with ext2. Generally perceived and benchmarked as slightly slower than other filesystems, but extremely stable and by far the most widely used, supported and developed GNU/Linux FS.

3. ReiserFS - Hans Reiser's high-performance journaling FS uses a very interesting method of data throughput. ReiserFS is touted as very fast, especially when dealing with many small files. ReiserFS is comparatively slow at mounting. Quite well established and stable. ReiserFS isn't actively developed at this time (Reiser4 is the new Reiser filesystem).

4. JFS - IBM's Journaled FileSystem. JFS uses the least CPU resources of any filesystem. Very fast at mounting and fsck's, and very good all-around performance, especially in conjunction with the deadline scheduler. (See JFS.) Not as widely supported as ext or ReiserFS.

5. XFS - Journaling filesystem which is best suited for large files. Very fast at mounting. May be slower than ReiserFS for many small files. The only available GNU/Linux FS with online defragmentation ability.

A major difference is journaling (something similar to transaction logs in database environments). All filesystems except ext2 use journaling. Note that not all journaling techniques are alike; specifically, only ext3 journals BOTH data AND meta-data (directory information). The others only journal meta-data. While all will return your filesystem to a valid state after recovering from a crash, only ext3 guarantees that you won't be left with some "stale data".

Choose and create the filesystem (format the partition) for / by selecting yes. You will now be prompted to add any additional partitions. In our example, only sda2 is remaining. Choose a filesystem type and mount it as /home. Again, create the filesystem and choose Done. Return to main menu.
 Select Packages

Now we shall select packages to install in our system.

    * Core ISO: Choose CD as source and select the appropriate CD drive if you have more than one.
    * FTP ISO: Select an FTP/HTTP mirror. Note that archlinux.org is throttled to 50KB/s. 

Package selection is split into two stages. First, you will select package categories, then you will be presented will the full lists of packages in the selected categories, allowing you to fine-tune your selections. The space bar selects and unselects the categories.

    * BASE: Contains the minimal package set; just enough for a barebones system.
    * SUPPORT: Additional packages for networking and filesystems, etc, such as gpm, fuse, dnsutils, wireless drivers, ndiswrapper, ntfs-3g, and so forth.
    * DEVEL: Software compiling tools such as GCC, autoconf, automake and make.
    * LIB: Various libraries such as gmp, lebelf, libevent, etc. 

Choose OK to continue and then choose 'yes' for 'Select all packages by default', for now.

The next screen will present you with the selected packages within your selected categories. Leaving all selected is a safe choice for beginners, while more experienced users will wish to trim a few unnecessary packages. (For instance, an unneeded filesystem type utility, unneeded drivers, etc.)
 Install Packages

Next, choose 'Install Packages'. You will be asked if you wish to keep the packages in the pacman cache. If you choose 'yes', you will have the flexibility to downgrade to previous package versions in the future, so this is recommended (you can always clear the cache in the future). The installer script will now install the selected packages, as well as the default Arch 2.6 kernel, to your system.

    * FTP ISO: The Pacman package manager will now download and install your selected packages. (See VC5 for output, VC1 to return to the installer)
    * CORE ISO: The packages will be installed from the CD. 

Note: For Arch 2007.08 FTP installation: after 'Install Packages' you have to upgrade pacman (ALT+F2, pacman -Sy pacman) and again 'Install Packages'.
 Configure The System

Closely following and understanding these steps is of key importance to ensure a properly configured system.

The installer will ask if you want to choose hwdetect to gather information for your configuration. Beginners should choose 'yes'.

Advanced users who are thoroughly familiar with their hardware, required modules, and who are able to manually configure /etc/rc.conf, /etc/mkinitcpio and /etc/fstab, etc. from scratch may wish to choose 'no'. (Needless to say, this option is very involved, beyond the scope of this guide, and therefore is not covered.)

Next, you will be asked if you need support for booting from USB devices, FireWire devices, PCMCIA devices, NFS shares, software RAID arrays, LVM2 volumes, encrypted volumes, and DSDT support. Choose yes if you need it; in our example nothing is needed.

Now you will be asked which text editor you want to use; choose nano or vi/vim (recommended). You will be presented with a menu including the most important configuration files for your system. If you want to look up the available options as stated in /etc/rc.conf just press Alt+F2 to get a shell, look it up, and switch back to the installer with Alt+F1.
 Why doesn't the installer handle this more automatically?

Hiding the process of system configuration is in direct opposition to The Arch Way. While it is true that recent versions of the kernel and hardware probing tools offer excellent hardware support and autoconfiguration, Arch presents the user all pertinent configuration files during installation for the purpose of transparency. By the time you have finished modifying these files to your specifications, you will have learned the simple method of manual Arch Linux system configuration and become more familiar with the base structure, leaving you better prepared to use your new installation productively.
 /etc/rc.conf

Arch Linux follows in the *BSD tradition of utilizing /etc/rc.conf as the principal location for system configuration. This one file contains a wide range of configuration information, principally used at system startup. As its name directly implies, it also contains settings for and invokes the /etc/rc* files, and is, of course, sourced by these files. /etc/rc.conf offers a simple, elegant method of streamlining system resource configuration by encompassing a wide range of control, readily accessible for the Arch user.

    * LOCALIZATION section
          o LOCALE=: This sets your system locale, which will be used by all i18n-aware applications and utilities. You can get a list of the available locales by running 'locale -a' from the command line. This setting's default is fine for US English users.
          o HARDWARECLOCK=: Specifies whether the hardware clock, which is synchronized on bootup and on shutdown, stores UTC time, or the localtime. UTC makes sense because it greatly simplifies changing timezones and daylight savings time. localtime is necessary if you dual boot with an operating system such as Windows, that only stores localtime to the hardware clock.
          o TIMEZONE=: Specify your TIMEZONE. (All available zones are under /usr/share/zoneinfo/).
          o KEYMAP=: The available keymaps are in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps. Please note that this setting is only valid for your TTYs, not any graphical window managers or X!
          o CONSOLEFONT=: Available console fonts reside under /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ if you must change. The default (blank) is safe.
          o CONSOLEMAP=: Defines the console map to load with the setfont program on bootup. Possible maps are found in /usr/share/kbd/consoletrans, if needed. The default (blank) is safe.
          o USECOLOR=: Select "yes" if you have a color monitor and wish to have colors in your consoles. 

LOCALE="en_US.utf8"
HARDWARECLOCK="localtime"
TIMEZONE="US/Eastern"
KEYMAP="us"
CONSOLEFONT=
CONSOLEMAP=
USECOLOR="yes"

    * HARDWARE section
          o MOD_AUTOLOAD=: Setting this to "yes" will utilize udev to automatically probe hardware and load the appropriate modules during boot-up, (convenient with the default modular kernel). Setting this to "no" will rely on the user's ability to specify this information manually.
          o MOD_BLACKLIST=: Specify any blacklisted modules. Udev will be forced NOT to load blacklisted modules. In the following example, the IPv6 module as well as the annoying pcspeaker are blacklisted.
          o MODULES=:Specify additional MODULES if you know that an important module is missing, (hwdetect should have filled in the most important modules): 

# Scan hardware and load required modules at bootup
MOD_AUTOLOAD="yes"
# Module Blacklist - modules in this list will never be loaded by udev
MOD_BLACKLIST=(net-pf-10 pcspkr)
#
MODULES=(e100 eepro100 mii slhc snd-ac97-codec snd-intel8x0 soundcore)

    * NETWORKING section
          o HOSTNAME=:Set your HOSTNAME to your liking.
          o eth0=: 'Ethernet, card 0'. Adjust the interface IP address, netmask and broadcast address if you are using static IP. Set eth0="dhcp" if you want to use DHCP
          o INTERFACES=: Specify any/all interfaces here. If you do not use DHCP to configure a device, just keep in mind that the value of the variable (whose name must be equal to the name of the device which is supposed to be configured) equals the line which would be appended to the ifconfig command if you were to configure the device manually in the shell.
          o gateway=: If you are using static IP, set the gateway address. Ignore this entry if using DHCP
          o ROUTES=: If you are using static IP, remove the ! in front of 'gateway'. Leave the ! if using DHCP 

Example, using DHCP:

HOSTNAME="arch"
#eth0="eth0 192.168.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255" 
eth0="dhcp"
INTERFACES=(eth0)
gateway="default gw 192.168.0.1"
ROUTES=(!gateway)

    * DAEMONS section 

This array simply lists the names of those scripts contained in /etc/rc.d/ which are to be started during the boot process, and the order in which they start.

DAEMONS=(@network syslog-ng netfs crond)

    * If a script name is prefixed with a bang (!), it is not executed.
    * If a script is prefixed with an "at" symbol (@), then it will be executed in the background; the startup sequence will not wait for successful completion of each daemon before continuing to the next. (Useful for speeding up system boot).
    * Edit this array whenever new system services are installed, if starting them automatically during bootup is desired. 

This 'BSD-style' init, is the Arch way of handling what others handle with various symlinks to an /etc/init.d directory.
 About DAEMONS

You don't have to change the daemons line at this time, but it is useful to explain what daemons are, because we need them later in this guide.

Analogous to a Windows service, a daemon is a program that runs in the background, waiting for events to occur and offering services. A good example is a webserver that waits for a request to deliver a page or an SSH server waiting for someone trying to log in. While these are full-featured applications, there are daemons whose work is not that visible. Examples are a daemon which writes messages into a log file (e.g. syslog, metalog), a daemon which lowers your CPU's frequency if your system has nothing to do (e.g.:cpufreq), and a daemon which offers you a graphical login (e.g.: gdm, kdm). All these programs can be added to the daemons line and will be started when the system boots. Useful daemons will be presented during this guide.

Historically, the term daemon was coined by the programmers of MIT's Project MAC. They took the name from Maxwell's demon, an imaginary being from a famous thought experiment that constantly works in the background, sorting molecules. UNIX systems inherited this terminology and created the backronym disk and execution monitor.

    * Tip: All Arch daemons reside under /etc/rc.d/ 

 /etc/fstab

The fstab (for file systems table) is part of the system configuration listing all available disks and disk partitions, and indicating how they are to be initialized or otherwise integrated into the overall system's file system. The /etc/fstab file is most commonly used by the mount command, which reads /etc/fstab to determine which options should be used when mounting the specified device.


