Archlinux VM -- Part the Seventh -- Action!

Right -- we're in the home stretch. We've gone from formatting the base hard-disk, to installing all teh fiels, to making last-minute configurations. We're ready to boot into our new system (and switch on one or two more things that have to wait 'til then.)


Due to several factors still to be explained, I won't be able to give you any new pretty pictures to go along with my rambling remarks.


Be that as it may ...

In Part Six, we finalized the last configurations for our system-to-be.

We're all set to reboot and run our very first smoke-test!

If you're still in your chroot sub-shell -- i.e., if you're still in Nasty-Prompt Ugly-Land -- snap out of it!

exit

Then -- reboot.

reboot

Ta-da!


[several seconds later ...]


Once the temporary system actually logs off and the VM reboots, you'll probably see the CD-prompt you saw earlier -- with a pretty logo and everything. Choose to "Boot existing operating system" whenever you have the chance.

You'll see a much-uglier boot-prompt -- no logos, no pictures, just colored text.

("What, you mean people actually lived like this?")
(Boy, we were excited to get CGA, and that was 4 colors max ...)
("Grandpa, you crazy ...")

Anyway, choose the regular Archlinux installation. ("Fallback" is another story for another time.)


You should see a slew of boot-messages appear as different modules come on-line.


After an eternity of maybe five seconds (!!!), you'll see the login prompt. (It'll say "Login:")

Log in as root.

There will be no password, too, as we didn't bother to set one during our final set-up phase.


And you're in! Hooray!

There's only one piece of configuration you should do, which we couldn't do beforehand: you'll need to enable the network controller.

If you remember, we configured a new network profile, ethernet-dhcp, back in Part Six. We couldn't activate it yet, though, as the networking sub-system wasn't actually running yet.

So: activate that shiz!

netctl start ethernet-dhcp

The command will probably take a second or two to complete, as your VM talks to the network, gets itself an IP address, and all that.

Once it finishes: verify that the network really is working:

ping google.com

 You should see those ping messages start piling up. Hit [Ctrl+C] to abort the command once you've see enough.

Now, you just need to make sure that that network-profile will activate automatically in the future.

netctl enable ethernet-dhcp

And that's the end of that! We've got our very own Archlinux VM, completely base and "stock", which we can clone and re-use to our hearts' collective content!


I'll have that VM image for you shortly -- albeit with a couple of caveats. But that'll come in the Final Countdown section ...