To make the system shutdown when you press the power button, add the acpid package.

pacman -S acpid

Then add it to the DAEMONS array in rc.conf

DAEMONS = (...... acpid)

Then create a file for the event,

sudo nano /etc/acpi/events/power

With...

# /etc/acpi/events/power
# This is called when the user presses the power button

event=button/power (PWR.||PBTN)
action=/sbin/poweroff

ACPI Shutdown

Now add these two lines to the end of your kernel load in /boot/grub/menu.lst

acpi=on acpi=power-off

What this extra bit will do is force the machine to poweroff completely on shutdown, rather than halting with the power still running.

With ArchLinux, the one thing they don't tell you until you install it is that you have to build the graphical GUI yourself. Honestly sometimes it's like a rite of passage solving all the problems you encounter along the way, good but hard work.

Anyway, I've thankfully managed to solve the one thing that's been driving me spare over the past week, that being the laptop's touchpad hyperactively tapping and opening apps when I don't want them to.

Once you've got KDE installed as your desktop GUI you may run into this problem, here's a copy of the most important sections of my xorg.conf file to solve the issue.

nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Here's the head section where you define your devices...

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Touchpad"  "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

After which down the line you define your touchpad configuration...

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Touchpad"
    Driver  "synaptics"
    Option  "Device"   "/dev/input/mouse0"
    Option  "Protocol"   "auto-dev"
    Option  "LeftEdge"   "130"
    Option  "RightEdge"   "840"
    Option  "TopEdge"   "130"
    Option  "BottomEdge"   "640"
    Option  "FingerLow"   "7"
    Option  "FingerHigh"   "8"
    #Option  "MaxTapTime"   "180"
    #Option  "MaxTapMove"   "110"
    #Option  "EmulateMidButtonTime"   "75"
    Option  "TapButton0" "0"
    Option  "TapButton1" "0"
    Option  "TapButton2" "0"
    #Option  "VertScrollDelta"   "20"
    #Option  "HorizScrollDelta"   "20"
    Option  "VertScrollDelta"   "0"
    Option  "HorizScrollDelta"   "0"
    Option  "MinSpeed"   "0.25"
    Option  "MaxSpeed"   "0.50"
    Option  "AccelFactor"   "0.010"
    Option  "EdgeMotionMinSpeed"   "200"
    Option  "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed"   "200"
    Option  "UpDownScrolling"   "1"
    Option  "CircularScrolling"   "1"
    Option  "CircScrollDelta"   "0.1"
    Option  "CircScrollTrigger"   "2"
    Option  "SHMConfig"   "on"
    Option  "Emulate3Buttons"   "on"
EndSection

NOTE: The most important sections really are...

    Option  "TapButton0" "0"
    Option  "TapButton1" "0"
    Option  "TapButton2" "0"
    Option  "VertScrollDelta"   "0"
    Option  "HorizScrollDelta"   "0"

Once edited, save and reboot your X11 terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE and the tapping should be gone.

Worked for me but eventually needed a full reboot to really take effect, finally I can get to and build this baby.

NOTE: Also check your KDE Control Center / Peripherals / Mouse -> set to double-click for opening apps.

At the moment I'm trying to get XEN to bootup, once I figure that out I'll post it here; plus a more in-depth info on how the server project went.

Chat later,

After setting up my new HP laptop with Vista and ArchLinux I thought I'd post how to replicate the same setup to help anyone else wanting to do the same, so here's a guide to do this with the latest Windows Vista and Arch Linux; enjoy!

Install Windows Vista

First off install Vista. Now when it gets to asking you about how much disk space to use, say half (250gb drive => 128gb approx), this will mean the other half will be unused space (perfect for your linux build).

Install Vista and set it up, when you're happy and it's running ok continue to the next step.

Get ArchLinux

By now you should have two hard-drive partitions, one with Vista (NTFS) and one blank; now we're going to sort that second one out.

First download the relevant ISO disc image,

• ArchLinux ISO

Download it and burn it to CD, it's only 120mb so shouldn't take too long. Once done insert it into your laptop and re-boot with it so it starts up the installer on bootup.

Install ArchLinux

When the installer boots up and shows the blue install screen you'll see 6 options, let's go thru each one...

1. Prepare Hard Drive

Don't choose Auto-Prepare, it'll wipe your hardrive and destroy Vista, select Partition Hard Drives which will put you in the disk partition tool.

You should see two entries, one will be...

1. [boot] [primary] [ntfs]
2. ...... [unknown] [unknown]

The first is setup as the boot partition (the one which will boot on startup) and you know it's Vista as the filesystem is marked as NTFS, the other is unknown; our target for the Linux install.

So select the unknown one and create, mark it as a primary partition, select write to write the change and then quit to continue. Note the name of the new partition (e.g. hd0/sda2) and goto step 2.

Note: SDA = SATA, the machine i'm using has SATA drives, if you've got older IDE drives it'll be HDA0.

2. Set Filesystem Mountpoints

With this we'll want to set which partition we want to use as a swap disc, but as we didn't create one, select none.

Next you'll be asked which partition will be used as the root one for this install, select hd0/sda2 (or whichever name you wrote down in step 1). Continue to step 3.

3. Select Packages

Here we select which packages we want to install, ArchLinux is broken up into 4 separate blocks; base being the core o/s. Select all four as we'll be wanting all the tools to practice (otherwise you can choose 'base' and customise later). Step 4...

4. Install Packages

This will install ArchLinux to your target FileSystem, shouldn't take long; once done goto 5...

5. Configure System

Now configure your system, with most options choose the defaulty chosen options; afterwards your configuration will be written to the new system. Now onto the important step 6.

