Yesterday evening after work I was willing to install the first AUR-Package on my Arch Linux PC. These are packages that are outside of the normal Arch package repositories. With a special method you can integrate this kind of packages into your Arch Linux system.

Of course you can do the normal compiling way:

1. ./configure
2. make
3. sudo makeinstall

But in this case you package manager (pacman) does not know this package and accordingly there are no updates.

The starting point is this page:

AUR home

In my example and the example of the Arch Linux user from site I have installed pacaur

The following programs you need to have in your Arch Linux:

• wget (in order to download the files)
• tar (it is always in every installation)
• gpg

First you must download the package from the AUR-Site.

Before you download you create a new folder, my case:

mkdir pacaur

you change into the new folder

cd pacaur

then you download the package (from the right address: Download snapshot, right click and click on „copy internet link“)

then you type in

wget https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/snapshot/pacaur.tar.gz

then the download starts.

after this you extract the file with

tar xzvf xxx.tar.gz

Then you go into the new folder

Then you must execute the installation:

makepkg -rs

Afterwards you see whether there is an error message or not. In my case makepkg has asked me after my sudo password (it is your normal user password).

If you have good luck then the installation is over. In my case there were an error message because the script needs another program. Then it is the same as before: You go the AUR website search for the package name what it will needed and do the same way as before.

In my case the program cower wants to have a confirmation of a special key. Yes the checksum was correct but it needs another key.

Below the package name you find in the commentaries the useful order in order to insert the key.

For 2018 you must type in:

gpg –recv-keys –keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu 1EB2638FF56C0C53

With this order the key was integrated in your system.

Afterwards you install cower with makepkg -rsi and it comes to the end then you can install with makepkg -rsi your program, in my first case it was pacaur.

Yes it is fiddly and I know that a lot of person thinks: „It is very cumbersome, in the year 2018 where you have all amenities of a graphical package manager“.

That’s ok, you can do it. It is here Arch Linux, the world where you can learn a lot of new things.

I had begun for more than 10 years the same way with SUSE Linux 10.0. It was my first Linux distribution after I have decided to change from Windows XP completely. Windows XP was not on my hard disk.

On my work in the First Level Support with Windows 7 and 10 I always lament when I wanted to install for user an application and it has not worked and I cannot see why.

At home with my Linux distribution I see it in the command line every error message and I know what I must do first. Searching the error message in the web. If you in a hurry because you an appointment or an important telephone call you do it first and go back to your computer and search unhurriedly after the error. Yes you can curse your computer but the computer will not flinch. 99,9 % of the problems sits before the computer in a small distance.

My next installation should be Alpine.

Alpine is very comfortable e-mail program in the command line. It is developed by the University of Washington, USA.