New installation of arch wont boot in

[donaldfarkas]

Ok my problem is i got a black screen with a cursor in the middle which i cant move.

could i be using the wrong video driver? I have an ideapad s9e i went to beginners guide and

#lspci  | grep vga

told me i have intel mobile 945gme Express integrated graphics controller so i installed the
xf86-video-intel — Newer Version of Intel i810/i830/i9xx video drivers is this correct?

this is the help i been getting to get me to this point.

As your user. Rule of thumb, anything in your home directory should only be done as your user.

should i do this while in root or just user?

The ~ expands to the current users home directory. So ~/.xinitrc is where you find the file, and is equivalent to /home/donaldfarkas/.xinitrc. If you were logged in as root, it would expand to /root/.xinitrc. The . before the filename means the file is normally hidden from view.

So do

nano ~/.xinitrc

and put

exec ck-launch-session openbox-session

in it. Save, exit, and try startx.

where do ifind the xnitrc file? so i can open it with nano

[reed9]

Do you have hal running? Post your /etc/rc.conf file.

FYI, if you want an openbox Arch preconfigured, there is Archbang.

[donaldfarkas]

LOCALE="en_US.UTF-8"
hardwareclock=""
timezone="American/Toronto"
keymap="us"
consolefont=
consolemap=
usecolor="yes"

mod_autoload="yes"
modules=()

uselvm="no"
Daemons=(syslog-ng network netfs crond)

[donaldfarkas]

kk hold on i might have forgot something important i have only installed openbox which is just a window manager i still have to install a desktop environment correct?

[reed9]

Daemons=(syslog-ng network netfs crond)

Unless you started it manually, you do not have HAL running. I think you skipped some parts of theBeginner's Guide.

Make sure you have the input drivers installed.

pacman -S xf86-input-keyboard xf86-input-mouse xf86-input-evdev xf86-input-synaptics

Add HAL to the daemons array.
[/code]Daemons=(syslog-ng hal network netfs crond)[/code]

So start it manually, do as root

/etc/rc.d/hal start

[reed9]

kk hold on i might have forgot something important i have only installed openbox which is just a window manager i still have to install a desktop environment correct?

No, that is not necessary.

Flipping the Linux switch: Desktop environments vs. window managers

[donaldfarkas]

alright i made the changes in the rc.conf file and then started hal then i signed into regular user. and i just have a black screen with a movable mouse.(only see the mouse cursor)

[donaldfarkas]

so this means that X is working but windows manager is not right? since i dont have a wm installed that makes sense correct?

Edit(might be just talking out of my *** lol)

[reed9]

Well, that's normal for openbox. Perhaps I should have been more clear when I said that you don't need a dekstop environment. If you want a panel, you'll need to install that, as well as any other apps you want.

A right click will bring up the openbox root menu. This is not dynamic and does not reflect what is necessarily installed on your system. You'll have to edit it for the apps you use. But the default does include an entry for xterm, so you can continue to work from openbox and not the console. Also an entry for Firefox is default, if you've installed that.

I recommend for ease of editing the menu, installing obmenu. You'll probably want obconf as well.

[reed9]

so this means that X is working but windows manager is not right? since i dont have a wm installed that makes sense correct?

Edit(might be just talking out of my *** lol)

No, openbox is probably working fine. If there's no windows open, there's nothing to show. By default openbox is a pretty blank slate.