An example /etc/fstab:

#
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>        <dir>        <type>        <options>                 <dump> <pass>
none                   /dev/pts     devpts               defaults             0         0
none                   /dev/shm     tmpfs                defaults             0         0
#/dev/cdrom            /mnt/cdrom   iso9660          ro,user,noauto,unhide    0         0
#/dev/dvd              /mnt/dvd     udf                 ro,user,noauto,unhide 0         0
#/dev/fd0              /mnt/fd0     vfat                user,noauto           0         0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/0ec-9339  /            jfs       defaults,noatime,nodiratime0         1
/dev/disk/by-uuid/7ef-223-0 /home        jfs       defaults,noatime,nodiratime0         2
/dev/disk/by-uuid/530-1e-2c2 swap        swap         defaults                0         0

Modify your fstab to your requirements.


Note: As of 2008-04rc, Arch is now utilizing the UUID, or Universally Unique Identifier naming convention, for consistent device mapping. This is due to active developments in the kernel and also udev, which may randomly change the ordering in which drivers for storage controllers are loaded, yielding an unbootable system/kernel panic. Nearly every motherboard has several controllers (onboard SATA, onboard IDE), and due to the aforementioned development updates, /dev/sda may become /dev/sdb on the next reboot- hence the persistent device naming convention of UUID has been adopted for reliability.

ls -lF /dev/disk/by-uuid/

Will list all partitions by uuid.

    * If you plan on using hal to automount media such as DVDs, you may wish to comment out the cdrom and dvd entries in preparation for hal, which will be installed later in this guide. 


Note: The 'noatime' and 'nodiratime' options may safely be appended to / and /home regardless of your specified filesystem type for increased speed, performance, and power efficiency, for laptops as well as desktops.


Expanded information available in the Fstab wiki entry.
 /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and /etc/modprobe.conf

We shouldn't need to edit these configurations at this point.

    * mkinitcpio.conf This file allows you to fine-tune the initial ram filesystem (also commonly referred to as the initial ramdisk or "initrd") for your system. The initrd is a gzipped image that is read by the kernel during bootup. The purpose of the initrd is to bootstrap the system to the point where it can access the root filesystem. This means it has to load any modules that are required for devices like IDE, SCSI, or SATA drives (or USB/FW, if you are booting off a USB/FW drive). Once the initrd loads the proper modules, either manually or through udev, it passes control to the Arch system and your bootup continues. For this reason, the initrd only needs to contain the modules necessary to access the root filesystem. It does not need to contain every module you would ever want to use. The majority of your everyday modules will be loaded later on by udev, during the init process. 

    * modprobe.conf can be used to set special configuration options for the kernel modules 

 /etc/resolv.conf (for Static IP)

The resolver is a set of routines in the C library that provide access to the Internet Domain Name System (DNS). One of the main functions of DNS is to translate domain names into IP addresses, to make the Web a friendlier place. The resolver configuration file, or /etc/resolv.conf, contains information that is read by the resolver routines the first time they are invoked by a process.

    * If you are using DHCP, you may safely ignore this file, as by default, it will be dynamically created and destroyed by the dhcpcd daemon. You may change this default behavior if you wish. (See Network). 

If you use a static IP, set your DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf (nameserver <ip-address>). You may have as many as you wish, e.g.:

nameserver 4.2.2.1
nameserver 4.2.2.2

If you are using a router, you will probably want to specify your DNS servers in the router itself, and merely point to it from your /etc/resolv.conf, using your router's IP (which is also your gateway from /etc/rc.conf), e.g.:

nameserver 192.168.1.1

If using DHCP, you may also specify your DNS servers in the router, or allow automatic assignment from your ISP, if your ISP is so equipped.
 /etc/hosts

This file associates IP addresses with hostnames and aliases, one line per IP address. For each host a single line should be present with the following information:

<IP-address> <hostname> [aliases...]

Add your hostname, coinciding with the one specified in /etc/rc.conf, as an alias, so that it looks like this:

127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain   localhost yourhostname


Note: This format, including the 'localhost' and your actual host name, is required for program compatibility! Errors in this entry may cause poor network performance and/or certain programs to open very slowly, or not work at all. This is a very common error for beginners.


If you use a static IP, add another line using the syntax: <static-IP> <hostname.domainname.org> <hostname> e.g.:

192.168.1.100 yourhostname.domain.org  yourhostname

    * TIP: For convenience, you may also use /etc/hosts aliases for hosts on your network, and/or on the Web, e.g.: 

64.233.169.103   www.google.com   g
192.168.1.90   media
192.168.1.88   data

The above example would allow you to access google simply by typing 'g' into your browser, and access to a media and data server on your network by name and without the need for typing out their respective IP addresses.
 /etc/hosts.deny and /etc/hosts.allow

Modify these configurations according to your needs if you plan on using the ssh daemon. The default configuration will reject all incoming connections, not only ssh connections. Edit your /etc/hosts.allow file and add:

sshd:all 

This will allow all incoming ssh connections.

If you do not plan on using the ssh daemon, leave this file at the default, (empty), for added security.
 /etc/locale.gen

The locale-gen command reads from /etc/locale.gen to generate specific locales. They can then be used by glibc and any other locale-aware program or library for rendering "peculiar" text, correctly displaying regional monetary values, time and date formats, alphabetic idiosyncrasies, and other locale-specific standards. The ability to setup a default locale is a great built-in privilege of using a UNIX-like operating system.

By default /etc/locale.gen is an empty file with commented documentation. Once edited, the file won't get touched again. locale-gen runs on every glibc upgrade, generating all the locales specified in /etc/locale.gen.

Choose the locale(s) you need (remove the # in front of the lines you want), e.g.:

en_US ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8	

The installer will now run the locale-gen script, which will generate the locales you specified. You may change your locale in the future by editing /etc/locale.gen and subsequently running 'locale-gen' as root.


Note: If you fail to choose your locale, this will lead to a "The current locale is invalid..." error. This is perhaps the most common mistake by new Arch users, and also leads to the most commonly asked questions on the forum.


 Root password

Finally, set a root password and make sure that you remember it later. Return to the main menu and continue with installing bootloader.
 Pacman-Mirror

Choose a mirror repository for pacman.

    * archlinux.org is throttled, limiting downloads to 50KB/s 

Return to the main menu.
 Install Bootloader

Because we have no secondary operating system in our example, we will need a bootloader. GNU GRUB is the recommended bootloader. Alternatively, you may choose LILO.
 GRUB

The provided GRUB configuration (/boot/grub/menu.lst) should be sufficient. The only thing you may want to alter is the resolution of the console. Add a vga=<number> to the first kernel line. (A table of resolutions and the corresponding numbers is printed in the menu.lst.)

Example:

title  Arch Linux (Main)
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/0ec1-9339.. ro vga=773
initrd /boot/kernel26.img

Explanation:

Line 1: title: A printed menu selection. "Arch Linux (Main)" will be printed on the screen as a menu selection.

Line 2: root: GRUB's root; the drive and partition where the kernel (/boot) resides. NOT necesarily the root (/) file system, as they can reside on separate partitions. GRUB's numbering scheme starts at 0, and uses an hdx,x format regardless of IDE or SATA, enclosed within parentheses.

The example indicates that /boot is on the first partition of the first drive, or, (hd0,0).

Line 3: kernel: This line specifies:

    * The path and filename of the kernel relative to GRUB's root (within the partition containing the kernel). 

In the example, /boot is merely a directory residing on the same partition as / and vmlinuz26 is the kernel filename; /boot/vmlinuz26. If /boot were on a separate partition, the path and filename would be simply /vmlinuz26, being relative to GRUB's root.

    * The root= argument to the kernel statement specifies the partition containing the root (/) directory in the booted system, (more accurately, the partition containing /sbin/init), according to the UUID numbering scheme as of 2008-04rc, which uses the /dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxx-xxxx-xxxx format. 

    * Kernel options. 

In our example, ro mounts the filesystem as read only during startup, and the "vga=773" argument will give a 1024x768 framebuffer with 256 color depth.

Line 4: initrd: (For Initial RAM disk) The path and filename of the initial RAM filesystem relative to GRUB's root (within the partition containing the kernel). Again, in the example, /boot is merely a directory residing on the same partition as / and kernel26.img is the initrd filename; /boot/kernel26.img. If /boot were on a separate partition, the path and filename would be simply /kernel26.img, being relative to GRUB's root.

Install the GRUB bootloader to the master boot record, (sda in our example).

That's it; You have configured and installed your Arch Linux base system. Exit the install, eject the installer CD, and type the magic word:

reboot

Your new Arch Linux system will boot up and finish with a login prompt (you may want to change the boot order in your BIOS back to booting from hard disk).

Congratulations, and welcome to your shiny, new Arch Linux base system!
 The Base System

Your new Arch Linux base system is now a functional GNU/Linux environment ready for customization. From here, you may build this elegant set of tools into whatever you wish or require for your purposes.

Let's begin.

Login with your root account. We will configure pacman and update the system as root, then add a normal user.


Note: Virtual consoles 1-6 are available, as is the links command line web browser.


 Configuring the network (if necessary)

    * This section will assist you in configuring most types of networks, if your network configuration is not working for you. 

If you properly configured your system, you should have a working network. Try to ping www.google.com to verify this.

ping -c 3 www.google.com

If you have successfully established a network connection, continue with Update, Sync and Upgrade the system with pacman.

If, after trying to ping www.google.com, you get an "unknown host" error, you may conclude that your network is not properly configured. You may choose to double-check the following files for integrity and proper settings:

/etc/rc.conf # Specifically, check your HOSTNAME= and NETWORKING section for typos and errors.

/etc/hosts # Double-check your format. (See above.)

/etc/resolv.conf # If you are using a static IP. If you are using DHCP, this file will be dynamically created and destroyed by default, but can be changed to your preference. (See Network.)

Advanced instructions for configuring the network can be found in the Network article.
 Wired LAN

Check your Ethernet with

ifconfig -a

All interfaces will be listed. You should see an entry for eth0, or perhaps eth1. If required, you can set a new static IP with

ifconfig eth0 <ip address> netmask <netmask> up 

and the default gateway with

route add default gw <ip address of the gateway>

Check to see if /etc/resolv.conf contains your DNS server and add it if it is missing. Check your network again with ping www.google.de. If everything is working now, adjust /etc/rc.conf as described above for static IP. If you have a DHCP server/router in your network try

dhcpcd eth0

If this is working, adjust /etc/rc.conf as described above, for dynamic IP.
 Wireless LAN

Detailed setup guide: Wireless Setup
 Analog Modem

To be able to use a Hayes-compatible, external, analog modem, you need to at least have the ppp package installed. Modify the file /etc/ppp/options to suit your needs and according to man pppd. You will need to define a chat script to supply your username and password to the ISP after the initial connection has been established. The manpages for pppd and chat have examples in them that should suffice to get a connection up and running if you're either experienced or stubborn enough. With udev, your serial ports usually are /dev/tts/0 and /dev/tts/1. Tip: Read Dialup without a dialer HOWTO.

