alien

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_posts/2017-12-12-alien.md

+---
+layout: post
+title: Arch on Alienware
+tags: [tech, linux]
+---
+
+It's been [4½ years since I bought my System76 laptop][sys76], and it is showing its
+age. Back in 2013, an NVidia GT670 MX was a pretty decent laptop graphics card
+(which meant it couldn't hold a candle to the desktop graphics cards). But I was
+able to play *Hitman: Absolution*, the various *Mass Effect* games, *Tomb
+Raider* and so on on it, and with OK graphics levels and resolutions. Fast
+forward to 2017, and we have *HITMAN*, *Mass Effect: Andromeda*, *Assassin's
+Creed: Origins*, and the 670MX really struggled with them (I don't have
+*Origins*, but it struggled with *Unity*). And so I decided to upgrade. After
+casting my net far and wide, I decided against going for a laptop again. My
+current laptop is functioning pretty much as a desktop[^1], so I might as well
+get another desktop.
+
+This time around, I decided to go for the best graphics card I could sanely get
+(so, no Titan). That's the [1080 Ti][ars-1080] at the moment, with 11 GB of
+GDDR5 graphics memory! I considered System76 once again, which did have models
+supporting the 1080Ti. But … Dell had a discount going on the Alienware Aurora
+R7 ([Ars Technica review][ars] of the 2016 model). After considering the
+discount, shipping charges and support options (Dell had a good discount going
+on accidental and on-site support coverage as well), Dell was proving to be
+cheaper, and I finally opted for it. Ordered, shipped and received in 2 weeks!
+
+Specs:
+
+- Intel® Core™ i7 8700 (6 core/12 threads, 12 MB cache, 4.6 GHz max)
+- NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 Ti 11GB GDDR5X
+- 256GB M.2 PCIe Toshiba SSD
+- 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s Seagate HDD
+- 16 GB dual-channel DDR4 @ 2666 Mhz (2x 8 GB)
+- A Blu-ray reader/writer[^2]
+- 7 USB 3.0-A ports (3 in front, 4 back)[^3]
+- 5 USB 2.0-A ports (all in the back)
+- 2 USB 3.0-C ports (one each front and back)
+- 1 HDMI port and 4 DisplayPorts
+- Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi & Bluetooth 4.1
+- 850 W PSU, liquid-cooled chassis
+- 14 kgs![^4]
+
+It came with Windows 10 Pro, and setting it up was pleasant. Logged in with my
+Microsoft account synced my theme and wallpapers (a nice touch). Set about
+installing Steam, other software I commonly use on Windows, and, of course, WSL.
+Installed *HITMAN*, cranked up the settings to Ultra at 1080p, and ran the
+benchmark to get an average of ~59 FPS! That's head and shoulders above whatever
+the 670MX could do at low-mid graphics. (The min was 4 FPS, but that came from a
+stutter right at the very beginning). Even discounting the FPS values, the
+benchmark looked smooth and clear in a way it never did on my laptop. Installed
+*Assassin's Creed: Unity* - no problems with that one either.
+
+Of course, my setting up didn't end there. The main quest was yet to be done:
+installing Linux.
+
+<!-- section -->
+
+## Setting up Arch Linux
+
+I must admit I had my worries about how well this thing would run Linux. The
+network card name (Killer?!) didn't particularly inspire confidence, and that's
+where most problems occur in a Linux setup - the LAN, WiFi and Bluetooth. And you
+don't often to get hear about people running Linux with a 1080Ti. But if my
+experience with the 670MX meant anything, graphics wouldn't be too much of a
+problem.
+
+### UEFI
+
+Booting with a USB drive with Arch on it didn't prove troublesome. Both the
+usual methods (use Windows' advanced reboot option to get to UEFI, and pressing
+<kbd>Esc</kbd> during boot) worked and got me into the UEFI boot menu. As an
+aside, the Alienware boot splash is a nicely understated logo that I really
+liked. Couldn't find an image that looked just like it, so I took a photo of it
+and processed it a bit to get this:
+
+![][boot]
+
+But that's probably the best bit about the Alienware UEFI setup. The UEFI menu
+itself is … disappointing. It didn't support widescreen monitors, and I have
+seen a few UEFI systems that do, so there's that. Many UEFI systems also support
+screenshots, but this doesn't.
+
+I needed to disable Secure Boot to get Arch to boot, as expected. Disabling
+Secure Boot enabled legacy boot as well, and the legacy boot splash is somewhat
+crappy. I didn't want legacy boot, so I disabled that.
+
+Once I selected the USB disk, Arch booted up right quick.
+
+<!-- section -->
+
+### Partitioning
+
+I'd shrunk the partitions that already existed, to split the ~200 GB Windows
+partition on the SSD in half, and to carve out a 500 GB space on the 2 TB disk.
