Talk:Install Arch Linux from existing Linux
Add a cron job before reboot to avoid being locked out of the new system in case of network misconfiguration
I apologize if my note about the cron job did not pleased the editor. Please allow me to explain the reasons behind that note and, after that, kindly ask the editor to maintain my revision.
The original article already states reasons for installing the OS from other Linux, including remote installations and when you can't use a live CD. Naturally, these scenarios are limited of available operational procedures to handle unexpected situations. Let me develop such argument using a virtual machine in a headless server as an usual example. If one has privileges to access the hypervisor, installation from live CD will suffice and this wiki article won't be useful to such user. On the other hand, without hypervisor access, the installation from other already installed Linux may be the only option available and the user may follow this wiki article. But please note that, without hypervisor access, a simply restart of the whole system may only be done by a formal request to a system administrator on a higher hierarchical level, which may be (very) cumbersome in certain institutions and is contrary to the KISS principle of Arch distribution. Moreover, note that if the bootloader was configured to boot the new system as default, a manual intervention in the boot process to select the old bootable system is needed in addition to the reboot command (or 'button', whatever it was meant there).
An interesting parallel case can be drawn from Grub also.
This bootloader has a fallback environment variable to set a default boot entry to load in case any other entry fails to boot.
But what if the system de facto boot but a network connection that you depend on to ssh into the new installation do not start properly?
IMHO, configuring a cron job to autoreboot to the old system after a couple of minutes is the next fallback step.
One may argue that if I misconfigure my network connection, I am not experienced enough to do the installation from other Linux.
Well, that may be correct, but in this case, to be fair, this person should also question Grub developers why they decided to program the fallback option into Grub then. If one can't boot the system properly, they are not allowed to use the system nor have the tools to handle the situation?
I apologize I didn't understood why my little unobtrusive note that just want to help the community with a tool to avoid them have headaches was rejected with a single phrase using the 'X was assumed for this' kind of argument.
Finally, for all that was stated above I would like to kindly ask the editor to accept the note I've added to the wiki article. In case the decision is to still keep it out, please at least add a note warning the user that any network misconfiguration may lead to an inaccessible OS and they need to find him/her way out of the situation by their own.
Thank you very much for your attention. Rahcor (talk) 00:37, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
System update
Right after chrooting into the freshly installed system via bootstraped tarball if you try to upadate it (pacman -Syu) it will throw some errors:
:: Running post-transaction hooks... (1/6) Creating system user accounts... (2/6) Reloading system manager configuration... Skipped: Running in chroot. (3/6) Applying kernel sysctl settings... Skipped: Running in chroot. (4/6) Creating temporary files... /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/journal-nocow.conf:26: Failed to replace specifiers in '/var/log/journal/%m': Package not installed /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf:23: Failed to replace specifiers in '/run/log/journal/%m': Package not installed /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf:25: Failed to replace specifiers in '/run/log/journal/%m': Package not installed /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf:26: Failed to replace specifiers in '/run/log/journal/%m/*.journal*': Package not installed /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf:29: Failed to replace specifiers in '/var/log/journal/%m': Package not installed /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf:30: Failed to replace specifiers in '/var/log/journal/%m/system.journal': Package not installed /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf:32: Failed to replace specifiers in '/var/log/journal/%m': Package not installed /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf:33: Failed to replace specifiers in '/var/log/journal/%m/system.journal': Package not installed (5/6) Reloading device manager configuration... Skipped: Running in chroot. (6/6) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...
darkbasic (http://www.linuxsystems.it/) (talk) 12:02, 14 February 2023 (UTC)!