Arch Linux Installation Guide

Introduction

Why this guide?

The Arch Wiki has this information spread across multiple pages, and I think this is much more clearly laid out and straight forward. It also contains some packages and decisions that are personal preference.

Important other resources

The Arch Wiki is a very powerful resource. If you have any problems it's the first place to search for solutions: https://wiki.archlinux.org

Especially for the installation please read: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/installation_guide

Sometimes packages need manual intervention which is announced at https://www.archlinux.org/news/

This tutorial is inspired by https://arch.d3sox.me/ and have taken out most stuff of it.

1- Pre-installation

1.1 Prepare the installation media

Download the latest Arch Linux ISO version and create a bootable USB drive. Make sure you enable USB boot in BIOS settings and set USB Disk as boot priority.

1.2 BIOS Configuration for UEFI

Before booting from an usb stick you better check your hardware settings. Boot into your hardware settings or BIOS or UEFI settings. Then check following settings. It can have different names and different keyboard shortcuts to reach it.

Set Boot Mode to UEFI. Most modern systems use UEFI, so it's generally on by default.
Disable Secure Boot. If secure boot is enabled it must be turned off since Linux boot loaders don't typically have digital signatures. Note that if you intend on running a dual-boot system with Windows and Linux you won't be able to use disk encryption on the partition containing Windows, as it requires secure boot.
Disable Launch CSM or Legacy Support.
Disable Fast Startup Mode. If you are dual booting with Windows turn off Fast Startup. This feature puts Windows into hibernation when you power off. Because some systems are still active during hibernation, booting into Linux can cause various nasty problems.

1.3 Boot the live environment

After booting Arch from the USB drive...

1.4 Set the console keyboard layout

The default keymap is US. Available layouts can be listed with:

localectl list-keymaps

find /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/ -type f | more

⌨️ Set your keymap (e.g. fr) with:

loadkeys fr

1.5 Set the console font

Available fonts can be listed with:

ls /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/

🔤 Set the console font with:

setfont ter-v18b

1.6 Verify the boot mode

ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

efivar -l

If the directory does not exist, the system may be booted in Legacy BIOS Mode. Most likely you want to do a UEFI install so please double-check if your system supports UEFI and you selected the correct entry in the boot menu (In most cases prefixed with UEFI).

1.7 Connect to the internet

Ensure your network interface is listed and enabled, for example with:

ip link

For wireless and WWAN, make sure the card is not blocked with rfkill.

rfkill unblock wlan

Connect to the network:
- Ethernet: plug in the cable.
- Wi-Fi: authenticate to the wireless network using iwctl.

iwctl
device list
# Your device name might be different (replace wlan0)
station wlan0 scan
station wlan0 get-networks
# Replace <SSID> with your network name from the previous command
station wlan0 connect <SSID>
exit

Check the internet connection with `ping`

ping -c 4 archlinux.org

1.8 Update the system clock

🕒 Ensure the system clock is accurate:

timedatectl set-ntp true

🌍 Set your time zone:

timedatectl set-timezone Africa/Tunis

1.9 Partition the disks

Tip: When recognized by the live system, disks are assigned to a block device such as /dev/sda, /dev/nvme0n1 or /dev/mmcblk0.

1.9.1 Identify the devices

To get an overview use fdisk or lsblk to list your partition table and find out the device you want to use.

fdisk -l

lsblk

1.9.2 Delete all the existing partitions on the disk to be used

wipefs -a /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned

If that is not working for you, you can try this one as well:

sgdisk -Z /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned

1.9.3 Start partitioning tool

▶️ Text-based

fdisk /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned

▶️ UEFI only text-based

gdisk /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned

▶️ Graphical (Recommended for beginners)

cfdisk /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned

▶️ UEFI only Graphical (Recommended for beginners)

cgdisk /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned

1.9.4 Decide partition table type and create partitions

BIOS: You can use both GPT and MBR (DOS)
UEFI: You need to use GPT

DOS/MBR (BIOS)