Instead of fighting a glorious battle with the plain pppd, you may opt to install wvdial or a similar tool to ease the setup process considerably. In case you're using a so-called WinModem, which is basically a PCI plugin card working as an internal analog modem, you should indulge in the vast information found on the LinModem homepage.
 ISDN

Setting up ISDN is done in three steps:

   1. Install and configure hardware
   2. Install and configure the ISDN utilities
   3. Add settings for your ISP 

The current Arch stock kernels include the necessary ISDN modules, meaning that you won't need to recompile your kernel unless you're about to use rather odd ISDN hardware. After physically installing your ISDN card in your machine or plugging in your USB ISDN-Box, you can try loading the modules with modprobe. Nearly all passive ISDN PCI cards are handled by the hisax module, which needs two parameters: type and protocol. You must set protocol to '1' if your country uses the 1TR6 standard, '2' if it uses EuroISDN (EDSS1), '3' if you're hooked to a so-called leased-line without D-channel, and '4' for US NI1.

Details on all those settings and how to set them is included in the kernel documentation, more specifically in the isdn subdirectory, and available online. The type parameter depends on your card; a list of all possible types can be found in the README.HiSax kernel documentation. Choose your card and load the module with the appropriate options like this:

modprobe hisax type=18 protocol=2

This will load the hisax module for my ELSA Quickstep 1000PCI, being used in Germany with the EDSS1 protocol. You should find helpful debugging output in your /var/log/everything.log file, in which you should see your card being prepared for action. Please note that you will probably need to load some USB modules before you can work with an external USB ISDN Adapter.

Once you have confirmed that your card works with certain settings, you can add the module options to your /etc/modprobe.conf:

alias ippp0 hisax
options hisax type=18 protocol=2

Alternatively, you can add only the options line here, and add hisax to your MODULES array in the rc.conf. It's your choice, really, but this example has the advantage that the module will not be loaded until it's really needed.

That being done, you should have working, supported hardware. Now you need the basic utilities to actually use it!

Install the isdn4k-utils package, and read the manpage to isdnctrl; it'll get you started. Further down in the manpage you will find explanations on how to create a configuration file that can be parsed by isdnctrl, as well as some helpful setup examples. Please note that you have to add your SPID to your MSN setting separated by a colon if you use US NI1.

After you have configured your ISDN card with the isdnctrl utility, you should be able to dial into the machine you specified with the PHONE_OUT parameter, but fail the username and password authentication. To make this work add your username and password to /etc/ppp/pap-secrets or /etc/ppp/chap-secrets as if you were configuring a normal analogous PPP link, depending on which protocol your ISP uses for authentication. If in doubt, put your data into both files.

If you set up everything correctly, you should now be able to establish a dial-up connection with

isdnctrl dial ippp0

as root. If you have any problems, remember to check the logfiles!
 DSL (PPPoE)

These instructions are relevant to you only if your PC itself is supposed to manage the connection to your ISP. You do not need to do anything but define a correct default gateway if you are using a separate router of some sort to do the grunt work.

Before you can use your DSL online connection, you will have to physically install the network card that is supposed to be connected to the DSL-Modem into your computer. After adding your newly installed network card to the modules.conf/modprobe.conf or the MODULES array, you should install the rp-pppoe package and run the pppoe-setup script to configure your connection. After you have entered all the data, you can connect and disconnect your line with

/etc/rc.d/adsl start

and

/etc/rc.d/adsl stop

respectively. The setup usually is rather easy and straightforward, but feel free to read the manpages for hints. If you want to automatically dial in on boot-up, add adsl to your DAEMONS array.
 Update, Sync and Upgrade the system with pacman

Now we will update the system using pacman.
 What is pacman ?

Pacman is the package manager of Arch Linux. Pacman is written in C and is fast, simple, and extremely powerful. It manages your entire package system and handles installation, removal, package downgrade (through cache), custom compiled package handling, automatic dependency resolution, remote and local searches and much more. Arch uses the .tar.gz package format, which further enhances pacman's speed; Gzipped tarballs, though slightly larger, are decompressed much faster than their Bzipped counterparts, and are therefore generally installed more expediently.

We will use pacman to download software packages from remote repositories and install them onto your system.

Pacman is the most important tool in your Arch Linux toolbox for building the base system into whatsoever you please.
 Configuring pacman
 Package Repositories and /etc/pacman.conf

Arch currently offers the following repositories readily accessible through pacman:

[core]

The simple principle behind [core] is to provide only one of each necessary tool for a base Arch Linux system; The GNU toolchain, the Linux kernel, one editor, one command line browser, etc. (There are a few exceptions to this. For instance, both vi and nano are provided, allowing the user to choose one or both.) Developer maintained.

    * The Core installation cd simply contains an installer script, and a snapshot of the core repository. 

[extra]

The [extra] repository contains all Arch packages that are not themselves necessary for a base Arch system, but contribute to a more full-featured environment. X, KDE and GNOME, for instance, can be found here. Developer maintained.

[unstable]

The [unstable] repository contains experimental and unstable software, especially if the development version of a package has become popular for some reason. For example, perhaps the upstream stable version is hopelessly out of date, or the unstable version has some groundbreaking changes that a lot of users seem interested in, like experimental kernel drivers or -svn package versions. Developer maintained.


Note: Contrary to popular belief, it is perfectly safe to enable the unstable repository, as there are no name collisions with [core], [community] or [extra]. Packages from [unstable] are only installed if you explicitly do so. If there is a conflict between an [Unstable] package and an installed package, pacman will warn you and resolve the conflict, if prompted, by removing the installed package.


The [unstable] repository is currently not maintained for x86_64.

[testing]

The [testing] repository contains packages that are candidates for the [core], [extra] or [unstable] repositories. New packages go into [testing] if:

    * they are expected to break something on update and need to be tested first
    * they require other packages to be rebuilt. In this case, all packages that need to be rebuilt are put into [testing] first and when all rebuilds are done, they are moved back to the other repositories. Developer maintained. 

[testing] is the only repository that can have name collisions with any of the other official repositories. If enabled, it has to be the first repo listed in your pacman.conf file.


Note: Be careful when enabling [testing]. Your system may break after you update with [testing] enabled. Only experienced users should use it.


[community]

The [community] repository is maintained by the Trusted Users (TUs) and is part of the Arch User Repository (AUR). It contains binary packages from the AUR that have enough votes and were adopted by a TU. Like all repos listed above, [community] may be readily accessed by pacman.

The AUR also contains the unsupported branch, which cannot be accessed directly by pacman*. [unsupported] contains more than 8 thousand PKGBUILD scripts for building packages from source, that may be unavailable through the other repos.

*The yaourt tool, an extremely popular, community contributed wrapper for pacman, can seamlessly access the AUR.

/etc/pacman.conf

pacman will attempt to read /etc/pacman.conf each time it is invoked. This configuration file is divided into sections, or repositories. Each section defines a package repository that pacman can use when searching for packages. The exception to this is the options section, which defines global options.

nano /etc/pacman.conf

Example:

[core]
# Add your preferred servers here, they will be used first
 Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
[extra]
# Add your preferred servers here, they will be used first
 Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
#[unstable]
# Add your preferred servers here, they will be used first
 Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
[community]
# Add your preferred servers here, they will be used first
 Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Enable all desired repositories (remove the # in front of the 'Include =' and '[repository]' lines).


    * When choosing repos, be sure to uncomment both the repository header lines in [brackets] as well as the 'Include =' lines. Failure to do so will result in the selected repository being omitted! This is a very common error. 

 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Faster mirrors will dramatically improve pacman performance, and your overall Arch Linux experience.

Edit /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist:

nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Remove all mirrors which are not on your continent, or are extremely distant. (Using nano, you may use CTRL-K to cut each unneeded line.)

Edit /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist by placing the best mirror at the top of the list. (Recall that archlinux.org is throttled to 50KB/s). If using nano, you can cut a line with CTRL-K and paste with CTRL-U.

After changing mirrors, issue the following command:

pacman -Syy

This will force pacman to resynchronize with the new repo. Issuing pacman -Syy whenever a mirror is changed, is good practice and will avoid possible headaches.
 Ignoring packages

When you execute the command "pacman -Syu", your entire system will be updated. It is possible that you want to prevent a package from being upgraded. An example could be the kernel (kernel26) or a package for which an upgrade may prove problematic for your system. In this case, you have two options; indicate the packages you want to skip in the pacman command line using the --ignore switch (do pacman -S --help for details) or permanently indicate the packages you want to skip in your /etc.pacman.conf file:

IgnorePkg = kernel26

The typical way to use Arch is to use pacman to install all packages unless there is no package available, in which case you can build your own package using ABS. Many user-contributed packages are available in the Arch User Repository. You are expected to keep your system up to date with pacman -Syu, rather than selectively upgrading packages. Use of IgnorePkg in /etc/pacman.conf is therefore discouraged, and should be used sparingly, if you know what you are doing.

You may diverge from this typical usage as you wish; just be warned that there is a greater chance that things will not work as intended and that it could break your system. The majority of complaints happen when selective upgrading or unusual compilation is performed.
 Ignoring Configuration Files

In the same vein, you can also "protect" your configuration/system files from being overwritten during "pacman -Su" using the following option in your /etc/pacman.conf

NoUpgrade   = etc/lilo.conf boot/grub/menu.lst

 Update System

Update, sync, and upgrade your entire new system with:

pacman -Syu

pacman will now fetch the latest information about available packages and perform all available upgrades. (You may be prompted to upgrade pacman itself at this point. If so, say yes, and then reissue the pacman -Syu command when finished.) Reboot if a kernel upgrade has occurred.


Note: Occasionally, configuration changes may take place requiring user action during an update; read pacman's output for any pertinent information.