+There used to be a time when I thought more partitions were a good thing, and
+I'd keep my data neatly divided into separate partitions (games on one, videos
+on another, etc.). When I last upgraded my laptop, adding a 1 TB disk to (in
+addition to the 500 GB it came with and the 500 GB disk from my older laptop),
+my partition layout looked like this:
+
+```
+~ lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,FSTYPE,TYPE,MOUNTPOINT
+NAME          SIZE FSTYPE            TYPE  LABEL       MOUNTPOINT
+sda         931.5G                   disk
+├─sda1       49.2G ntfs              part  Windows8
+├─sda2        804M ntfs              part
+├─sda3        500G ntfs              part  Downloads   /home/muru/Downloads
+└─sda4      381.5G ntfs              part  Stuff       /home/muru/Stuff
+sdb         465.8G linux_raid_member disk  ica-ext:0
+└─md127     931.5G                   raid0
+  ├─md127p1    40G ext4              md    arch        /
+  ├─md127p2   100G ext4              md    devel       /home/muru/dev
+  ├─md127p3   300G ext4              md    var         /home/muru/var
+  ├─md127p4 483.5G ext4              md    archives    /home/muru/archives
+  └─md127p5     8G swap              md                [SWAP]
+sdc         465.8G linux_raid_member disk  ica-ext:0
+└─md127     931.5G                   raid0
+  ├─md127p1    40G ext4              md    arch        /
+  ├─md127p2   100G ext4              md    devel       /home/muru/dev
+  ├─md127p3   300G ext4              md    var         /home/muru/var
+  ├─md127p4 483.5G ext4              md    archives    /home/muru/archives
+  └─md127p5     8G swap              md                [SWAP]
+```
+
+In hindsight, that is just … insane. All those partitions meant that I soon ran
+out of space in some of them. And of course, naïve as I was, I only granted
+~50GB to Windows. This time around, I eschewed all that:
+
+```
+~ lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,FSTYPE,TYPE,LABEL,MOUNTPOINT /dev/sda /dev/nvme0n1
+NAME          SIZE FSTYPE TYPE LABEL       MOUNTPOINT
+sda           1.8T        disk
+├─sda1        128M        part
+├─sda2        1.3T ntfs   part Downloads   /home/muru/Downloads
+└─sda3        500G ext4   part dev         /home/muru/dev
+nvme0n1     238.5G        disk
+├─nvme0n1p1   500M vfat   part ESP         /boot
+├─nvme0n1p2   128M        part
+├─nvme0n1p3 124.5G ntfs   part OS
+├─nvme0n1p4   450M ntfs   part WINRETOOLS
+├─nvme0n1p5  11.9G ntfs   part Image
+├─nvme0n1p6     1G ntfs   part DELLSUPPORT
+└─nvme0n1p7   100G ext4   part arch        /
+```
+
+Aside from the partitions already present, I added just two. Not even a swap
+partition. Another upgrade I'd done to my laptop was to add 16 GB RAM to it,
+for a total of 24 GB. And since then, I noted that swap was never used and I
+don't think I have seen it use more than 16 GB RAM. Even if I need swap, I'll
+probably use a swap file. No hibernation for me.
+
+<!-- section -->
+
+### Installing
+
+After mounting, I realized that I'd forgotten to check the part that I'd worried
+most about: the network. And to my pleasant surprise, *both* LAN and WiFi were
+working perfectly fine OOTB:
+
+```
+# lspci | grep -i net
+05:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32)
+06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
+```
+
+I'd never heard of "Killer" network cards before, and I didn't look them up
+before I ordered, figuring I'd work something out if the card turned out to be
+poorly supported. But nah, we've plain old Qualcomm Atheros here.
+
+It was a simple matter of:
+
+```
+mount /dev/nvme0n1p7 /mnt
+mkdir -p /mnt/boot/EFI
+mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/EFI
+pacstrap /mnt base base-devel gnome
+```
+And the usual steps in [the Installation Guide][guide]. (I'd accidentally
+mounted the Windows partition instead of the Linux one on `/mnt`, but `pacstrap`
+is non-destructive, so no harm done).
+
+One thing I intended to  do this time was to skip GRUB and boot directly from
+UEFI. This is possible because the Linux kernel from Arch has [EFISTUB]. While
+using `efibootmgr` to set this up, I realized that the ESP was best mounted on
+`/boot`, since the only thing `/boot` contained was the kernel image and the
+initramfs, both of which had to be copied to the ESP anyway. So, remounting
+`/mnt/boot`, and using these:
+
+```
+kernel_params="root=UUID=e5018f7e-5838-4a47-b146-fc1614673356 rw initrd=/initramfs-linux.img"
+efibootmgr --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 1 --create --gpt --label "Arch Linux" --loader /vmlinuz-linux.efi --unicode "$kernel_params"
+```
+
+I got a new UEFI boot entry created and set as default automatically. The
+command is long-winded enough that I saved it to file in root's home directory,
+which turned out to be pretty handy later.