Needed	Partition	Partition type	Code (fdisk)	Flags	Mount point
❌	/dev/sdXY	Linux swap	82	-	-
✔️	/dev/sdXY	Linux filesystem	83	Bootable (a)	/mnt
❌	/dev/sdXY	Linux filesystem	83	-	/mnt/home

GPT (BIOS)

Needed	Partition	Partition type	Code (fdisk/gdisk)	Mount point
✔️	/dev/sdXY	BIOS boot	4 / ef02	-
❌	/dev/sdXY	Linux swap	82 / 8200	-
✔️	/dev/sdXY	Linux filesystem	83 / 8300	/mnt
❌	/dev/sdXY	Linux filesystem	83 / 8300	/mnt/home

GPT (UEFI)

Needed	Partition	Partition type	Code (fdisk/gdisk)	Mount point
✔️	/dev/sdXY	EFI partition	1 / ef00	/mnt/boot/efi
❌	/dev/sdXY	Linux swap	82 / 8200	-
✔️	/dev/sdXY	Linux filesystem	83 / 8300	/mnt
❌	/dev/sdXY	Linux filesystem	83 / 8300	/mnt/home

Size recommandations

* EFI partition:

At least 300 MiB.
If multiple kernels will be installed, then no less than 1 GiB.

* BIOS boot:

1MB (unformatted)

* Swap:

System RAM	Recommended swap space	Swap space if using hibernation
< 2GB	2x the amount of RAM	3x the amount of RAM
2-8GB	Equal to amount of RAM	2x the amount of RAM
8-64GB	At least 4GB	1.5x the amount of RAM
64GB	At least 4GB	Hibernation not recommended

1.10 Format partitions

Root partition filesystem

💽 This will create the file system where the system will be installed on.

To create a btrfs file system on /dev/root_partition, run

mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/root_partition

EFI system partition

If you created an EFI system partition, format it to FAT32 using mkfs.fat

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/efi_system_partition

Swap partition

If you created a partition for swap, initialize it with mkswap:

mkswap /dev/swap_partition

Create subvolumes to better organize our data and to exclude them from btrfs snapshots

mount /dev/root_partition /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@root
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@srv
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@log
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@cache
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@tmp
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@snapshots
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@swap

1.11 Mount the file systems

Mount the root volume to /mnt

Let us unmount /mnt and remount all the subvolumes with options. For example if the root volume is /dev/root_partition :

umount /mnt
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@ /dev/root_partition /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/{home,root,srv,var/log,var/cache,tmp,.snapshots,swap}
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@home /dev/root_partition /mnt/home
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@root /dev/root_partition /mnt/root
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@srv /dev/root_partition /mnt/srv
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@log /dev/root_partition /mnt/var/log
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@cache /dev/root_partition /mnt/var/cache
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@tmp /dev/root_partition /mnt/tmp
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@snapshots /dev/root_partition /mnt/.snapshots
mount -o defaults,noatime,subvol=@swap /dev/root_partition /mnt/swap

Create any remaining mount points (such as /mnt/boot) and mount the volumes in their corresponding hierarchical order

mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/boot_partition /mnt/boot

or shortly:

mount --mkdir /dev/boot_partition /mnt/boot

▶️ For UEFI systems, mount the EFI system partition:

mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
mount /dev/efi_system_partition /mnt/boot/efi

or shortly:

mount --mkdir /dev/efi_system_partition /mnt/boot/efi

Swap

If you created a swap volume, enable it with swapon:

swapon /dev/swap_partition

As an alternative to creating an entire partition, a swap file offers the ability to vary its size on-the-fly, and is more easily removed altogether. To create a swap file:

### Ram-size in bytes:
RAM_SIZE=$(free -b -t | awk 'NR == 2 {print $2}')
### Create a swap file equal to the ram size:
btrfs filesystem mkswapfile --size $RAM_SIZE --uuid clear /mnt/swap/swapfile
### When activating the swap file you can use -p or --priority flag to set the swap file priority, by default it is -2
swapon -p 100 /mnt/swap/swapfile

2- Installation

2.1 Select the mirrors

You can select the mirrors that are closest to you geographically. BUT it does not mean they will be the fastest. Normally I will change nothing until the speed is not satisfactory. On the live system, after connecting to the internet, reflector updates the mirror list by choosing 20 most recently synchronized HTTPS mirrors and sorting them by download rate. Read the info about mirror servers as this is quite important.

reflector --latest 20 --protocol http,https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

2.2 Install essential packages

⏳ This will install the system and may take a while.