 The beauty of the Arch rolling release model

Keep in mind that Arch is a rolling release distribution. This means there is never a reason to reinstall or perform elaborate system rebuilds to upgrade to the newest version. Simply issuing pacman -Syu periodically keeps your entire system up-to-date and on the bleeding edge. At the end of this upgrade, your system is completely current. Reboot if a kernel upgrade has occurred.
 Get familiar with pacman

Pacman is the Arch user's best friend. It is highly recommended to study and learn how to use the pacman tool. Try:

man pacman

Check out the bottom of this article, and look up the pacman wiki entries at your leisure.


 Add a user and setup groups

You should not do your everyday work using the root account. It is more than poor practice; it is dangerous. Root is for administrative tasks. Instead, add a normal user account using:

adduser

While most default options are safe to use, you may want to add storage, audio, video, optical, and wheel to your additional groups- especially if you are planning on having a full-featured desktop environment.

Groups and users thereof are defined in /etc/group.

They include:

    * audio - for tasks involving sound card and related software 

    * wheel - for using sudo 

    * storage - for managing storage devices 

    * video - for video tasks and 3d acceleration 

    * optical - for managing tasks pertaining to the optical drive(s) 

    * floppy - for access to a floppy if applicable 

    * lp - for managing printing tasks 

See the Groups article to understand what groups you need to be a member of.

Check the man pages for usermod and gpasswd for more information.
 Install and setup Sudo

See Sudo
 Part II: Install X and configure ALSA
 Configure the audio card with alsamixer

The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (known by the acronym ALSA) is a Linux kernel component intended to replace the original Open Sound System (OSS) for providing device drivers for sound cards. Besides the sound device drivers, ALSA also bundles a user space library for application developers who want to use driver features with a higher level API than direct interaction with the kernel drivers.


Note: udev will automatically probe your hardware on boot-up, loading the corresponding module for your audio card. Your sound should already be working, but you can't hear anything because it is muted by default.

The alsa-utils package contains alsamixer, which will allow us to configure the sound device from the console. (You may also run alsamixer from an X environment later.)

Install the alsa-utils package:

 pacman -S alsa-utils

Did you add your normal user to the audio group? If not, now would be a good time. As root do:

gpasswd -a yourusername audio

Log your normal user out and back in to ensure the audio group is loaded.

As normal, non-root user, do:

$ alsamixer

Unmute the Master and PCM channels by scrolling to them with cursor left/right and pressing M. Increase the volume levels with the cursor-up key. (70-90 Should be a safe range.) Leave alsamixer by pressing ESC.
 Sound Test

Test your sound configuration as normal user using aplay:

aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

You should hear a very eloquent woman say, "Front, center."

Then run alsactl as root:

alsactl store

This will create '/etc/asound.state', saving the alsamixer settings.

Also, add the alsa daemon to your DAEMONS section in /etc/rc.conf to automatically restore the mixer settings on boot-up.

nano /etc/rc.conf
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network crond alsa)

Note that the alsa daemon merely restores your volume mixer levels on boot up by reading /etc/asound.state. It is separate from the alsa audio library (and kernel level API).

Expanded information available in the ALSA wiki entry.
 Installing and configuring X

The X Window System (commonly X11, or just simply X) is a networking and display protocol which provides windowing on bitmap displays. It provides the standard toolkit and protocol to build graphical user interfaces (GUIs) on UNIX-like operating systems.

X provides the basic framework, or primitives, for building GUI environments: drawing and moving windows on the screen and interacting with a mouse and/or keyboard. X does not mandate the user interface — individual client programs handle this.

X is so named because it was preceded by the W Window System, originally developed at Stanford University.


Note: If you plan on using an open-source video driver, and need 3d acceleration, it is recommended to install the libgl library before installing Xorg:

pacman -S libgl

(Proprietary video drivers provide their own gl library implementations.)

Now we will install the base Xorg packages using pacman. This is the first step in building a GUI.

pacman -S xorg

3d utilities such as glxgears are included in the mesa package:

pacman -S mesa

Now we have the base packages we need for running the X Server. You should add the driver for your graphics card now (e.g. xf86-video-<name>). The easiest way to configure X.org is by installing the correct driver packages first, and then generating /etc/X11/xorg.conf using an autoconfiguration script, like Xorg -configure.

If you need a list of all open-source video drivers, do:

pacman -Ss xf86-video | less

You will need knowledge of which video chipset your machine has. If you don't know, do:

lspci | grep VGA

Here is a list of open source drivers, and corresponding video chipsets.

    * xf86-video-apm Alliance ProMotion video driver
    * xf86-video-ark ark video driver
    * xf86-video-ati ati video driver
    * xf86-video-chips Chips and Technologies video driver
    * xf86-video-cirrus Cirrus Logic video driver
    * xf86-video-dummy dummy video driver
    * xf86-video-fbdev framebuffer video driver
    * xf86-video-glint GLINT/Permedia video driver
    * xf86-video-i128 Number 0 i128 video driver
    * xf86-video-i740 Intel i740 video driver
    * xf86-video-i810 Intel i810/i830/i9xx video drivers (deprecated - use -intel)
    * xf86-video-intel Newer Version of Intel i810/i830/i9xx video drivers
    * xf86-video-imstt Integrated Micro Solutions Twin Turbo vidoe driver
    * xf86-video-mga mga video driver (Matrox Graphics Adapter)
    * xf86-video-neomagic neomagic video driver
    * xf86-video-nv nvidia nv video driver
    * xf86-video-rendition Rendition video driver
    * xf86-video-s3 S3 video driver
    * xf86-video-s3virge S3 Virge video driver
    * xf86-video-savage savage video driver
    * xf86-video-siliconmotion siliconmotion video driver
    * xf86-video-sis SiS video driver
    * xf86-video-sisusb SiS USB video driver
    * xf86-video-tdfx tdfx video driver
    * xf86-video-trident Trident video driver
    * xf86-video-tseng tseng video driver
    * xf86-video-unichrome Unichrome video drivers
    * xf86-video-v4l v4l video driver
    * xf86-video-vesa vesa video driver
    * xf86-video-vga VGA 16 color video driver
    * xf86-video-via via video driver
    * xf86-video-vmware vmware video driver
    * xf86-video-voodoo voodoo video driver 

    * Note that the vesa driver is the most generic, and should work with almost any modern video chipset. If you cannot find a suitable driver for your video chipset, vesa should work. 

    * If you have an NVIDIA or ATI video adapter, you may wish to install the proprietary NVIDIA or ATI drivers. Installing proprietary video drivers is covered below. 

Use pacman to install the appropriate video driver for your video card/onboard video. e.g.:

pacman -S xf86-video-savage

(for the Savage driver.)
 Create /etc/X11/xorg.conf
 What is /etc/X11/xorg.conf?

/etc/X11/xorg.conf is the main configuration file for your X Window System, the foundation of your Graphical User Interface. It is a plain text file ordered into sections and subsections. Important sections are Files, InputDevice, Module, Monitor, Modes, Screen, Device, and ServerLayout. Sections can appear in any order and there may be more than one section of each kind, for example, if you have more than one monitor, or if your laptop has a trackpoint as well as a mouse.

By default, you will not have an Xorg config file, and with the newest versions of Xorg, you don't need one if the autodetection works satisfactorily and you don't need to turn on features such as aiglx and so on.

Most people will still find that they need to generate a config file, however.


Advanced users may wish to manually create their own xorg.conf file. You may also use the Xorg -configure script to make a basic config file. As root, do:

Xorg -configure

This will create a config file at /root/xorg.conf.new

To test the server, run:

X -config /root/xorg.conf.new

X should start with the white hollow vector X in the center of the screen, which should respond to mouse, trackpoint or touchpad movement. Use CTRL-Alt-Backspace to exit X.

Inspect your config file in case of errors:

nano /root/xorg.conf.new

Ensure the Xorg -configure script has correctly specified your video driver. e.g.:

Section "Device"

       ...

       Driver  "savage"

       ...

EndSection

Ensure there are horizontal sync and vertical refresh specs under section "Monitor". If not, add them:

Section "Monitor"
       Identifier   "Monitor0"
       VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
       ModelName    "Monitor Model"
       HorizSync     30.0 - 130.0 # Safe for LCD's
       VertRefresh   50.0 - 100.0 # Safe for LCD's and most CRT's.
EndSection

(If you do not know these specs, consult your monitor's documentation.)

Specify your default color depth under section "Screen":

Section "Screen"
       Identifier "Screen0"
       Device     "Card0"
       Monitor    "Monitor0"
       DefaultDepth 24

(Typically, this will be set to 24 for true color.)

Also add your desired Modes to your "Display" subsection, at least under the Depth 24 header, e.g.:

 SubSection "Display"
               Viewport   0 0
               Depth     24
               Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

Add the following section, if you wish to enable eye candy which requires the composite extension:

Section "Extensions"
 	Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Try your config again, after modifying:

X -config /root/xorg.conf.new

Ensure an X session opens, without errors, and move the generated config file to /etc/X11/:

mv /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Detailed instructions in the Xorg article.
 Alternative xorg.conf generation

If Xorg -configure is not generating a usable xorg.conf, you may alternatively use the hwd tool. Install with:

pacman -S hwd

And run with

hwd -xa 

Lastly, you may choose xorgconfig, which will prompt you for hardware information to make an xorg.conf:

xorgconfig

Continue with Simple baseline X test
 Using proprietary Graphics Driver (NVIDIA, ATI)

You may choose to use the proprietary video drivers from NVIDIA or ATI.
 NVIDIA Graphic Cards

The NVIDIA proprietary drivers are generally considered to be of good quality, and offer 3D performance, whereas the open source nv driver offers only 2d support at this time.

Before you configure your Graphics Card you will need to know which driver fits. Arch currently has 3 different driver packages that each match a certain subset of Cards:

1. nvidia-71xx for very old Cards like TNT and TNT2

2. nvidia-96xx slightly newer cards up to the GF 4

3. nvidia newest GPUs after the GF 4

Consult the NVIDIA-Homepage to see which one is for you. The difference is only for the installation; Configuration works the same with every driver.

Select and install the appropriate NVIDIA driver for your card, e.g.:

pacman -S nvidia-96xx

The NVIDIA package has a utility for updating your existing /etc/X11/xorg.conf for use with the NVIDIA driver:

nvidia-xconfig

It also has several options which will further specify the contents and options of the xorg.conf file. For example,

nvidia-xconfig --composite --add-argb-glx-visuals

For more detailed information, see nvidia-xconfig(1).

