[Thrillhouse]

I've been wanting to try out Arch for a while and I finally got around to installing it in a virtual machine but have run into a problem. I've been following this guide and it was helpful but installing a desktop environment per these instructions is done over the internet with pacman. My ISP, for whatever reason, forces you to log in with your account before you can use the internet if you register more than one MAC address and usually this is done when you open up a web browser and try to access the internet but obviously I can't do that without a desktop environment. So, my question is: is there a way I can install Gnome from the Installation CD? I'm not even sure if the appropriate packages are on there but I can't seem to connect to the internet from the command line. I know my connection is valid and that I just need to log in to get the service but I'm not familiar enough with text-based internet to do that. Your help is appreciated.

[bryansmith]

IIRC, the base install gives you the option of installing Links (text-based web browser). Will that suffice?

Start links like such: links <url>

If you didn't get it in the initial install, the package should be on the CD.

[Thrillhouse]

Thanks for the thought, bryansmith. Turns out links is available on the CD and after sorting through some dependencies, I managed to install it. And with pacman! Yet it seems as if even my DNS service has betrayed me now because I can't even ping anyone let alone connect to a website with links. I've also messed with the virtual machine settings a little bit to try and get an active connection (started with Bridged, tried NAT and Host-only) but I can't seem to find a setting that works. I'm gonna come back to this later but if anyone has any other suggestions I'd be glad to hear them.

I did manage to get xorg installed but still don't have a desktop environment.

[bryansmith]

I'm taking a shot in the dark here but does your network device listed in /etc/rc.conf match the device match the device created by the VM?

That may sound confusing so let me clarify - is the device name in the rc.conf file match the device name that is created? I'm sure the rc.conf defaults to eth0 and perhaps the VM is using eth1 or something else.

Like I said, it's a shot in the dark.

You could also try different DNS servers.

[Thrillhouse]

Yeah, the device is named eth0 in /etc/rc.conf. I'm not sure how VMware identifies it, I'm guessing VMnet0. That's the setting it's on right now but it changes if I try different networking schemes. I don't think that's the problem, though. I've installed other Linux's on VMware and I'm pretty sure they all used eth0 too. What's different is that they all install a desktop environment on top of the system so I can get to a browser. I think all the tinkering I've done with the VMware settings is what lost me my connection because when I first started I had a valid public IP and I could ping everybody and receive a destination unreachable message now I'm left with a private one and an unknown host error when I try a ping.

I'm not sure how else to get a different DNS server. I have two listed in /etc/resolv.conf along with a search option. Thanks for your help so far, though. I'll keep tinkering with it and see if I can't get things back to how they were when I first installed it. If not, I'll re-install everything. That process is pretty quick on Arch.

[bryansmith]

Yeah, the base install take likes 5 minutes.

If it is DNS problems, try putting the following in for nameservers in your resolv.conf:

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

Those are the OpenDNS servers and they should work if it is in fact a DNS problems.

Perhaps if all you have is the base install, it would be best just to reinstall. It is the easy way out but then again, it only takes like 5 minutes.