Enable parallel downloads for faster installation:

sed -i 's/^#ParallelDownloads/ParallelDownloads/' /etc/pacman.conf

⚠️ Warning: To ensure system stability append the microcode package for your CPU to the following command.

amd-ucode for AMD CPUs

intel-ucode for Intel CPUs

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Microcode

pacstrap -K /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware linux-headers intel-ucode btrfs-progs sudo nano bash-comlpetion terminus-font

3- Configure the system

3.1 Create the filesystem table (Fstab)

This will create the filesystem table which contains all the partitions and mountpoints:

genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Edit the fstab configuration to add an entry for the swap file (if created):

echo '/swap/swapfile none swap defaults 0 0' >>/mnt/etc/fstab

3.2 Chroot

After you entered this command, you are basically in the installed system.

arch-chroot /mnt

3.3 Time

📅 Set the time zone (You can tab-complete your stuff after typing zoneinfo):

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Tunis /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc

3.4 Localization

🌐 Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment (remove the # in front of) all languages you need:

nano /etc/locale.gen

🏁 Generate locales

locale-gen

🔘 Set the system language

echo 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/locale.conf

echo 'LC_ADDRESS=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/loacle.conf
echo 'LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/loacle.conf
echo 'LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/loacle.conf
echo 'LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/loacle.conf
echo 'LC_NAME=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/loacle.conf
echo 'LC_NUMERIC=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/loacle.conf
echo 'LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/loacle.conf
echo 'LC_TELEPHONE=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/loacle.conf
echo 'LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/loacle.conf

⌨️ Set tty keymap ( e.g. fr) and console font ( e.g. ter-v18b)

echo 'KEYMAP=fr' >> /etc/vconsole.conf
echo 'FONT=ter-v18b' >> /etc/vconsole.conf

3.5 Network configuration

📛 Create the hostname file. The hostname will be the name of your PC on your network.

echo 'ArchLinux' >> /etc/hostname
# Edit /etc/hosts file using echo command or open it with nano and add the lines:
echo '127.0.0.1		localhost' >> /etc/hosts
echo '::1	        localhost' >> /etc/hosts
echo '127.0.1.1		ArchLinux.localdomain	ArchLinux' >> /etc/hosts

📶 Complete the network configuration for the newly installed environment. That may include installing suitable network management software.

We will use the application NetworkManager afterwards in any of our desktops we would like to install. Therefore it makes sense to install and activate this application right now. Then, you can use nmtui or wifi-menu to configure your network profile.

Make sure you type NetworkManager in the second line. It is case sensitve. You will get 3 symlink lines as a result. When we boot we will have internet on board.

pacman -S networkmanager
systemctl enable NetworkManager

🔴 Install necessary drivers for wireless card if needed (e.g. for my Broadcom BCM4312 card)

pacman -S --needed dkms
pacman -S --needed broadcom-wl-dkms
#pacman -S --needed broadcom-wl

To find out what hardware you have in your computer:

lspci -v | grep -i network

3.6 Initramfs

Modify mkinitcpio.conf :

nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Add btrfs to MODULES
Add setfont to BINARIES
Replace keymap and consolefont HOOKS with sd-vconsole
Uncomment the following line: #COMPRESSION="ZSTD"

And recreate the initramfs image with:

mkinitcpio -P

3.7 Root password

🔑 Use a strong and complicated password

passwd

3.8 Bootloader

UEFI

pacman -S --needed grub os-prober efibootmgr mtools dosfstools
# Change the directory to /boot if you mounted the EFI partition at /boot
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

BIOS

pacman -S --needed grub os-prober mtools dosfstools
# Replace sdX with your disk name, not the partition
grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sdX
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

4 Reboot

exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot

And log in back with root.

