Dotfiles-and-Configs

Various dotfiles and other documentation for my Arch Linux Installation(s)

Descriptions

• .Xmodmap ... Contains keyboard mappings which enable umlaut keys when pressing capslock + specific key (capslock + a = ä)
• .aliases ... Shell aliases
• install.sh ... Executes all necessary scripts and creates all symlinks in order to properly set up a machine with these files
• maxima_tempfiles.sh ... Adds maxima config file so that it stops leaving files in the home directory
• fix_unknown_media_type.sh ... Fixes an annoying error that stems from KDE Cachegrind and it's dependencies and always prints messages when using pacman.
• font_fontrendering.sh ... Enables smooth font rendering.
• htmlWatchdog.sh ... Takes a given url and downloads the html page. It then saves the page and creates a checksum which can be compared at later stages to check if the site has changed. Is primarily used in an automated Jenkins Job which checks semi-dead sites for updates.

Notes

General

• After adding a user to a new group simply execute newgrp <group name> to update the entry.
• Don't forget to enable the following options in your /etc/pacman.conf: Color, ILoveCandy, VerbosePkgLists
• Add Defaults insults to the /etc/sudoers file for a more interesting administration experience! Use visudo to edit this file safely.
• To pick mirrors near to your geographical position use the reflector package: sudo reflector --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist -c "country name" -f 5 -l 5
• To list all available fonts in LaTeX execute the following command: fc-list :outline -f "%{family}\n"
• If you are having encoding problems with your ssh session - namely every backspace being interpreted as a space - export TERM=ansi temporarely fixes this problem.

Nvidia/Xorg/Tearing

This tutorial shows how to get rid of tearing under Arch when using the proprietary Nvidia driver. Here is a quick summary of the process:

• Generate an xorg.conf file with the nvidia-xconfig command.
• Append the following two lines to the Device section of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Option         "RegistryDwords" "PerfLevelSrc=0x3322; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x1"
Option         "TripleBuffer" "True"

• Remove any mentions of RegistryDwords or TripleBuffer from the Screen section in case there are any.
• Append the following line to the Screen section.

Option "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"

• Add this option to /etc/profile.d/profile.sh (the tutorial has a typo in this instruction!).

export __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1

• In the nvidia-settings in the OpenGL section enable Sync to VBlank and Allow Flipping. In the XServer XVideo Settings use the mode Auto.
• Install the package compton and create config with the following content in ~/.config/compton.conf
• Add compton to the auto-startup manager of your choice (XFCE4-autostart in my case) via

compton --config ~/.config/compton.conf -b

If you have multiple monitors then you also need to execute the following line in order for the ForceFullComposition to be applied on both devices:

nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="$(xrandr | sed -nr '/(\S+) connected (primary )?[0-9]+x[0-9]+(\+\S+).*/{ s//\1: nvidia-auto-select \3 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }, /; H }; ${ g; s/\n//g; s/, $//; p }')"

GPG

export private key

gpg -ao <file name> --export-secret-key "email address"

import private key

gpg --import <file name>

Symlinks

Always use absolute paths!

ln -s <source> <target>

CUPS

Add your user to the lp and the sys group otherwise you will encounter an authentication problem when accessing the web interface via localhost:631 or 127.0.0.1:631.

If your printers are not showing up in some applications (e.g. evince, firefox) then simply install gtk3-print-backends.

Teamspeak 3

Essential files which should be included in a backup:

• ts3server.sqlitedb - contains channels, settings, user, permissions
• ts3server.ini
• query_ip_whitelist.txt
• query_ip_blacklist.txt
• files/internal - all the icon logos, etc.

Teamspeak also offers the possibility to format text with BB codes.

Ubiquiti

To correctly enable zero-handoff with multiple access points (also called fast roaming in Ubiquities interface) you have to enable the following options:

• Settings -> Wireless Networks -> -> Check enable fast roaming
• Additionally, you can enable meshing on every access point: Select the appropriate access point -> Config -> Wireless Uplinks -> Check allow meshing to another access point

Gaming

Steam

If all source games fail to properly update and/or download with the error message corrupt update files and the steam folder lies on an NTFS formatted drive then you need to change the mounting options in /etc/fstab to defaults,exec,uid=1000,gid=1000.

To check if any libraries for steam are missing simply execute:

cd ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=".:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}" ldd $(file *|sed '/ELF/!d;s/:.*//g')|grep 'not found'|sort|uniq

Minecraft

To install shaderpacks with the Feed the Beast Launcher, simply download the Shader Core Mod and place it in the appropriate .../minecraft/mods/ folder. Then startup the game, it automatically creates a shaderpacks folder in the minecraft folder. There you have to put your shaderpacks, this can be even done at runtime.

If you get an error saying [Shaders] Error : Invalid program composite1 then you need to manually modify the shader code as it seems to contain an error. Just edit the contents of the zip archive with the editor of your choice. Find the following line in the shaders/composite1.fsh file, in my case it was line 959.

vec4 	ComputeFakeSkyReflection(in SurfaceStruct surface) {

There you need to change the type of the parameter from in to inout.

Feral Interactive Ports

• https://forum.manjaro.org/t/problems-fixes-for-steam-apps-and-new-openssl-currently-in-testing-only/23214/3

Raspberry Pi (Arch Linux ARM) - First steps after installation

• Basic source
• Create boot partition on SD card (type primary, partition type W95 FAT32 (LBA)) with a size of +100M
• Create second partition filling up the remaining card
• Create FAT filesystem with mkfs.vfat /dev/sdX1 and mount to a new folder (eg: boot)
• Create ext4 filesystem with mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdx2 and mount to a new folder (eg: root)
• Get the root filesystem with wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-rpi-latest.tar.gz
• Extract it with bsdtar -xpf ArchLinuxARM-rpi-latest.tar.gz -C root
• Execute sync for some cache/memory flushing magic and to have some time to get a coffee
• Move the boot files from your temporary root to the new boot partition (eg: mv root/boot/* boot
• Unmount the partions
• Put the SD card back into the pi and connect it to your network device of choice
• ssh into the little devil and initialize the keyring with pacman-key --init and populate the package signing keys with pacman-key --populate archlinuxarm
• Install base-devel
• Create new user
• Add new user to wheel group
• Add wheel group to sudoers in /etc/sudoers
• Delete default alarm user
• Disable root user by deleting the password in /etc/shadow with !
• Copy your local (just for this use case generated) ssh public key to the pi with ssh-copy-id username@remote-server.org
• Set PasswordAuthentication no in /etc/ssh/sshd_config to disallow password-based ssh login attempts
• Restart the sshd.service to make those changes permanent
• Install & configure fail2ban (see the Arch Wiki for more information)
• Get yay tarball (or similiar aur manager) and install package with makepkg -si
• Additional possibilities: iptables

Useful links

Latex

• Bibtex entries for RFC specifications

Contributions

AUR packages

• texlive-tikz-uml
• texlive-coffee-stains
• ttf-impallari-dosis