Some useful tweaking options in the device section are (beware that these may not work on your system):

       Option          "RenderAccel" "true"
       Option          "NoLogo" "true"
       Option          "AGPFastWrite" "true"
       Option          "EnablePageFlip" "true"

Make sure all instances of DRI are commented out:

#    Load        "dri"

Double check your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to make sure your default depth, horizontal sync, vertical refresh, and resolutions are acceptable.

Update kernel module dependencies:

depmod -a

Advanced instructions for nvidia configuration can be found in the NVIDIA article.

Continue with Simple baseline X test
 ATI Graphic Cards

ATI owners have two options for drivers. If you are unsure which driver to use, please try the open-source one first. The open-source driver will suit most needs along with being generally less problematic.

Install the proprietary ATI Driver with

pacman -S catalyst

Use the aticonfig tool to modify the xorg.conf.

Install the open-source ATI Driver with

pacman -S xf86-video-ati

Currently, the performance of the open-source driver is not on par with that of the proprietary one. It also lacks TV-out, dual-link DVI support, and possibly other features. On the other hand, it supports Aiglx and has better dual-head support.


Note: The latest proprietary driver does support AIGLX now. To use Compiz or Beryl add Option "AIGLX" "True" to Section ServerFlags and Option "Composite" "True" to Section Extensions.

Advanced instructions for ATI configuration can be found in the ATI wiki.
 Simple baseline X test

At this point, you should have xorg installed, with a suitable video driver and an /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration file. If you want to test your configuration quickly, to ensure your ability to start X from the command line before installing a complete desktop environment, you can do so by invoking xterm. Xterm is a very simple terminal emulator which runs in the X Server environment; it is installed as part of the base xorg packages.

And this is how you perform the test:
 ~/.xinitrc

This file dictates what X Window client is invoked with the startx and/or xinit command on a per-user basis. (The startx script is merely a front end to the more versatile xinit command.)

To determine the client to run, startx/xinit will first look for a .xinitrc file in the user's home directory. In the absence of file ~/.xinitrc, it defaults to the global xinitrc in the xinit library directory; /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc, which defaults to using the TWM window manager. (Hence, if you invoke startx without a ~/.xinitrc file, a TWM session will start.)

Switch to your normal, non-root user:

su yourusername

    * /etc/skel/ contains files and directories to provide sane defaults for newly created user accounts. The name skel is derived from the word skeleton, because the files it contains form the basic structure for users' home directories. 

Copy the sample xinitrc file from /etc/skel/ to your home directory:

cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc ~/

Edit the file:

nano ~/.xinitrc

and add:

exec xterm

So that it looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
#
# ~/.xinitrc
#
# Executed by startx (run your window manager from here)
#
exec xterm
# exec wmaker
# exec startkde
# exec icewm
# exec blackbox
# exec fluxbox

Be sure to have only one uncommented exec line in your ~/.xinitrc at this time. Below, we shall edit this file again to specify the appropriate desktop environment/window manager of your choice.

Start X Server as normal, non-root user, with:

startx

or

xinit

You should have an xterm session open up. You can exit the X Server with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, or by typing "exit". If you have problems starting X, you can look for errors in the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file and on the console output of the console you started X from.

Advanced instructions for Xorg configuration can be found in the Xorg article.
 Part III: Installing and configuring a Desktop Environment

While The X Window System provides the basic framework for building a graphical user interface (GUI), a Desktop Environment (DE), works atop and in conjunction with X, to provide a completely functional and dynamic GUI. A DE typically provides icons, applets, windows, toolbars, folders, wallpapers, applications and abilities like drag and drop. The particular functionalities and designs of each DE will uniquely affect your overall environment and experience. Therefore, choosing a DE is a very subjective and personal decision. Choose the best environment for your needs.

    * If you want something full-featured and similar to Windows and Mac OSX, KDE is a good choice
    * If you want something slightly more minimalist, which follows the K.I.S.S. principle more closely, GNOME is a good choice
    * Xfce is generally perceived as similar to GNOME, but lighter and less demanding on system resources, yet still visually pleasing and providing a very complete environment. 

If you have an older machine, or desire a lighter, less demanding GUI, you may choose to simply install a Window Manager, or WM. A WM controls the placement and appearance of application windows in conjunction with the X Window System but does NOT provide such additions as panels, applets, icons, etc.

    * Lightweight WM's include: openbox, fluxbox, fvwm2, windowmaker and twm.
    * If you need something completely different, try ion, wmii, dwm, or xmonad. 

 Install Fonts

At this point, you may want to install some good-looking fonts, before installing a desktop environment/window manager, (so you don't have to stare at ugly bitmap fonts in X). Dejavu and bitstream-vera are nice font sets. For websites, you may want to have the Microsoft fonts too. Install with:

pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts ttf-dejavu ttf-bitstream-vera

 ~/.xinitrc (again)

As non-root user, edit your /home/username/.xinitrc to utilize the DE you wish to use. This will allow you to use startx/xinit from the shell to open your DE/WM of choice:

nano ~/.xinitrc

Uncomment or add the 'exec ..' line of the appropriate desktop environment/window manager. Some examples are below.

For the Xfce4 desktop environment:

 exec startxfce4 

For the KDE desktop environment:

 exec startkde

A startkde or startxfce4 command starts the KDE or Xfce4 desktop environment. This command does not finish until you logout of the DE. Normally the shell would wait for KDE to finish, then run the next command. The "exec" prefix to this command tells the shell that this is the last command, so the shell does not need to wait to run a subsequent command.

Remember to have only one uncommented exec line in your ~/.xinitrc for now.

Continue below, installing the DE/WM of your choice.
 GNOME
 About GNOME

The GNU Network Object Model Environment. The GNOME project provides two things: The GNOME desktop environment, an intuitive and attractive desktop for end-users, and the GNOME development platform, an extensive framework for building applications that integrate into the rest of the desktop.
 Installation

Install the GNOME environment with:

pacman -S gnome

You can also optionally install gnome-extra with:

pacman -S gnome-extra

It's safe to choose all packages shown in the extra package.
 Useful DAEMONS for GNOME

Recall from above that a daemon is a program that runs in the background, waiting for events to occur and offering services. The hal daemon, among other things, will automate the mounting of disks, optical drives, and USB drives/thumbdrives for use in the GUI. The fam daemon will allow real-time representation of file alterations in the GUI, allowing instant access to recently installed programs, or changes in the file system. Both hal and fam make life easier for the GNOME user. The hal and fam packages are installed when you install GNOME, but must be invoked to become useful.

You may want to install a graphical login manager. For GNOME, the gdm daemon is a good choice.

As root:

pacman -S gdm

You will almost certainly want the hal and fam daemons.

Start hal and fam:

/etc/rc.d/hal start

/etc/rc.d/fam start

Add them to your /etc/rc.conf DAEMONS section, so they will be invoked on bootup:

nano /etc/rc.conf

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network crond alsa hal fam gdm)

(If you prefer to log into the console and manually start X in the 'Slackware tradition', leave out gdm.)


As normal user, start X:

startx

If ~/.xinitrc is not configured for GNOME, you may always start it with xinit:

xinit /usr/bin/gnome-session

You may want to install a terminal and an editor. I would recommend gnome-terminal (part of the group gnome-extra) and geany:

pacman -S geany gnome-terminal

Advanced instructions for installing and configuring GNOME can be found in the Gnome article.

Congratulations! Welcome to your GNOME desktop environment on your new Arch Linux system! You may wish to continue by viewing Tweaks and finishing touches, or the rest of the information below. You may also be interested in the Post Installation Tips wiki article.
 Eye Candy

You may find the default GNOME theme and icons not very attractive. A nice gtk theme is murrine. Install it with

pacman -S gtk-engine-murrine

and select it with System->Preferences->Theme. You can find more themes, icons, and wallpaper at Gnome Look.
 KDE
 About KDE

The K Desktop Environment. KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of UNIX-like operating systems.
 Installation

Arch offers several versions of kde: kde, kdebase, and KDEmod. Choose one of the following, and continue below with Useful KDE DAEMONS:

1.) Package kde is the complete, vanilla KDE, ~300MB.

pacman -S kde

2.) Package kdebase is a slimmed-down version with less applications, ~80MB.

pacman -S kdebase

3.) Lastly, KDEmod is an Arch Linux exclusive, community-driven system which is modified for extreme performance and modularity. The KDEmod project website can be found at http://kdemod.ath.cx/. KDEmod is extremely fast, lightweight and responsive, with a pleasing, customized theme.
 Useful KDE DAEMONS

KDE will require the hal (Hardware Abstraction Layer) and fam (File Alteration Monitor) daemons. The kdm daemon is the K Display Manager, which provides a graphical login, if desired.

Recall from above that a daemon is a program that runs in the background, waiting for events to occur and offering services. The hal daemon, among other things, will automate the mounting of disks, optical drives, and USB drives/thumbdrives for use in the GUI. The fam daemon will allow real-time representation of file alterations in the GUI, allowing instant access to recently installed programs, or changes in the file system.. Both hal and fam make life easier for the KDE user. The hal, fam and kdm packages are installed when you install KDE, but must be invoked to become useful.

Start hal and fam:

/etc/rc.d/hal start

/etc/rc.d/fam start


Note: The hal daemon relies on, and will automatically start, the dbus daemon.

Edit your DAEMONS section in /etc/rc.conf:

nano /etc/rc.conf

Add hal and fam to your DAEMONS section, to invoke them on bootup. If you prefer a graphical login, add kdm as well:

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network crond alsa hal fam kdm)

    * This method will start the system at runlevel 3, (/etc/inittab default, multiuser mode), and then start KDM as a daemon. 

    * Some users prefer an alternative method of starting a display manager like KDM on bootup by utilizing the /etc/inittab method and starting the system at runlevel 5. See Adding a login manager (KDM, GDM, or XDM) to automatically boot on startup for more. 

    * If you prefer to log into the console at runlevel 3, and manually start X in the 'Slackware tradition', leave out kdm, or comment it out with an exclamation. ( ! ) 

Now try starting your X Server as normal user:

startx

Advanced instructions for installing and configuring KDE can be found in the KDE article.