+
+Next step was to edit `/etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux` to get it to create the
+initramfs files in the locationss listed above directly (using [the mkinitcpio(2)
+method from the Arch Wiki][hook]).
+
+Timezone set, `fstab` created,  hostname set … and reboot!
+
+<!-- section -->
+
+### Borking
+
+Bork. Rebooting didn't work, it looks like I messed up the boot entry. I'd
+missed the part where the paths were supposed to be rooted at the ESP partition.
+So, rebooting back to the USB, chrooting again, and:
+```
+kernel_params="root=UUID=e5018f7e-5838-4a47-b146-fc1614673356 rw initrd=/EFI/arch/initramfs-linux.img"
+efibootmgr --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 1 --create --gpt --label "Arch Linux" --loader /EFI/arch/vmlinuz-linux.efi --unicode "$kernel_params"
+```
+
+Reboot again, and I'm dropped into a TTY. :disappointed: I had installed `gnome`
+after all. Of course, I forgot that Arch doesn't automatically enable services,
+so logging in, and `systemctl enable gdm; systemctl start gdm` later,
+I had … GDM crashing in a loop. I had both my TV and my monitor connected, so I
+tried disconnecting my TV, which stabilized GNOME and allowed me to login.
+Turns out GDM itself runs in Wayland, and while Wayland didn't have problems on
+a running on a single screen, a dual display setup caused it to crash.
+
+So, getting it to [use Xorg][xorg] instead:
+
+```
+sed -i '/WaylandEnable=false/s/^#//' /etc/gdm/custom.conf
+```
+And GDM worked fine with dual displays from then on.
+
+Logging in, my next point of trouble: no networking! :sob: Panicked, I checked
+`ip a` and `lspci` to realise that the devices were detected fine, but I'd
+forgotten to install NetworkManager. A quick run of `dhcpd` later, I had
+network.
+
+### Steam
+
+After that, it was relatively simple to install the other software that I usually
+use, and setup a LAN cross-connection to my laptop to start copying files (I
+used `tar c | nc`/`nc -l | tar x` for speed). I ran into some trouble getting
+Steam to start, turned out to be missing 32-bit libraries:
+
+```
+libXtst.so.6
+libXrandr.so.2
+libgobject-2.0.so.0
+libglib-2.0.so.0
+libgio-2.0.so.0
+libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
+libpulse.so.0
+libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0
+```
+
+Later on, `vdui2.so` couldn't be loaded. Then curl wasn't loaded.
+
+All told, I needed to install:
+
+```
+# xargs -L1 -a ~muru/dev/steam-libs pkgfile -s | grep multi
+multilib/lib32-libxtst
+multilib/lib32-libxrandr
+multilib/lib32-glib2
+multilib/lib32-glib2
+multilib/lib32-glib2
+multilib/lib32-gtk2
+multilib/lib32-libpulse
+multilib/lib32-gdk-pixbuf2
+# And
+lib32-openal
+lib32-curl
+```
+
+`steam-native` still refuses to start, but `steam-runtime` works well enough.
+
+And finally:
+
+![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/QmHeTwb.jpg)
+
+54 FPS! A 10% drop compared to Windows, but still pretty good for a port.
+My gaming will no longer be as frustrating as it was before. :sunglasses:
+:neckbeard:
+
+<!-- section -->
+
+Who knew an Alienware would be so comfortable for Linux? Besides goof-ups I made
+because I hadn't installed Arch in ages and didn't pay attention to the Wiki, it
+was a pretty easy install. It would hvae been easier still if I'd gone for
+Ubuntu, I suspect. A far cry from some of the laptops I have installed Linux on
+for friends, maybe the year of the Linux desktop is indeed at hand.
+
+
+<!-- section -->
+
+[^1]: Not because of battery issues, but because I burnt(!) the LVDS cable
+      connecting the graphics card to the monitor. I will getting around to
+      replacing that cable any day now.
+
+
+[^2]: Never going to use it, probably.
+
+[^3]: Some of these may be 3.1, because one of the USB controllers is an "ASMedia
+      Technology Inc. ASM1142 USB 3.1" controller.
+
+[^4]: My laptop is 4.5kgs. Looks like my computers all turn out to be
+      heavyweights.
+
+[ars]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/alienware-aurora-review-gaming-pc/
+[ars-1080]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/nvidia-gtx-1080-ti-review/
+[sys76]: {% post_url 2013-04-12-bonobo %}
+[boot]: https://i.imgur.com/hCPyDT1.png
+[guide]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide
+[EFISTUB]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFISTUB#Using_UEFI_directly
+[hook]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFI_System_Partition#Using_mkinitcpio_hook_.282.29
+[xorg]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GDM#Use_Xorg_backend

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