5 Post-installation

5.1 System administration

5.1.1 Users and groups

Add your user

👦 This will be the user you'll use to log in. For group reference see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Users_and_groups#Group_list

useradd -m -g users -G audio,video,network,wheel,storage,rfkill -s /bin/bash anisbsalah
passwd anisbsalah

Enable sudo

🧐 This will give your user administrative privileges.

EDITOR=nano visudo

⭐ Uncomment (remove the # in front of) the following line:

%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

And log in back with user account.

5.2 Package management

5.2.1 Pacman

Edit pacman configuration file:

nano /etc/pacman.conf

a- Enable parallel downloads

🌐 Depending on your internet connection enabling parallel downloads may speed up the package download process.

⭐ Uncomment (remove the # in front of) this line and set it to your desired value:

#ParallelDownloads = 5

b- Extra candy

🍬 If you want some extra candy you can uncomment Color and VerbosePkgLists and add ILoveCandy under Misc options.

5.2.2 Repositories

👾 multilib is a repository which contains 32-bit libraries and is disabled by default (needed for some games & software; highly recommended to enable).

If you plan on using 32-bit applications, you will want to enable the multilib repository.

⭐ Uncomment (remove the # in front of) the following lines:

#[multilib]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Update the repos

sudo pacman -Syu

5.3 Graphical user interface

5.3.1 Display server

Xorg is the public, open-source implementation of the X Window System (commonly X11, or X). It is required for running applications with graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and the majority of users will want to install it.

sudo pacman -S --needed xorg xorg-apps xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-xkill xorg-xwayland

5.3.2 Display drivers

The default modesetting display driver will work with most video cards, but performance may be improved and additional features harnessed by installing the appropriate driver for AMD or NVIDIA products.

⚠️ Warning: The linux kernel can handle many graphical cards, so try first without any extra installation.

To find out what hardware you have in your computer:

lspci -v | grep -e VGA -e 3D

Mesa (useful for all GPUs)

sudo pacman -S --nedded mesa lib32-mesa

Vulkan (useful for all GPUs)

sudo pacman -S --nedded vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader

Open Source drivers

Only install this if you use an AMD or Intel GPU or want to use the open source NVIDIA driver (Nouveau, not developed by NVIDIA)

sudo pacman -S <driver>

xf86-video-amdgpu is for newer AMD GPUs
xf86-video-nouveau is the open source NVIDIA driver
xf86-video-intel is the open source Intel driver (You probably want to leave this out, and it will use the modesetting driver. For more information refer to the wiki)
xf86-video-ati is for older AMD GPUs
xf86-video-vmware for VirtualBox, VMWare, QEMU
xf86-video-fbdev for Hyper-V
If you don't know it you can install all, but it could happen that the internal graphics card is used if you install the driver for it

AMD Utils

Only install these packages if you are using an AMD GPU

sudo pacman -S libva-mesa-driver lib32-libva-mesa-driver mesa-vdpau lib32-mesa-vdpau libva-vdpau-driver lib32-libva-vdpau-driver vulkan-radeon lib32-vulkan-radeon

Intel Utils

Only install this package if you are using an Intel GPU

sudo pacman -S vulkan-intel

Nvidia proprietary driver

Only install these packages if you are using an NVIDIA GPU

sudo pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils libvdpau lib32-libvdpau

⚠️ Warning NVIDIA's Linux drivers have a bad reputation when it comes to stability and compatibility with all systems. If you experience any problems later on consult https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA for troubleshooting.