Congratulations! Welcome to your KDE desktop environment on your new Arch Linux system! You may wish to continue by viewing Tweaks and finishing touches, or the rest of the information below. You may also be interested in the Post Installation Tips wiki article.
 Xfce
 About Xfce

The cholesterol-free X environment. Xfce, like GNOME or KDE, is a desktop environment, but aims to be fast and lightweight while still being visually appealing and easy to use. It contains a suite of apps like a root window app, window manager, file manager, panel, etc. Xfce is written using the GTK2 toolkit (like GNOME) and contains its own development environment (libraries, daemons, etc) similar to other big DEs. Unlike GNOME or KDE, Xfce is lightweight and designed more around CDE than Windows or Mac. It has a much slower development cycle, but is very stable and extremely fast. Xfce is great for older hardware, and will fly with especially great speed on newer machines as well.
 Installation

Install Xfce:

pacman -S xfce4 

You may also wish to install themes and extras:

pacman -S xfce4-goodies gtk2-themes-collection

If you want to admire 'Tips and Tricks' on login, you must install the fortune-mod package:

pacman -S fortune-mod 

 Useful DAEMONS

Recall from above that a daemon is a program that runs in the background, waiting for events to occur and offering services. The hal daemon, among other things, will automate the mounting of disks, optical drives, and USB drives/thumbdrives for use in the GUI. The fam daemon will allow real-time representation of file alterations in the GUI, allowing instant access to recently installed programs, or changes in the file system. The hal and fam packages are installed when you install Xfce, but must be invoked to become useful.

Start hal and fam:

/etc/rc.d/hal start

/etc/rc.d/fam start


Note: The hal daemon relies on, and will automatically start, the dbus daemon.

Edit your DAEMONS section in /etc/rc.conf:

nano /etc/rc.conf

Add hal and fam to your DAEMONS section, to invoke them on bootup.

Advanced instructions for installing and configuring Xfce can be found in the Xfce article.

If you wish to install one, see Adding a login manager (KDM, GDM, or XDM) to automatically boot on startup

Congratulations! Welcome to your Xfce desktop environment on your new Arch Linux system! You may wish to continue by viewing Tweaks and finishing touches, or the rest of the information below. You may also be interested in the Post Installation Tips wiki article.
 *box
 Fluxbox

Fluxbox © is yet another windowmanager for X. It's based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code. Fluxbox looks like blackbox and handles styles, colors, window placement and similar things exactly like blackbox (100% theme/style compability).

Install Fluxbox using

pacman -S fluxbox fluxconf

If you use gdm/kdm a new fluxbox session will be automatically added. Otherwise, you should modify your user's .xinitrc and add this to it:

exec startfluxbox 

More information is available in the Fluxbox article.
 Openbox

Openbox is a standards compliant, fast, light-weight, extensible window manager.

Openbox works with your applications, and makes your desktop easier to manage. This is because the approach to its development was the opposite of what seems to be the general case for window managers. Openbox was written first to comply with standards and to work properly. Only when that was in place did the team turn to the visual interface.

Openbox is fully functional as a stand-alone working environment, or can be used as a drop-in replacement for the default window manager in the GNOME or KDE desktop environments.

Install openbox using

pacman -S openbox obconf obmenu

Once openbox is installed you will get a message to move menu.xml & rc.xml to ~/.config/openbox/ in your home directory:

mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox/
cp /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml ~/.config/openbox/
cp /etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml ~/.config/openbox/

In the file "rc.xml" you can change various settings for Openbox (or you can use OBconf). In "menu.xml" you can change your right-click menu.

To be able to log into openbox you can either go via graphical login using KDM/GDM or startx, in which case you will need to edit your ~/.xinitrc (as user) and add the following:

exec openbox

You may also start openbox from the shell using xinit:

xinit /usr/bin/openbox-session

    * Openbox may also be used as the window manager for GNOME, KDE, and Xfce. 

For KDM there is nothing left to do; openbox is listed in the sessions menu in KDM.

Useful programs for openbox are:

    * PyPanel or LXpanel if you want a panel
    * feh if you want to set the background
    * ROX if you want a simple file manager and desktop icons 

More information is available in the Openbox article.
 fvwm2

FVWM is an extremely powerful ICCCM-compliant multiple virtual desktop window manager for the X Window system. Development is active, and support is excellent.

Install fvwm2 with

pacman -S fvwm 

fvwm will automatically be listed in kdm/gdm in the sessions menu. Otherwise, add

exec fvwm 

to your user's .xinitrc.

Note that this stable version of fvwm is a few years old. If you want a more recent version of fvwm, there is a fvwm-devel package in the unstable repo.
 APPENDIX
 Tweaks/Finishing touches
 Install Yaourt

Yet AnOther User Repository Tool. Yaourt is a community-contributed wrapper for pacman which adds seamless access to the AUR, allowing and automating package compilation and installation from your choice of the 8000+ PKGBUILDs in the AUR, in addition to the many thousands of available Arch binary packages. Yaourt uses the same exact syntax as pacman, which saves you from relearning an entirely new method of system maintenance, but also adds new options. Yaourt expands the power and simplicity of pacman by adding even more useful features and provides pleasing, colorized output, interactive search mode, and much more. You will almost certainly want this.

The easiest way to install Yaourt is to add the yaourt repository to your /etc/pacman.conf:

[archlinuxfr]
Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/i686

for i686 or:

[archlinuxfr]
Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/x86_64

for x86-64.

Sync and install:

pacman -Sy yaourt

If you wish, you may then create your own command aliases in ~/.bashrc to save typing:

nano ~/.bashrc

alias p="pacman"
alias y="yaourt" 

Save and then source:

source ~/.bashrc

See the yaourt man page for more.
 HAL

Since you have now installed a desktop environment, and if you did not do so earlier, now would be a good time to also install HAL. HAL allows plug-and-play for your mobile phone, your iPod, your external HD's, etc. It will mount the device and make a nice visual icon on your desktop and/or in 'My Computer', allowing you to access the device after you have plugged it in instead of having to manually configure the /etc/fstab file or udev rules for each and every new device.

KDE, GNOME and XFCE all use HAL.

The installation procedure is described in the HAL article. Some information can also be found at Wikipedia.
 Backgrounding DAEMONS on startup

To speed up system start up procedure, background selected DAEMONS in /etc/rc.conf by prefixing them with a '@' e.g.:

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng @network crond @alsa @hal @fam @kdm)

This will enable daemons to load in the background, without waiting for the preceding daemon to load first.

Prefix any daemons which you do not need with a bang (!) e.g.:

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng @network !netfs !crond @alsa @hal @fam @kdm)

Alternatively, you may also simply remove unneeded daemons.
 Beautifying Fonts for LCD's

See Fonts
 Adjusting Mouse for scroll wheel

While your mouse should be working out of the box, you may want to use your scroll wheel. Add this to your Input Section (mouse0):

       Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"

 Get All Mouse Buttons Working

See Get All Mouse Buttons Working
 Configuring Touchpad for Laptops

See Touchpad Synaptics
 Adjusting Keyboard Layout

You may want to change your keyboard layout. To do this edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add these lines in the InputDevice Section (Keyboard0) (the example shows a German keyboard layout with no dead keys; alter this to fit your needs).

       Option          "XkbLayout"     "de"
       Option          "XkbVariant"    "nodeadkeys"

 Additional tweaks for laptops

ACPI support is needed if you want to use some special functions on your notebook (e.g. sleep, sleep when lid is closed, special keys...). Install acpid using

pacman -S acpid

and add it to the daemons in /etc/rc.conf. acpid should be started before hal and dbus, so take care to place it before any calls to hal and dbus. Manually, it can be started by

/etc/rc.d/acpid start

More-specific information about Arch Linux on various Laptops can be found at Category:Laptops (English)
 Configuring CPU frequency scaling

Modern processors can decrease their frequency and voltage to reduce heat and power consumption. Less heat leads to a quieter system; Laptop users will definitely want this, but even a desktop system will benefit from it. Install cpufrequtils with

pacman -S cpufrequtils

Edit the config file /etc/conf.d/cpufreq and change

governor="ondemand"

which dynamically increases the CPU frequency if needed (which is a safe choice on desktop systems too). Alter min_freq and max_freq to match your system's CPU spec. If you don't know the frequencies, run cpufreq-info after loading one of the frequency scaling modules. You can also comment out or delete the min_freq and max_freq lines: things will work automatically. Add the frequency scaling modules to your /etc/rc.conf modules line. Most modern notebooks and desktops can simply use the acpi-cpufreq driver, however other options include the p4-clockmod, powernow-k6, powernow-k7, powernow-k8, and speedstep-centrino drivers. Load the module with

modprobe <modulname> 

and start cpufreq with

/etc/rc.d/cpufreq start

For more details, see Cpufrequtils
 Pm-Utils

The pm-utils package will allow you to suspend-to-RAM and hibernate:

pacman -S pm-utils

Pm-utils wiki page.
 Laptop-Mode

The laptop-mode-tools package is sort of a one-stop configuration for all laptop power management utilities. It works in conjunction with other installed tools to fully configure everything from hard disk spin-down to X display DPMS standby times, if desired.

pacman -S laptop-mode-tools

Add laptop-mode to your DAEMONS= line in /etc/rc.conf and configure /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf.
 File and directory explanation

/boot/grub/menu.lst

GRUB is the default bootloader for Arch Linux. You should check and modify this file to accommodate your boot setup if you want to use GRUB, otherwise read on about the LILO configuration.

Make sure you read the warning regarding the pata transition elaborated on in the fstab section!

Configuring GRUB is quite easy, the biggest hurdle is that it uses yet another device naming scheme different from /dev; Your hard disks as a whole are referred to as (hd0), (hd1), etc., sequentially numbered in order of appearance on the IDE/SCSI bus, just like the hda, hdb, etc. names in Linux. The partitions of a disk are referred to with (hd0,0), (hd0,1) and so on, with 0 meaning the first partition. A few conversion examples are included in the default menu.lst to aid your understanding.

Once you grasped the concept of device naming, all you need to do is to choose a nice title for your boot section(s), supply the correct root partition device as a parameter to the root option to have it mounted as / on bootup, and create a kernel line that includes the partition and path where the kernel is located as well as any boot parameters. If using the stock Arch 2.6.x kernel, you'll also need an initrd line that points to the kernel26.img file in your /boot directory. The path you put on your initrd line should be the same as the path to vmlinuz26 that you provide on the kernel line. You should be fine with the defaults, just check whether the partition information is correct in the root and kernel lines, especially in regard to the pata issue!

