Tag Archives: Pacman

CLI

Fix makemkv not compiling in Arch

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I’ve had my Arch Linux desktop system for several years now. Over that time, cruft has built up. It bit me today when I tried to install makemkv. No matter what I tried I could not get it to compile. Configure constantly failed an this step:

checking whether LIBAVCODEC_VERSION_MAJOR is declared... yes
checking LIBAVCODEC_VERSION_MAJOR... 52
...
configure: error: The libavcodec library is too old. Please get a recent one from http://www.ffmpeg.org

I had to systematically delete anything containing ffmpeg, then re-install ffmpeg, in order to finally get it to work.

Get a list of installed packages containing ffmpeg:

yay -Ss ffmpeg | grep Installed

Remove ffmpeg-containing packages:

yay -R chromaprint-fftw grilo-plugins gst-plugins-bad cheese gnome-music gnome-video-effects totem ffmpeg-compat-54 ffmpeg-compat-57 ffmpeg0.10 ffmpeg4.4 vlc libavutil-52 faudio

Install makemkv:

yay -S makemkv

My “nuke all ffmpeg from orbit” approach worked. After I did so, makemkv compiled!

Hardware

Fix KVMD not starting after updating piKVM

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piKVM is amazing. I had one controlling an old desktop of mine for over 18 months with no issues. I decided to update its software and ran into some problems.

The first problem was pacman was returning a 404 when trying to update. I guess in the last year and a half the repository URL had changed. I had to edit /etc/pacman.conf and update the URL:

[pikvm]
Server = https://files.pikvm.org/repos/arch/rpi4
SigLevel = Required DatabaseOptional

After fixing that, running pacman -Syu and answering yes, I rebooted, but found that kvmd would not start. The first symptom: HTTP 500 from nginx. Digging in I found that two services were failing to start: kvmd-tc358743.service and kvm-otg.service.

v4l2-ctl[429]: Cannot open device /dev/kvmd-video, exiting
kvmd-otg[398]: RuntimeError: Can't find any UDC

With these two services bailing the web UI wouldn’t start. I checked the kernel log and the tc358743 device was not detected at all. I was about to give up and just reflash the device when I noticed two files in /boot: cmdline.txt.pacsave and config.txt.pacsave. I know from my experience in arch that it means I had some configurations get clobbered. Running a diff between the two I found some very important lines omitted:

dtoverlay=tc358743
dtoverlay=disable-bt
dtoverlay=dwc2,dr_mode=peripheral

I restored the .pacsave files and rebooted, and it worked! Everything came back.

Next time I won’t wait so long between software updates.

OS

arch install notes 2020-06

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My install notes to get Arch Linux set up just the way I like it, June 2020 edition. Reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

Change to dvorak layout:
loadkeys dvorak

Sync NTP time:
timedatectl set-ntp true

Configure disk:
fdisk
#create separate efi partition, LVM root & swap
pvcreate <dev>
vgcreate arch <dev>
lvcreate -L+2G arch -n swap
lvcreate -l100%FREE -n root arch

Initialize swap:
mkswap /dev/arch/swap
swapon /dev/arch/swap

Format & Mount root:
mkfs.ext4 /dev/arch/root
mount /dev/arch/root /mnt

Create EFI partition
mkdosfs -F32 <partition 1>
mkdir /mnt/efi
mount <partition 1> /mnt/efi

Make mirrorlist use only xmission
sed -i 's/^Server/#Server/g;s/#Server\(.*xmission.*\)/Server\1/g' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Install base system plus extra packages:
pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware lvm2 efibootmgr samba vim htop networkmanager inetutils man-db man-pages texinfo openssh grub

Generate fstab
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Enter new environment chroot
arch-chroot /mnt

Set timezone
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Boise /etc/localtime

Configure en_US locales
sed -i 's/^#en_US\(.*\)/en_US\1/g' /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen

Make dvorak layout permanent
echo "KEYMAP=dvorak" > /etc/vconsole.conf

Set hostname
echo "_HOSTNAME_" > /etc/hostname
echo "127.0.1.1 _HOSTNAME_._DOMAIN_ _HOSTNAME_" >> /etc/hosts

Enable lvm2 hook for initial ramdisk (boot)
sed -i 's/HOOKS=(.*\<block\>/& lvm2/' /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Generate initial ramdisk
mkinitcpio -P

Set password for root user:
passwd

Install Grub (EFI)
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Enable networking & SSH on bootup:
systemctl enable NetworkManager sshd

Configure NTP
yum -y install ntp
#modify /etc/ntp.conf for timeservers as desired
systemctl enable ntpd

Exit chroot & reboot
exit
reboot