Two questions before I install

Good Morning,

Was on Antergos, then moved to Manjaro when Antergos died. Have been an arch user since 2004, and prefer the less painful route of install.

Question #1: Before I switch back to Endeavour, do I need to track the Arch website for all those “Manual Intervention” notices? Or does Endeavour handle these anomalies in their own repos?

Question #2: I will need to make an rsync copy of the entire repos…I have one secure machine that can’t ever be connected to the internet per my contract. So I rsync the mirrors, put them on a USB SSD, then “Sneakernet” them over to the secure machine. Do I just rsync the Arch repos? Or is there an Endeavour repo I also need to rsync with?

Thanks!

Dave

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  1. EOS is mostly vanilla arch, so there is occasionally an upstream issue that requires intervention. In my experience over the past 2 years that has happened maybe once.
  2. There are a few custom packages provided, as you can see from one of the mirrors:
    https://mirror.linux.pizza/endeavouros/repo/endeavouros/x86_64/
######################################################
####                                              ####
###        EndeavourOS Repository Mirrorlist       ###
####                                              ####
######################################################
#### Entry in file /etc/pacman.conf:
###     [endeavouros]
###     SigLevel = PackageRequired
###     Include = /etc/pacman.d/endeavouros-mirrorlist
######################################################

## Germany
Server = https://mirror.alpix.eu/endeavouros/repo/$repo/$arch

## Sweden
Server = https://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/endeavouros/repo/$repo/$arch
Server = https://mirror.linux.pizza/endeavouros/repo/$repo/$arch

## China
Server = https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/endeavouros/repo/$repo/$arch

## Github
Server = https://github.com/endeavouros-team/mirrors/releases/download/mirror1/
Server = https://raw.githubusercontent.com/endeavouros-team/repo/master/$repo/$arch

Welcome aboard!

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Welcome aboard!

Welcome to the community :beers:

What sort of stuff is on that computer you can’t connect to the internet? Or at least what can you tell us about it?

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I really liked Antergos. I was saddened to see it go away. But I have been tracking Endeavour since it’s inception…worried about it’s longevity. And I have found that the team here is doing some wonderful things…

I like Manjaro, but I really dislike the elitist attitude of the Manjaro Team. Especially the snitty responses I read on the forums to people asking very legitimate questions.

I am retired. Been with IT since the days of 300 baud acoustically coupled modems. I don’t have patience anymore for bad attitude.

I really love what I see in the Endeavour forums. Nice to see folks being treated well.

So I think I am going to have a good experience again…

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

Dave

Nice to be back.

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we do not hold back package updates, as we keep even with archlinux. But you will get a quick solution gere at the forum in most cases, and this issues are getting rare on arch.

And welcome here from my side too

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@ramblinwreck

The machine is a development machine. I am a long time developer in C/C++/ and lately doing some python. I am now retired - so I can cherry pick which projects I want to get involved with. I’ve kept three clients into retirement. I’ve done everything in my career from device drivers for the old AT&T System V 3.3.3 Unix kernel, all the way down to modern day GUI apps for Win/Linux.

I’d still be on FreeBSD if they wouldn’t have lost the lions share of their talent, and the ports tree loosing all semblance of quality. Now - I like my hulu, netflix, and my steam games (Skyrim SE and Fallout-4) on Linux. You can’t do that under FreeBSD. In fact, my steam titles categorically run better on Linux - then they did on honest to God W10 on real hardware. That is NOT hyperbole.

I no longer support Windows in any form now that I am retired. Too frustrating, too unstable, too much…well…you know… I’ll not start my rant against W10 - it’s all been said before elsewhere.

Back to your question…This machine is for development for the medical community, specifically, the VA. I am an old USMC 'Nam era vet. I go to the VA as I had a mortar dropped 18" from my head while I was crawling under some barbed wire while fully prone. Not a scratch from the mortar - as I was prone. But…I did get my ears blown out. In fact, the local VA (Denver) actually takes pretty good care of me (I do some volunteer work for them as well for cancer patients). I am working with two designated RN’s…and for HIPPA and Encryption reasons, their lawyer has directed all development to be done on air-gap machines ONLY. And the same was true when I was working for a project for Raytheon (DoD contractor) way back when the Iraq invasion first happened doing satellite command and control.

So essentially - what I’m doing is classified. But how I am doing it is not.

So this machine doesn’t have a wire plugged into it. The MB has no wireless devices on it. No Cat-5E going to it, and the onboard NIC has been shutdown. They almost made me physically cut the etch on the MB to physically disable the NIC (as if I would know which etch to cut! Which I wouldn’t. )…but was able to get a variance based upon sending a pic of the setup, where the “wire” is on a different floor of my townhome from where this workstation is at. And…arguing about cutting etches would immediately void the warranty of the MB.