To create a boot option that loads the bootsector of a different OS, the following example might be helpful. You will probably succeed in starting any Microsoft-based operating system with it, just add this block to the file after any other sections, and modify the partition device accordingly to refer to the partition containing the bootsector of the OS you are intending to boot.

 (1) Other OS
 title My Other OS
 rootnoverify (hd0,1)
 makeactive
 chainloader +1

For advanced configuration of other OSes, please refer to the online GRUB manual.

After checking your bootloader configuration for correctness, you'll be prompted for a partition to install the loader to. Unless you're using yet another boot loader, you should install GRUB to the MBR of the installation disk, which is usually represented by the appropriate device name without a number suffix.


/etc/lilo.conf

This is the configuration file for the LILO bootloader. Make sure you check this one and get it right if you want to use LILO to boot your system. See LILO documentation for help on this.

Things you should check are the root= lines in the image sections and the boot= line right at the beginning of the file. The root lines specify the device which shall be mounted as the root filesystem on bootup. If you don't know what is supposed to be entered here, change to another terminal and type mount to see a list of all currently mounted drives, and look for the line which displays a device name mounted on /mnt type [...]. The device path at the beginning of this very line should be entered in the root lines of your lilo.conf. Change if necessary, and keep the pata issue in mind!

The boot line should be okay by default in most cases. Unless you have a weird boot manager setup in mind with multiple OSes, the device referenced here should be having the same prefix your root lines have, but not end with a number. For example, a root of /dev/hda3 means you probably want to install LILO into the Master Boot Record of the hard disk, so you would set boot to /dev/hda, which references the disk as a whole. During installation, the boot device must be the current name of the device where you want to write the boot sector to; This may differ from the name of the device after the first boot, thanks to the pata transition! Check carefully what device to write to during the installation stage, for example with the mount command.

To prevent some serious grief, you should make sure you know how to restore the bootsector of your other OSes, for example with Windows's FIXBOOT/FIXMBR tools.

To be on the safe side, you should keep the option lba32 listed. This will prevent some geometry issues from happening.

In some cases, depending on your BIOS, LILO will not run on bootup and spill out an error code infinitely. In most cases you either removed the lba32 option, or your hardware setup is a little special, meaning that maybe your CD-ROM drive is primary master and the hard disk you installed secondary slave. This can very well confuse your BIOS, and thus stop the boot process. To prevent that you can try and make the install drive the primary master on your IDE bus. If you've got a mixed IDE and SCSI system and the problem persists, you'll probably need some experimentation with the disk and bios options of LILO to provide a working mapping; The disk drives in your system are numbered sequentially by your BIOS, starting with 0x80. If you're lucky your SCSI controller tells you which drive has which BIOS ID, but usually you're not. How the drives are effectively numbered is depending on your BIOS, so in the worst case you can only guess until it works. A typical disk line would look like this:

 boot=/dev/hda
 disk=/dev/hda bios=0x80

The disk option maps a BIOS ID to the disk device known to linux. Note that there is still no guarantee that things will work as other things can be wrong, so do not despair if all your tries fail, but rather try rearranging your hardware in a way that's not totally odd. In this area too much can go wrong and needs special handling to be explained here. In most cases the lba32 option will suffice anyway. Old hard drives will usually need a little more special care until they do as told.

Don't become fidgety when reading this section, I (Dennis) just happened to stumble over this problem when experimenting with a rather odd system, and figured it'd be a good idea to mention this show stopper and workarounds here. You probably won't ever experience this, as you should be using GRUB anyway.

How to recreate a LILO boot sector with only a rescue disk is explained later in this document.


/etc/conf.d/*

Some daemon scripts will have a matching configuration file in this directory that contains some more-or-less useful default values. When a daemon is started, it will first source the settings from it's config file within this directory, and then source the /etc/rc.conf. This means you can easily centralize all your daemon configuration options in your /etc/rc.conf simply by setting an appropriate variable value, or split up your configuration over multiple files if you prefer a decentralized approach to this issue. Isn't life great if it's all just simple scripting?


/etc/profile

This script is run on each user login to initialize the system. It also globally defines PS1, $PATH, bash aliases, etc. It is kept quite simple under Arch Linux, as most things are. You may wish to edit or customize it to suit your needs.
 Boot Scripts

Arch Linux uses a fairly simple bootup sequence quite similar to *BSDs. The first boot script to run is /etc/rc.sysinit. When it's done, /etc/rc.multi will be called (in a normal bootup). The last script to run will be /etc/rc.local. When started in runlevel 1, the single user mode, the script /etc/rc.single is run instead of /etc/rc.multi. You will not find an endless symlink collection in the /etc/rc?.d/ directories to define the bootup sequence for all possible runlevels. In fact, due to this approach Arch only really has three runlevels, if you take starting up X in runlevel 5 into account. The boot scripts are using the variables and definitions found in the /etc/rc.conf file and also a set of general functions defined in the /etc/rc.d/functions script. If you plan to write your own daemon files, you should consider having a look at this file and existing daemon scripts.

Boot Script Overview

   1. /etc/rc.sysinit
   2. /etc/rc.single
   3. /etc/rc.multi
   4. /etc/rc.local
   5. /etc/rc.shutdown
   6. /etc/rc.local.shutdown
   7. /etc/rc.d/* 


/etc/rc.sysinit

The main system boot script. It does boot-critical things like mounting filesystems, running udev, activating swap, loading modules, setting localization parameters, etc. You will most likely never need to edit this file!


/etc/rc.single

Single-user startup. Not used in a normal boot-up. If the system is started in single-user mode, for example with the kernel parameter 1 before booting or during normal multi-user operation with the command init 1, this script makes sure no daemons are running except for the bare minimum; syslog-ng and udev. The single-user mode is useful if you need to make any changes to the system while making sure that no remote user can do anything that might cause data loss or damage. For desktop users, this mode usually is useless as crud. You should have no need to edit this script, either.


/etc/rc.multi

Multi-user startup script. It starts all daemons you configured in the DAEMONS array (set in /etc/rc.conf) after which it calls /etc/rc.local. You shouldn't feel a pressing need to edit this file.

/etc/rc.local

Local multi-user startup script. It is a good place to put any last-minute commands you want the system to run at the very end of the bootup process. This is finally the one and only script you should modify if needed, and you have total freedom on what to add to this script. Most common system configuration tasks, like loading modules, changing the console font or setting up devices, usually have a dedicated place where they belong. To avoid confusion, you should make sure that whatever you intend to add to your rc.local isn't feeling just as home in /etc/profile.d/ or any other already existant config location instead.


/etc/rc.shutdown

System shutdown script. It stops daemons, unmounts filesystems, deactivates the swap, etc. Just don't touch.


/etc/rc.local.shutdown

Analogous to the /etc/rc.local file, this file may contain any commands you want to run right before the common rc.shutdown is executed. Please note that this file does not exist by default, and for it to work properly, it must be set as executable.


/etc/rc.d/*

This directory contains the daemon scripts referred to from the rc.conf's DAEMONS= array. In addition to being called on bootup, you can use these scripts when the system is running to manage the services of your system. For example the command

 /etc/rc.d/postfix stop

will stop the postfix daemon. This directory is not in the $PATH by default. Of course a script only exists when the appropriate package has been installed (in this case postfix). With a base system install, you don't have many scripts in here, but rest assured that all relevant daemon scripts end up here. If you wish, you can, of course, create your own scripts and place them here, to be called by the DAEMONS= array in /etc/rc.conf on system startup. This directory is pretty much the equivalent to the /etc/rc3.d/ or /etc/init.d/ directories of other distributions, without all the symlink hassle.
 Useful Applications

This section will never be complete. It just shows some good applications for the everyday user.

KDE users NOTE: Since KDE resides in /opt, you will most likely have to log out and in after initial installation to update your PATH before these programs can be used.
 Internet
 Firefox

The ever-popular Firefox web browser is available through pacman, although it doesnt have its official branding, so the program appears when opened as Bon Echo. Install with:

pacman -S firefox

Be sure and install 'flashplugin', 'mplayer', 'mplayer-plugin', and the 'codecs' packages for a complete web experience:

pacman -S flashplugin mplayer mplayer-plugin codecs

(The codecs package contains codecs for Quicktime and Realplayer content.)

Thunderbird is useful for managing your emails. If you are using GNOME you may want to take a look at Epiphany and Evolution; if you are using KDE Konqueror and KMail could be your choice. If you want something completely different you can still use Opera. Finally, if you are working on the system console - or in a terminal session - you could use various text-based browsers like ELinks, Links and Lynx, and manage your emails with Mutt. Pidgin (previously known as Gaim) and Kopete are good instant messengers for GNOME and KDE, respectively. PSI and Gajim are perfect if you are using only Jabber or Google Talk.
 Office

OpenOffice is a complete office suite (similar to Microsoft Office). Abiword is a good, small alternative word processor, and Gnumeric an Excel replacement for the GNOME desktop. KOffice is a complete office suite for the KDE Desktop. GIMP (or GIMPShop) is a pixel-based graphics program (similar to Adobe Photoshop), while Inkscape is a vector-based graphics program (like Adobe Illustrator). And, of course, Arch comes with a full set of LaTeX Programs: tetex has been popular for many years and still works, and its successor Texlive is available from the AUR repository.
 Multimedia
 Video Player
 VLC

VLC Player is a multimedia player for Linux. To install it, simply type the code below.

pacman -S vlc

(TODO) Instructions for VLC mozilla plug-in
 Mplayer

MPlayer is a multimedia player for Linux. To install it, simply type the code below.

pacman -S mplayer

It also has a Mozilla plug-in for videos and streams embedded in web pages. To install it, simply type the code below.

pacman -S mplayer-plugin

If you use KDE, KMplayer is a better choice. It comes with a plug-in for videos and streams embedded in web pages, which works with Konqueror. To install it, simply type the code below.

pacman -S kmplayer

(TODO) GMPlayer instructions
 Xine

Xine is an excellent player, especially for DVDs.

pacman -S xine-ui

The libdvdcss library provides DVD decoding for encrypted DVDs. Ensure the legality of using libdvdcss in your country before installing!

pacman -S libdvdcss

 GNOME
 Totem

Totem is the official movie player of the GNOME desktop environment based on xine-lib or GStreamer (gstreamer is the default which installs with the arch totem package). It features a playlist, a full-screen mode, seek and volume controls, as well as keyboard navigation. It comes with added functionality such as:

    * Video thumbnailer for the file manager
    * Nautilus properties tab
    * Epiphany / Mozilla (Firefox) plugin to view movies inside your browser
    * Webcam utility (in development) 

Totem-xine is still the better choice if you want to watch DVDs.