6. Install Bootloader

Now we'll install the bootloader to allow you to select on-bootup which O/S to start. Choose GRUB as your bootloader, you'll then be taken to the bootloader's config file.

Scroll down to the bottom of the file and uncomment the bottom entry until it resembles...

# (2) Windows Vista
title Windows Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

This will add to your selection list an entry pointing to your first partition so you can select to boot Vista. Scroll up to the top of the file and check these lines, adjust as appropriately...

• timeout 5 ...this sets the seconds to wait until booting the default entry

• default 1 ...once the timeout expires GRUB will boot the option 1, ArchLinux, if you want to boot Vista instead, change it to 2.

• fallback 0 ...if the default can't be booted, the fallback will be started, in this case the ArchLinux FallBack system created when we just installed ArchLinux (think of it as it's Linux's safe-mode, only much more powerful).

If you're happy with the setup, press CTRL+X to save the file and continue.

You'll next be asked where to place the Bootloader, we want to place it inside the MBR of the Drive so it will be launched when the disc spins up. The MBR is the first sector of the Hard Drive and commonly called the Master Boot Record.

You'll be presented with probably 3 options...

/SDA
/SDA1
/SDA2

Choose the first, this will be where the MBR is located.

Now you're finished, exit the Installer by selecting Exit Install, then type REBOOT to reboot.

The computer should restart and present you with the GRUB bootloader menu, where you'll now be able to select which O/S to start; job done.

• ArchLinux
• ArchLinux GRUB

Setting ROOT Password

Please note that with this initial install your ROOT account won't have a password assigned to it, posing a poblem later on down the line.

So when you've booted into ArchLinux, and typed 'root' as the username and hit ENTER to login, type...

passwd

To set the 'root' account's password.

Changing The Config

To edit the GRUB config later on, do...

nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

Settings

So as you know, the system config files are located in...

• /etc/rc.conf (main system config)
• /boot/grub/menu.lst (grub boot menu)
• /etc/lilo.conf (lilo boot menu)
• /etc/mkinitrd.conf
• /etc/hosts
• /etc/fstab
• /etc/modprobe.conf
• /etc/modules.conf
• /etc/resolv.conf
• /etc/conf.d/*
• /etc/profile

Seriously, how good is this Linux distribution. It's on a rolling release so you never need to worry about release numbers (7.04, 8.10, etc.) and it's so light and tightly put together, just excellent.

I installed a dual-boot install on my new HP laptop with Vista + ArchLinux using GRUB in about 5 minutes, really impressed about the intelligence of this build; well done to all involved.

Also for learning Linux it's got to be the best one to choose, ok it's a toughie with it's command-line install but with a 120mb install and creation of a rescue system incase you screw it up I've seriously grown to like it a lot; totally my favourite Linux distribution.

• ArchLinux Installation Guide
• Gnone Install

System Config

While the final bits arrive for my new server project I might as well put pen to paper on how the server's O/S will be laid out.

The operating system I'm rooting for this time around will be Linux, purely for the flexibility and the stability; the hardware I'll have to run thru it's paces with a CPU testing tool to make sure i've not got a faulty chip along with some brute-force testing on the memory chips, it's going in co-location so I might as well do it as I don't want to drive down to the site everytime it falls over.

I'll be using SSH obviously to connect to it along with a strong keychain to make my logging in easier and the connection encrypted.

I've got a strong iptables config so will put that into play with a custom port for SSH, not the usual port 22 which is standard; the more things you put in the way of potential hackers the better.

And no, I won't be logging in as root, only if I absolutely have to.

System Layout

This is the tricky bit, working out how you're going to lay the system out and run the various services; there really isn't any good answer, no one solution will fit everything.

For me I've decided to use XEN virtualisation to segregate my services out so each one remains separate, not all my eggs in one basket.

So I plan to use XEN and ArchLinux to handle each server stack, e.g.

• Database Server (MySQL / PostGreSql / Sqlite)
• PHP Server (Lighttpd + PHP5)
• Rails Server (Nginx, Thin, Ruby on Rails 2.0)
• Caching Server (Memcache, or some kind of custom Content Delivery Network)

I haven't nailed down the particular distro of Linux for the core o/s but will be using ArchLinux to handle the 'baby' boxes, the controlling 'big-daddy' may either be Fedora or again ArchLinux.

Now this may sound like overkill, but it does make sense, as it'll allows me to custom-build each Server based on it's proposed use and with ArchLinux I can make sure no extra baggage is added with unneccesary features and services; tuning it to the maximum performance.

It also allows me to do image backups in the future of each server so I can take snapshots of each one, in case I need to restore any at a certain point in time (say a bad update).

ArchLinux?

I've grown to enjoy ArchLinux, mainly for it's neatness and light feature stack, but also because it has no set release number. Unlike other distro's there is no frozen release 7 or 8, you go with the latest core files and that's what you've got; taking the pressure out of always being on-top.

Also the package manager is a little more powerful and because you only install what you need you don't end up with tons of extra software you never even use. Rolling in at a 160mb ISO build compared to 4.4GB for your average Ubuntu or Fedora you know you're only getting the bare-bones.

As Judd Vinet, the founder of the Arch Linux project said: "It (Arch Linux) is what you make it."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash any of the other distro's but as you can imagine with this particular project I have to keep things lean so I can maximise power and alleviate future problems when trying to identify awol services.

Final Notes

It's going to be a lot of work and probably a pain in the rear to put together but I've done this long enough with SliceHost and Virtual Hosting so I think I've cut my teeth long enough to do this for real.

Keep you posted how the build goes.