So installs and updates are all done via “Sneakernet”. I have a bash script that keeps the local copy of the whole mirror up to date on my main workstation (AMD TR Gen 1 16 core, 64Gb ram, 18Tb of storage). I modify the pacman.conf and the mirrorlist to use my local mirror, then “chattr +i” those files to prevent updates from messing with them. Lastly, I copy the mirrors to a USB SSD in a adapter case from my main workstation, then physically transfer the SSD by hand by walking to the workstation (thus the term “Sneakernet”) to the secure workstation - and then rsync’d the mirrors into this workstation manually.

Doesn’t all make sense to me…but I don’t set the rules - I’m just the dev. The client’s lawyer sets the rules. One thing I can share with you, is that some DoD projects, and most everything I do with the VA comes with it’s own strange set of rules and regs. Good Lord almighty, how the gov loves red tape! But - they are willing to pay for that so I follow their rules. I just bid appropriately.

One of my other clients is a dark DoD installation - that’s all I can say. I use this same workstation for these projects as well following a DoD mandate rule that I can’t remember the paragraph number of at this point.

While this doesn’t directly address your question…I hope it gives you a well enough picture!

Thanks!

Dave

6 Likes

Very interesting stuff. It all makes sense, it’s always interesting to see the lengths that people/companies/governments actually have to go to in order to make things secure (if it’s even possible). Thanks for sharing. :beers:

to answer your first Q - do you use terminal for updates? if so I recommend ditch yay and use pikaur. Whenever you do a pikaur-syu unread news will pop up before you can update making you aware if there are any issues. one can ofc just check the new on arch site . but i’d rather not leave the terminal to see if there are any news when I can have them in my term

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I’ll check it out. Thanks!

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Welcome to the community btw - I use vanilla Arch but prefer this community as there are nice helpful people here who don’t try to put you don for asking a “dumb”, here everyone get met with respect

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Thank you for the welcome.

Phrakature back in the early days of Judd Vinet, he and I crossed swords a couple of times - over basic manners. And the Manjaro community can be downright rude at times. I’m an old guy now. Manners means a lot to me. Plus…I don’t have the time to muck about with installing vanilla Arch. I appreciated Antergos, and now I’m sure I’m going to appreciate Endeavour. My install this AM went perfectly, and I’m 100% back up and running on Endeavour. I keep a tertiary backup so the port over was smooth and easy.

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Semper, leatherneck.

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Thank you. Half of my family on my mothers side were Army, and the others were Marines. My uncle fought in WWII in the Pacific.

Dave

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@dcbdbis If you’re still worried about the longevity of this project, I can say two things about that in case we decide to end the project.

We always said from the start to each other that in the case we all decide to throw in the towel, the possibility will be there for others to continue the project, for the sake of the community.

In case nobody wants to continue the project, we are closer to Arch than Antergos was, so it is very easy to turn it into a pure Arch system. And knowing the devs, we would give you instructions on how to do that in that scenario and not promising it without ever delivering on that promise.

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Let me try to put your mind at rest I run Arch on Arch testing and run into small problems a couple of times a year usually things are fixed in a day on testing, it is simple to just drop back to Arch stable just # before the testing repros then pacman syyuu and downgrate to stable leave it a couple of days remove the # entries a Syyu all is well.
Remember i’m on testing repros on Arch.

On Endeavour i’m running stable Arch stable is more stable than Manjaro as they do strange things to the file system hold packages push some as well by the time they get to stable they are out of sync with themselves.
This does not happen hear

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i do like it too but mainly i have a little mess with using different ones side by side, as i still not decided.
And also keep yay installed to help users questions…

@Bryanpwo,

Thank you for the re-assurance. I had already ported my system over yesterday morning. I have a tertiary backup of everything across three mirrors…so making the move was pretty painless. So I was forced to move to a Debian distro, or RPM based distro…it wouldn’t be that hard.

So Bryan, you’ve built the most friendly and laid-back community I’ve ever seen in the Linux world, take some pride in doing that! I’m very pleasantly surprised!

Dave

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@mandog,

Yeah - that was another reason I wasn’t comfortable with Manjaro. I didn’t like what I saw happening in their mirrors. Remember - I use offline repo rsync mirrors locally - so I can track everything very granularly. I saw some security updates just sitting in testing for literally weeks…that should have been fast-tracked to stable as they were security updates.

I was able to go get the packages and deploy them - but the average user wouldn’t be able.

To me - the closer a distro’s software tracks vanilla versions of the packages (like Arch), in my experience - makes for a more stable experience overall. The more playing and tweaking that is done to the vanilla packages - it increases the risk of issues creeping in.

So - it’s good to be back (of sorts) Antergos was my favorite distro for a long time. And the Arch family are my favorites as well - because I get to setup the tone of my distro. I can match it to my workflow easier.

Dave

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