Manjaro / Arch Power management - Battery monitor - hybernation

Problem:
The battery monitor that came with Manjaro doesn't inform me when I'm running out of juice and my computer will just shut off without warning.

Hibernation also seems does nothing, just makes it harder to boot back up.

Fixes:
I played around with tint2 using tintwizard and other peoples shared tint2rc config files as a guide and found adding the following to my tint2rc file added battery status to the system tray, but I was still not seeing notifications that the battery was down.

# Battery
battery = 1
battery_low_status = 20
battery_low_cmd = notify-send "battery low"
battery_hide = 0
bat1_font = Sans 6
bat2_font = sans 6
battery_font_color = #FFFFFF 65
battery_padding = 3 1
battery_background_id = 1

As it turns out, the notification was just too dark and disappeared to quickly for me to notice it.

One solution to this was to change tintrc to increase the timeout of the notification and add an icon to make it more visible:

# Battery
battery = 1
battery_low_status = 25
battery_low_cmd = notify-send -t 600000 "WARNING:" "Battery Critically Low!" --icon=battery-low
battery_hide = 0
bat1_font = Sans 6
bat2_font = sans 6
battery_font_color = #FFFFFF 65
battery_padding = 3 1
battery_background_id = 1

Another option would be to change the default setting of all notifications to be more visible by going to Settings --> Notifications and bumping up the time a which notifications will disappear and
and choosing the Theme: "ZOMG-PONIES!"

I did both.

Another fix worth mentioning is a program to extend battery life.  The Arch user Spatry who does the how-to videos recommended I try Jupiter.  It wasn't part of the normal Manjaro build so I had to install it from AUR:

yaourt -S jupiter

After that, it appeared I needed a way to start it upon bootup in Openbox.  While searching how to auto-start on Manjaro I came across a post recommending the program ob-autostart, which also had to be installed via AUR:

yaourt -S ob-autostart

After that one just launches ob-autostart and creates a shortcut to launch Jupiter.

Network printing on Manjaro / Arch linux

I'm starting to find the Arch user documentation isn't as helpful as it seemed when I was an Ubuntu user.

Came across this post related to network printing:

Optional advanced network setup

It is also possible to run a entire cupsd+cups-browsed instance on your client with Avahi browsing enabled to discover unknown shared printers in your network. This can be useful in large setups where the server is unknown.

Note: This behavior did not change with cups 1.6.x - the difference is that until 1.5.x cupsd was able to do printer browsing alone and now it can only browse its own shared printers. To get the local cupsd recognize other shared printers offered by a remote cupsd server you need a running local cups-browsed (supported since cups-filters 1.0.26) instance using Avahi to discover unknown printers.
There is good news in April 2013 (still has to be incorporated above).

Following the link to the news links you to information that isn't clear enough to be useful, or is no longer correct.

Would love to know if anyone has got a network printer up and running on Arch...

Google talk plugin on Manjaro / Arch

I'm not sure why getting a basic functional system needs to be so complicated on Arch / Manjaro, but I guess it does force me to learn about the entire system, which I guess is kind of the point.

Anyway, pacman doesn't work, and the forums said to use packer, but that didn't work for me either.  Try:

yaourt -Sy google-talkplugin

Installing Insync client on Manjaro / Arch Linux

The easiest way to install Insync on Manjaro (Arch) Linux, is to use the AUR (Arch user repositories) repositories.   There are different clients to help you interface with AUR, and I'm not clear about why getting sources sometimes works in one as opposed another, but I digress.  I used yaourt to install Insync, but first I had to install yaourt:

$ sudo pacman -S base-devel yaourt

Being a relatively new install, of course my mirrors file was all out of whack, and the above command didn't actually work until I ran:

$ sudo pacman-mirrors -g
$ sudo pacman -Syy

then one can install Insync:

 $ yaourt insync

yaourt will present you with some developer chat and ask if you want to edit the config file, just say no (unless you really know what you are doing).
Accept the rest of questions about continuing, then use synapse to start Insync.

Manjaro / Arch Linux on Asus K55A

It took a little bit to figure out differences between a K55A laptop install and an older computer, thus it seems worth the while to document how i finally got Arch (Manjaro) to boot on my K55A using Grub.

Software you'll need before you start:
A Manjaro image 0.8.7 or later (I chose and Openbox based one):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/manjarolinux/files/release/

An Ubuntu x86_64 12.04.03 or later  or x86_64 13.04 image (I choose 13.04)
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

1. Make a bootable USB, CD or DVD for both the Ubuntu and Manjaro images.
2. Access the boot manager by pressing <esc> during boot up and selecting "enter setup" (formally known as the BIOS)
3. Disable Secure boot, and activate alternate UFEI booting.

Insert the Manjaro cd, and restart the system.  Press escape to get into the UFEI loader again and choose to boot the CD in UFEI mode.

(Continuing from step 4 here: http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=UEFI_-_Install_Guide ) Boot with your USB or DVD & use the rEFInd - Main Menu... to choose which GPU drivers you want to have installed, the open-source or proprietary:

* Boot Manjaro Linux ... (default) - 
  This chooses the open-source - free GPU drivers.
* Boot Manjaro Linux ... (nonfree) - 
  This option chooses the proprietary GPU drivers
  from Nvidia or ATI.

Open terminal and enter

$ sudo setup 

Choose 2. Use testing installer (EFI support).

From here you can continue to install via your preferred setup method.  When you get to 5. Install Boot loader choose Grub (2) UFEI

It will almost work, but then fail with the error:

  efivars kernel module was not loaded properly.

  Manually load it and create a boot entry for DISC

  /dev/sda , PART 1 and LOADER

  \EFI\manjaro_grub\grubx64.efi , in UFEI Boot Manager

  using efibootmanager

(I had a guess as to what this meant, but when I tried to execute efibootmanager it became apparent it wasn't available via the live CD.  Thuse I began a Ubuntu install on a separate partition hoping to salvage my Arch install later.)

Install Ubuntu in UFEI mode:

1. Insert the Ubuntu Disc into your computer
2. Once again reboot the computer and enter UFEI loader via the esc key.
3. Install Ubuntu via the usual manner

From there remove the install CD, reboot the system pressing esc to get into the UFEI loader, and choose Ubuntu Loader.  From the Grub menu, you'll be able to select Ubuntu, Grub, and any other OS that might be on your system.







 

Giving Arch / Manjaro a Shot

So I first heard about Arch while I was having some dependency problems with a Debian based distribution.  From all accounts it sounded like Arch was the only distro that had the packed in question working properly, (I don't remember the package name or what it was for) which intrigued me.

Moreover, it seemed like Arch had a lot of the same advantages of Gentoo, but was more user focused, and from what I can tell the documentation was better as well.  Further, the claim to adhere to principal of simplicity, as well as the way they've build upon and re-instituted the apt-packgage manager made me feel it was worth trying.

Unfortunately, the text based installer leaves you without a X window system, and configuring that is no easy task.  After days of tying to force arch onto my desktop I finally gave up on it. 

Recently, however, I heard of Manjaro Linux.  Which esentially is an installer script for Arch that leaves you with an XFCE or OpenBox desktop.  The process, while not perfect, was far easier, and if I can work out a coupple bugs, I may decide to start using Arch full-time.