Arch migration (success!!)

Mon Dec 19 23:17:38 MST 2016

I really had no idea GPT was such an anomaly still.  Everything I read was
like "just do it!".  Not.

First time I dealt with GPT was a laptop my work had gotten me, which was
an asus that had good resolution and dual ssd I could raid.  It was
otherwise a basketcase, acpi bugs galore, no legacy boot, and forced into
EFI booting otherwise quite annoying - I'm now pretty much F-Asus for
anything.  I stayed using my old HP Folio that I thought was bad until
that, but somewhat worked until I quit.  I really developed quite the
aversion to EFI there as yet another microsoft abortion.  GPT I figured was
an evolution of MBR, but seems more of another unwanted upsell forced upon
people during EFI/Windoze migrations too.

I think I'll stay with mbr until we have 3tb and higher SSD's to deal with
at a price point that makes them rational, and hopefully bios vendors make
not-difficult by then.  Mine are only 512gb, and GPT seems just another
unnecessary (microsoft) evil until I'm forced to boot off 3tb disks or
higher.

-mb

On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 6:44 PM, Stephen Partington <cryptworks at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Good information, however "GPT as far as I can tell simply doesn't work
> outside EFI" this is kind of the norm.
>
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 6:30 PM, Michael Butash <michael at butash.net>
> wrote:
>
>> I figured if I'm going to anything, I'd prefer to go to something I can
>> control more, which always seems to bring me back to Arch, and more than a
>> few of you seem to use it too.  I attempted before and failed, but this
>> weekend I got there, got stable, and then found more or less all the same
>> desktop bugs and more, particularly with KDE, with far more pain than I'm
>> used to with Ubuntu or other debian derivatives.  Figured I would share
>> some of the experiences for better and worse even if TL:DR, but HTH someone
>> too.
>>
>> I like certain things about Arch, but found getting it working to be a
>> dismal process, and one that kept teaching me just how different (or
>> broken) every distribution's process can be.  I simply can't imagine most
>> people using Arch that aren't simply diehard sysadmins, primarily even
>> getting it to work outside of the most basic installations.
>>
>> Biggest things that totally screwed me up were my want to use GPT, these
>> new-fangled nvme disks that aren't still fully baked into linux, adapting
>> my disk/volume setup to all of this, and finding it really didn't like me
>> making /usr a separate partition.
>>
>> GPT as far as I can tell simply doesn't work outside EFI, especially as a
>> legacy bios thing that has been MBR-based for eons.  Usage of GPT seems to
>> ass-u-me/implies it is being paired with EFI which knows these things.
>> Trying everything with this intel board, it simply would never boot off it,
>> and apparently most legacy bios are cranky about booting gpt, particularly
>> intel boards.  I wasted thanksgiving long weekend attempting last time,
>> even without raid or anything else on a standard non-nvme ssd, and never
>> worked.  I give up as I didn't really need GPT, but more curiosity to keep
>> alignment proper for ssd geometry.
>>
>> I got a pair of Samsung NVME-based 950 Pro M.2 disks as my end-goal, as
>> their attachment to the pci-bus direct seems to be the future.
>> Unfortunately the tech is still new, most tools like udev still aren't
>> baked to detect them, and even when rigging it with rules to do so, fails
>> because of other things around udev not baked in either.  This includes
>> thins like hdparm, smart tools, any monitoring apps looking for drives at
>> only sd[a-z]*, zfs libs (because udev won't build /dev/disk/by-* links off
>> them), and most anything else looking for disks !=sd*.  Even samsung's own
>> firmware utility "magician" doesn't know what they are under linux.
>>
>> Adapting my disk formula was actually fairly easy giving up on GPT and
>> ZFS already, combining MBR+ traditional linux fs tools, mdadm,
>> luks/cryptsetup, and lvm2 didn't so much care.  What last broke my booting
>> linux was combinations of mdadm and luks, and my typical habit of building
>> /usr as a separate partition.  I found out the hard way mdraid builds
>> different from initrd or a fully-booted kernel, and arch didn't seem to
>> want to work via UUID with grub, as it unlocks luks volumes differently in
>> initrd than ubuntu does (poorly in arch, imho).  Once I created a static
>> mdadm.conf for it, pointed grub to unlock it, it would work.  Then die on
>> not finding /usr to init systemd.
>>
>> The usr problem was far more annoying, and took some digging, where all
>> recommendations I found simply didn't work.  Arch devs just never presumed
>> anyone would want to do that, and really have no good method of supporting
>> it.  Quick fix was relenting and keeping /usr on root anyways, though
>> annoying it wasn't so obvious with boot dying because of not getting
>> /sbin/init to work (really a symlink to /usr/lib/systemd/systemd or like).
>>
>> After everything, I have mdraided nvme disks, luks encryption, lvm, and
>> ext4 atop that, so I'm at least no worse off.  ZFS was my first choice, but
>> linux tools not understanding nvme drives broke that as viable.  BTRFS
>> didn't seem to get me much with chicken and egg issues around encryption
>> that it would be simpler, but would have at least offered lzo compression,
>> if not brokenness like ZFS+udev with nvme.
>>
>> Once at a desktop again, KDE with latest packages ala neon are still a
>> clusterfsck though, still getting my taskbar flipping around with displays
>> coming/going, but not Arch's fault, and at least I'm stable off of Ubuntu
>> so far otherwise.  I probably need to try cinnamon or mate again, something
>> the developers have tested more than a single monitor and video card with.
>>
>> I cannot say it's been terribly worth it so far moving to Arch, but this
>> is only really my second full day of just simply "using it".  The fact it
>> really is so minimal has been a bit painful, as it requires literally
>> anything you might actually need to be installed, even with full desktop
>> meta packages.  Actually need a terminal app with kde - need to add
>> konsole.  Want screenshots with spectacle or music with banshee?  Need to
>> figure out AUR, or yaourt as I did.
>>
>> Thankfully I've already learned their stupid app names for linux software
>> to even begin to find most (like baobab, my favorite disk space utility
>> with the most horrid name), but I don't expect most would/could but the
>> most diehard linux users to get a moderately complete desktop back.  At
>> least versus kubuntu giving you an adequate base to start with that I'm
>> more used to.
>>
>> Any windoze person would have run away screaming long ago, and I think
>> even most moderately skilled linux folks - it really shouldn't be this
>> hard, yet here I am too.  Neither debian or ubuntu are good long-term with
>> upgrades obliterating my system, so here's to hoping change is worth it in
>> the long run for rolling releases and adding a new distribution to
>> achievements earned.
>>
>> -mb
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
> rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
>
> Stephen
>
>
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