Totem is part of the gnome-extra group; the Totem webbrowser plugin isn't.

To install separately:

pacman -S totem

To install the Totem webbrowser plugin:

pacman -S totem-plugin

 KDE
 Kaffeine

Kaffeine is a good option for KDE users. To install it, simply type the code below.

pacman -S kaffeine

 Audio Player
 Gnome/Xfce
 Exaile

Exaile is a music player written in Python that makes use of the GTK+ toolkit. It tries to be close to the popular Amarok, but in GTK. It is in [community], so install with:

pacman -S exaile

 Rhythmbox

Rhythmbox is an integrated music management application, originally inspired by Apple's iTunes. It is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop, and based on the powerful GStreamer media framework.

Rhythmbox has a number of features, including:

    * Easy-to-use music browser
    * Searching and sorting
    * Comprehensive audio format support through GStreamer
    * Internet radio support
    * Playlists 

To install rhythmbox:

pacman -S rhythmbox

 Quod Libet

Quod Libet is a music manager that uses the GStreamer media framework to play audio files. This allows it to play all the file-types that Rhythmbox (which uses GStreamer too) can play. Quod Libet is more suited to non-Gnome desktops since it has a smaller footprint and fewer dependencies than Rhythmbox (Rhythmbox depends on nautilus, which requires a lot of GNOME to be installed).

In addition to the music player/manager, Quod Libet also includes Ex Falso, a tag editor.

Quod Libet's features include:

    * Easy-to-use music browser
    * Searching
    * Comprehensive audio format support through GStreamer
    * Easy Playlist management 

To install Quod Libet:

pacman -S quodlibet

Other good audio players are Banshee and Listen. See Gnomefiles to compare them.
 KDE
 Amarok

Amarok is one of the best audio players and music library systems available for KDE. To install it, simply type the code below.

pacman -S amarok-base

 Console

Moc is a ncurses-based audio player for the console; another good choice is mpd.

Another excellent choice is cmus.
 Other X-based

(TODO) Xmms, audacious, bmpx.
 Codecs and other multimedia content types (i686 only)
 DVD

You can use xine-ui, totem-xine, mplayer or kaffeine (just to name three of the big ones) to watch DVDs. The only thing you may miss is libdvdcss. Beware that using it may be illegal in some countries.
 Flash

Install the flash plugin using

pacman -S flashplugin

to enable Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash in your browser, if you run KDE you should see this after installing flash. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flash_and_Adobe_Acrobat_browser_plugins#Fixing_Flash_in_Konqueror
 Quicktime

Quicktime codecs are contained in the codecs package. Just type

pacman -S codecs

to install them.
 Realplayer

The codec for Realplayer 9 is contained in the codecs package. Just type

pacman -S codecs

to install them. Realplayer 10 is available as a binary package for Linux. You can get it from AUR here.
 CD and DVD Burning
 GNOME
 Brasero

Brasero is an application that burns CDs/DVDs for the GNOME Desktop. It is designed to be as simple as possible and has some unique features to enable users to create their discs easily and quickly.

To install:

pacman -S brasero

 KDE
 K3b

K3b (from KDE Burn Baby Burn) is a free software CD and DVD authoring application for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems designed for KDE. As is the case with most KDE applications, K3b is written in the C++ programming language and uses the Qt GUI toolkit. K3b provides a graphical user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD/DVD, as well as more advanced tasks such as burning eMoviX CD/DVDs. It can also perform direct disc-to-disc copies. The program has many default settings which can be customized by more experienced users. The actual disc recording in K3b is done by the command line utilities cdrecord or wodim, cdrdao, and growisofs. As of version 1.0, K3b features a built-in DVD ripper.- licensed under the GPL.

K3b was voted LinuxQuestions.org's Multimedia Utility of the Year (2006) by the majority (70%) of voters.

To install:

pacman -S k3b

 (Todo) cdrecord, graveman...

Most CD burners are wrappers for cdrecord:

pacman -S cdrkit

If you install packages for CD/DVD burning applications like Brasero or K3B it also installs the CD/DVD burning library for it, like libburn or cdrkit.

A good command-line DVD-burning tool is growisofs:

pacman -S dvd+rw-tools

 TV-Cards

There are several things to do if you want to watch TV under (Arch) Linux. The most important task is to find out which chip your tuner is using. However, quite a lot are supported. Be sure to check at a Hardware Database to be sure (see this list, for example). Once you know your Model, there are just a few steps ahead to get you going.

In most cases, you will need to use the bttv-drivers (other drivers exist, like V4L) together with the I2C-modules. Configuring those is the hardest task. If you are lucky, a

modprobe bttv

will autodetect the card (check dmesg for results). In that case, you need only to install an application to watch TV. We will look at that later, though. If the autodetection did not work, you will need to check the file CARDLIST, which is included in the tarball of bttv to find out the right parameters for your card. A PV951 without radio support would need this line:

modprobe bttv card=42 radio=0

Some cards need the following line to produce sound:

modprobe tvaudio

However, that varies. So just try it out. Some other cards demand the following line:

modprobe tuner

This is subject to trial-and-error, too.

TODO: clarify the installation-procedure

To actually watch TV, install the xawtv-package with

pacman -S xawtv 

and read its manpage.

TODO: clarify some possible problems and procedures. Introduction to XAWTV on another page?
 Digital Cameras

Most newer digital cameras are supported as USB mass storage devices, which means that you can simply plug it in and copy the images. Older cameras may use the PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol) which requires a "special driver". gPhoto2 provides this driver and allows a shell-based transfer of the images; digikam (for KDE) and gthumb (for GNOME, gtkam would be another choice) use this driver and offer a nice GUI.
 USB Memory Sticks / Hard Disks

USB Memory Sticks and hard disks are supported out of the box with the USB mass storage device driver and will appear as a new SCSI device (/dev/sdX). If you are using KDE or GNOME you should use dbus and hal (add them to your daemons in /etc/rc.conf), and they will be automatically mounted. If you use a different Desktop Environment you may have a look at ivman.
 Maintaining the system
 Pacman

Pacman is both a binary and source package manager which is able to download, install, and upgrade packages from both remote and local repositories with full dependency handling, and has easy-to-understand tools for crafting your own packages too.

A more-detailed description of Pacman can be found in its article.
 Useful commands

To view the options available for a particular operational command, say -Q, just append it with -h:

pacman -Qh

To synchronize and update the local packages database with the remote repositories (it is a good idea to do this before installing and upgrading packages):

pacman -Sy

To upgrade all packages on the system:

pacman -Su

To sync, update, and upgrade all the packages on the system with one command:

pacman -Syu

To install or upgrade a single package or list of packages (including dependencies):

pacman -S packageA packageB

You can also sync, update the package database, and install packages in one command:

pacman -Sy packageA packageB

To remove a single package, leaving all of its dependencies installed:

pacman -R package

To remove a package and all of the package's dependencies which aren't used by any other installed package:

pacman -Rs package

(-Rs is typically preferred vs R to remove any package as it will clean up all unused dependencies)

To remove all of the package's now unneeded dependencies and also instruct pacman to ignore file backup designations. (Normally, when a file is removed from the system the database is checked to see if the file should be renamed with a ".pacsave" extension.):

pacman -Rsn package

To search the remote (repo) package database for a list of packages matching a given keyword:

pacman -Ss keyword

To list all packages on your system

pacman -Q

To list all packages on your system without the version strings, we add the -q option:

pacman -Qq

To search (query) the local (your machine) package database for a given package:

pacman -Q package 

To search (query) the local (your machine) package database for a given package and list all pertinent information:

pacman -Qi package

To list all files installed by a given package:

pacman -Ql package

Conversely, to find the package that owns a given file (in this example, the ls executable):

pacman -Qo /bin/ls

To find all unused packages (orphans):

pacman -Qdt

Missing libraries: Suppose you receive an error message like this:

mplayer: error while loading shared libraries: libgssapi.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This may be an indication that a package you have previously installed is now corrupt (some or all of its files are missing). You should try to find the package name that provides the missing shared library. In this example, you could type:

pacman -Ql | grep libgssapi.so.2

The first column in the output is the package name:

heimdal /usr/lib/libgssapi.so.2
heimdal /usr/lib/libgssapi.so.2.0.0

Then, you can just re-install it:

pacman -Sy heimdal

To defragment pacman's cache database and optimize for speed:

pacman-optimize

To count how many packages are currently on your system:

pacman -Q | wc -l

To install a package compiled from source using ABS and makepkg:

pacman -U packagename.pkg.tar.gz

Note: There are countless additional pacman functions and commands. Try man pacman and consult the pacman wiki entries.
 Files

There are a number of files left and created by pacman and other programs to facilitate maintenance and to conform to a safe computing practice. When pacman is installing something, the package contains information on whether to back up a particular file. Such files will have the .pacsave extension. When you force a "NoUpgrade" on a file via pacman.conf, it will not be replaced during an upgrade and the new file will come with the .pacnew extension. For example, you have edited a configuration file thoroughly and you do not want an upgrade of the respective package to replace the file with a new one, we must have the following line in /etc/pacman.conf:

 NoUpgrade = /path/to/config/file

To view the differences of the old and new versions of these files, we can either edit them manually or use a diff utility to take note of the differences. There is an automated tool to find and view such files available from the community repository:

pacman -S pacman-contrib
cd ~/
pacdiff # as root

There is a bug in the above tool where if you navigate to /etc and run it from there, the paths will be messed up. We remain on the safer side by being at "home". You may want to run it as user first in case you happen to be a careless person (you may just overwrite or remove files because you think that is the right way).

There are other types of leftovers depending on the programs available on your system. Some will create backups with a .bak extension, while others with something like "~" or "-". Unfortunately, there is currently no way to "automatically" find and review them. Fear not, as we have no need for automated tools to deal with such trivial tasks. Simply use locate to search for them:

locate -e *.~ *.- *.bak

And we can use something useful like vimdiff to look at the differences manually:

pacman -S vim
vimdiff file1 file2

 Polishing & Further information

For further information and support you can go to the homepage, search the wiki, the forums, the IRC channel, and the mailing lists. 
http://archlinux.org
