Clone Arch Linux to another computer

I’ve just cloned my arch linux installation from my lab pc to my laptop, and it is much easier than I’ve expected. First I packed every thing up into a tar in a removable disk like this: (you need to change sdxx and sdyy below to your corresponding partition)

#mount the backup disk
mkdir /mnt/backup
mount /dev/sdxx /mnt/backup
cd /
tar -cvpzf /mnt/backup/BACKUP_FILE.tar.gz --exclude=/{dev,lost+found,mnt,proc,sys,tmp,}/* / 

Then in my laptop:

# boot with arch iso
# mount the dest partition
mkdir /mnt/arch
mount –t ext3 /dev/sdyy /mnt/arch
# mount the backup disk
mkdir /mnt/backup
mount –t vfat /dev/sdxx /mnt/backup
# expand the installation tar
cd /mnt/arch
tar –xvpzf /mnt/backup/BACKUP_FILE.tar.gz
# something necessary to boot
chroot /mnt/arch
cd /dev
mknod -m 660 console c 5 1
mknod -m 660 null c 1 3
# modify the /etc/fstab
# make a new boot ramdisk
mkinitcpio -p kernel26
# install grub
# modify /boot/grub/menu.lst
exit
umount /dev/sdxx
umount /dev/sdyy
shutdown –r now
# have fun

Besides what are listed here, I also changed my video card driver and edited my /etc/xorg.conf file. The workflow works well for Arch Linux, but might not work exactly with other distro(e.g. mkinicpio seems to be Arch-only), in this case you may need to consult the all-mighty adviser – Google ;)

Cannot use visudo?

Su is not always the best tool to grand permission to users, so I installed sudo on my Arch Linux system. However when I tried to issue visudo, I got the following error:

bash-3.2# visudo
bash: visudo: command not found

The reason of this is quite simple - /usr/sbin is not in the PATH environment variable by default, and you can locate the visudo command by:

bash-3.2# whereis visudo
visudo: /usr/sbin/visudo /usr/share/man/man8/visudo.8.gz

so just use the full path to visudo:

bash-3.2# /usr/sbin/visudo

then everything goes right.

Script to set all pdf bookmarks to zoom: inherit

When you create a bookmark in Acrobat, it automaticly sets the current zoom setting to te bookmark. This may be smart and sweet for someone, but to me it's stupid and annoying. Since when I read a file in a large screen, I want a greater zoom, while on a smaller screen, I wanna save space and see more content; setting a zoom for bookmarks screws things up. Finally I found {a great perl script} that can convert all pdf bookmark to zoom: inherit.

Use the bookmarks-fitpage.pl script from the zip, which set all bookmarks to zoom: inherit (the script is named as fitpage, which is a bit confusing...)

Notice that the script only works for PDF version 1.4 or earlier, if you're using Acrobat 9, you can convert the file to pdf-1.4 (Acrobat 5) by going to menu: advanced>print production>preflight, the wizard will do a nice convert job for you.

VIM in GNU coding style

I guess I'll start working on GCC recently, so I tried to prepare my VIM for GNU coding style. However, it's not as easy as I hoped, since VIM seems to favor BSD style more than GNU style which is a great waste of screen space in my view...Anyway, after a vast amount of Googling and attempts, it works now. Here's what I did to VIM: create a file named c.vim in my "~/.vim/after/ftplugin" directory, with the following content:

"GNU Coding Standards
setlocal cindent
setlocal cinoptions=>4,n-2,{2,^-2,:2,=2,g0,h2,p5,t0,+2,(0,u0,w1,m1
setlocal expandtab
setlocal shiftwidth=2
setlocal tabstop=8
setlocal softtabstop=2
setlocal textwidth=80
setlocal fo-=ro fo+=cql

I have to put it here otherwise the settings might be overrode by VIM's default ftplugin settings.

My Score Summary as a Nerd…

I came accross this quiz (nerd quiz) when I was browsing my RSS feeds -____-b

Overall, you scored as follows:

10% scored higher (more nerdy),
1% scored the same, and
89% scored lower (less nerdy).

What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:
High-Level Nerd. You are definitely MIT material, apply now!!!.

Vim春季新装面世

Vim是什么？Vim是一种异空间里的宗教……那就让我来展示一下我看到的Vim世界的样子吧=)

color scheme: molokai

guifont: Envy Code R (preview 7)