Early KMS start

Some systems require early KMS start to work properly. Read the Arch Wiki entry about it

nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Change MODULES=() to

MODULES=(amdgpu) if you installed xf86-video-amdgpu
MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm) if you installed nvidia
MODULES=(i915) if you are using Intel graphics
for any other driver you can skip this step

Remove kms inside HOOKS=() if you installed nvidia

and run

mkinitcpio -P

5.3.3 Desktop environment

sudo pacman -S plasma-desktop konsole kate dolphin firefox ssdm

sudo systemctl enable ssdm.service

5.3.4 User directories

Well-known user directories like Downloads or Music are created by the xdg-user-dirs-update.service user service, that is provided by xdg-user-dirs and enabled by default upon install.

sudo pacman -S --needed xdg-user-dirs xdg-utils

⚠️ Note: The installation can just end here. Then you add more applications to have a system suited to your needs and theme it anyway you like.

5.4 Useful packages

AUR Setup

The Arch User Repository is a community-driven repository for Arch users. yay is a pacman wrapper that allows installing AUR packages.

pacman -S --noconfirm --needed git base-devel
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git /tmp/yay
cd /tmp/yay
makepkg -si

paru is a good alternative to yay. It's easy to use due to its similarity with yay's CLI. To install it, simply execute the following commands:

pacman -S --noconfirm --needed git base-devel
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/paru.git /tmp/paru
cd /tmp/paru
makepkg -si

Networking

sudo pacman -S --needed avahi curl bind bridge-utils dhclient dialog dnsutils dnsmasq gvfs gvfs-smb ifplugd inetutils ipset iptables-nft iw iwd mobile-broadband-provider-info modemmanager net-tools netctl networkmanager network-manager-applet networkmanager-openconnect networkmanager-openvpn networkmanager-pptp networkmanager-qt networkmanager-vpnc nfs-utils nm-connection-editor nss-mdns ntp openbsd-netcat openconnect openssh openvpn samba wireless-regdb wireless_tools wget wpa_supplicant

sudo systemctl enable avahi-daemon.service
sudo systemctl enable ntpd.service
sudo systemctl enable sshd.service
sudo systemctl enable wpa_supplicant.service

Sound

a- Pipewire

sudo pacman -S --needed alsa-card-profiles alsa-firmware alsa-lib alsa-plugins alsa-utils sof-firmware pipewire pipewire-alsa pipewire-audio pipewire-docs pipewire-ffado pipewire-jack pipewire-pulse pipewire-roc pipewire-v4l2 pipewire-x11-bell pipewire-zeroconf lib32-pipewire lib32-pipewire-jack wireplumber gst-plugin-pipewire gstreamer gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-ugly pavucontrol playerctl volumeicon

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire

b- PulseAudio

sudo pacman -S --needed alsa-card-profiles alsa-firmware alsa-lib alsa-plugins alsa-utils sof-firmware pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa pulseaudio-bluetooth pulseaudio-equalizer pulseaudio-jack pulseaudio-lirc pulseaudio-rtp pulseaudio-zeroconf lib32-alsa-plugins lib32-libpulse gstreamer gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-ugly pavucontrol playerctl volumeicon

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PulseAudio

Bluetooth support

sudo pacman -S --needed bluez bluez-utils bluez-libs bluedevil

sudo systemctl enable bluetooth.service

Printer support

sudo pacman -S --needed cups cups-pdf cups-filters cups-pk-helper foomatic-db foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db-gutenprint-ppds foomatic-db-ppds foomatic-db-nonfree foomatic-db-nonfree-ppds ghostscript gsfonts gutenprint gtk3-print-backends libcups system-config-printer sane skanlite

sudo systemctl enable cups.service

Input drivers

sudo pacman -S --needed xf86-input-synaptics xf86-input-libinput xf86-input-evdev xf86-input-elographics

Power management

sudo pacman -S --needed acpi acpid acpi_call tlp

sudo systemctl enable acpid.service
sudo systemctl enable tlp.service

General packages, archive and file system utils

sudo pacman -S --needed arj bash-completion cabextract cifs-utils e2fsprogs exfat-utils filelight file-roller man-db man-pages nfs-utils nilfs-utils ntfs-3g p7zip rar reflector rsync sharutils squashfs-tools terminus-font texinfo udiskie udisks2 unace unarchiver unrar unzip usbutils uudeview xz zip

sudo systemctl enable reflector.timer

anisbsalah / archlinux-installation-guide Goto Github PK