ArchLinux Installation Guide on Encrypted SSD [2017]

This tutorial will guide you for installing ArchLinux on a GPT partition while using GRUB2 on a BIOS enabled PC (see Wiki for EFI) and thus on a SSD media based upon LUKS (encryption) over LVM. It is not aimed to replace the official ArchLinux installation guide or Wiki. It is just a collection of notes gathered from the official sources. As a reminder the Installation Guide can now also be found on the USB flash drive under /root/install.txt.

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Fixing Cressi Drake Max Dive Time

When I received my brand new Cressi Drake dive computer watch, all the historical fields (dynamic, static) were blank except one field in the Pro/Free mode and which is the longest time spent in free dive (middle line, right). It was set to 0’26” and I thought that after my first dive which, will be more than 0’26”, the historical 0’26” would disappear and reflect my dives. After my first session, where I did a dive in Pro mode for 1’27”, the counter hasn’t changed and after further looking at it I noticed a little 2 digit on top of it that could indicate 20’26” instead of 0’26” and that could explain why this counter will never be updated since no humans can hold his breath for over 20 minutes, at least when breathing regular air.

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ArchLinux Installation Guide on Encrypted SSD

WARNING!

2017 version of this installation guide can be found here

This tutorial will guide you for installing ArchLinux on a GPT partition while using GRUB2 on a BIOS enabled PC (see Wiki for EFI) and thus on a SSD media based upon LUKS (encryption) over LVM. It is not aimed to replace the official ArchLinux installation guide or Wiki. It is just a collection of notes gathered from the official sources. As a reminder the Installation Guide can now also be found on the USB flash drive under /root/install.txt.

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Enabling Rsync daemon on unRAID

I used to rsync my data using a CIFS mount of the corresponding /mnt/user/share found on unRAID. I noticed that some of the files kept uploading even if they haven’t been modified. I also had issues with some long directories containing files with long filenames. After enabling rsync daemon on unRAID, all my problems went away and transfert speed was great.

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Getting git-annex to run on unRAID

git-annex is an appealing Open Source replacement for Dropbox. You can easily install it on unRAID by following some easy steps.

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Migrating to unRAID 5.0 Release

unRAID 5.0 has now been officially released. Considering the significant changes, upgrade is not as smooth as it used to be so it is better to start off from scratch with a clean USB drive that only contains disk configuration. With the new add-ons management options it requires less tweaking in the ‘go’ startup file. Please read the release note. Depending of your current version you might just have to upgrade the unRaid image while with other (i.e. any 5.0 beta) it is advised to go through a fresh installation while using exisiting disk configuration.

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Emergency commands for encrypted Archlinux installations

ArchLinux is a fantastic rolling distribution but sometimes you will end up with a broken or semi-broken system that you need to fix. Getting back on tracks might sound even scarier when running a full disk encryption installation on SSD but LVM brings some nice goodies that will make your life easier. For information, I have run LUKS encryption on LVM for many years and I can tell you that it is rock solid and very robust. I have tortured it many many times, powered it off without any notice and haven’t (yet) lost a single bit of data, although there is always this half second pause after entering the initial passphrase that makes you think “…is it going to be able to decrypt my drive?…”.

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Gnome 3.8 tweaks

Gnome 3.8 brings a number of nice new changes such as support for Owncloud storage, a redesigned application launching view, enhanced search, new privacy settings, a new classic mode, improved animation rendering, a new Clocks application, heavily updated settings and many of updates to GNOME applications.

You can find out more about the many other improvements GNOME 3.8 in release notes. Gnome 3.8 broke few things on my system. Here is my experience so far under ArchLinux.

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Switching SD cards from exFAT to FAT32 format

Before receiving my Fujifilm X100S I bought a Sandisk UHS-1 64GB rated for 95MB/s. After unboxing the X100S I immediately formatted the card within the camera, took some shots and removed the card to view the pictures on my PC. I was surprised to see that my ArchLinux machine couldn’t read the card out of the box. I then discovered that the X100S formats the at least the 64GB cards with exFAT filesystem while using the regular FAT32 for smaller cards such as 16GB (haven’t tested 32GB yet). After installing two packages on my Linux machine I was able to read the card but this made me look at this so called exFAT filesystem. After reading about the exFAT limitations I decided to re-format my 64GB SD card with FAT32 for better robustness and interoperability.

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Setting-up a HTPC with XBMC and ArchLinux

This tutorial will guide you through an installation of XBMC on top of ArchLinux and thus using a GPT partition and GRUB2 on a BIOS enabled PC (see Wiki for EFI).

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