aaronlaw / arch-linux-install-guide

Arch Linux Install Guide - will be rewritten SOON due to new/changed information!!!

Basic

Assumes the machine is running in UEFI mode!

1. Boot from Archlinux ISO and wait until the root prompt appears

   • Be aware that according to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VirtualBox booting inside VBox may initially take a couple of minutes after the initial boot menu for the system to display anything - i.e. the blank screen at the beginning is normal!
   • Check that there's an internet connection (e.g. ping google.com should work)

2. Set timezone / clock

   1. timedatectl set-ntp true
   2. timedatectl status should show a valid time/zone

3. Set keyboard map (if different from default) TODO

4. Create partitions

   1. fdisk -l to show available devices
   2. e.g. fdisk /dev/sda to work with /dev/sda
   3. g for new GPT partition table
   4. n for creating new partitions, at least two are needed: ~400MB for EFI boot and "the rest" for the root i.e. / The syntax for quickly specifying sizes is like +15G would mean 15 GBytes from whatever "first sector" might be
   5. t to switch partition types -> l shows a list of available partition types. Type for EFI boot is 1, for root it is 24
   6. w to finalize and write out the new partitions.
   7. For the further steps below, the example is going to assume that the EFI boot partition resides on /dev/sda1, the swap partion - on /dev/sda2 and the root partition - on /dev/sda3

5. Create file systems

   1. mkfs.msdos -F32 /dev/sda1 to create FAT32 on the EFI boot partition
   2. mkswap /dev/sda2 if using a swap partition followed by swapon(possibly a bad idea if installing on an SSD)
   3. mkfs.ext4 ./dev/sda3 to create EXT4 on the root partition

6. Temporarily mount file systems for installation

   1. Note: mounting partitions into /mnt may look a little weird, but is only during the installation process (because pacstrap needs a target to work with), and will not affect the final fstab mount points in any way!
   2. mkdir /mnt/boot
   3. mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
   4. mount /dev/sda3 /mnt

7. Bootstrap installation

   • pacstrap /mnt base will initiate installation of base system packages into / and /boot currently mounted under /mnt

8. Create fstab

   1. genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
   2. less /mnt/etc/fstab to make sure fstab was generated OK
   3. Take a screenshot of fstab contents (or write down the mapping for the root partition, especially the partition UUID)

9. Basic configuration

   1. arch-chroot /mnt change root to /mnt
   2. ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin /etc/localtime to set the local timezone
   3. hwclock --systohc to set the hardware clock
   4. vi /etc/locale.gen and then uncomment the en_US.UTF-8
   5. locale-gen to generate the locale
   6. vi /etc/locale.conf and add the line LANG=en_US.UTF-8

10. Network configuration

    1. vi /etc/hostname and add e.g. arch-machine
    2. vi /etc/hosts and the lines ``127.0.0.1 arch-machine, ::1 arch-machine`, and `127.0.1.1 arch-machine.localdomain arch-machine`

11. Security configuration

    1. passwd and set root password (do NOT disable the root account just yet!)
    2. Install vim by ``pacman -S vim`
    3. Install sudo by pacman -S sudo
    4. Run visudo, look for the line %wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL, uncomment it and save the changes

12. Configure systemd-boot

    1. Install systemd-boot via bootctl --path=/boot install
    2. cd /boot/loader
    3. Edit loader.conf, change default to arch-*, adjust timeout as desired
    4. cd /boot/loader/entries, create a file called arch.conf
    5. Edit arch.conf and add the following lines:
       • title Arch Linux
       • linux /vmlinuz-linux
       • initrd /initramfs-linux.img
       • options root=UUID=[UUID saved in step 8.3] rw

Adding full system encryption with dmcrypt and LUKS

Using btrfs

Misc

Links, Tutorials etc

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/installation_guide
• https://gist.github.com/kevinwright/6884737
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zciJYPwUWQ
• Encrypted Arch Setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT7h62OYQv8
• Manual mounting of encrypted partitions: https://evilshit.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/how-to-mount-luks-encrypted-partitions-manually