Installing Arch

Tags: note os/linux guide

Installing the system

Steps:

  1. Obtain an installation image and burn it into the USB drive. you can simply do cp archlinux.iso /dev/sdx. Alternatively you can do the following:

    1. Determine the optimal buffer size of the installation media device: lsblk -o NAME,LABEL,SIZE,OPT-IO
    2. Write the installation image to the installation media with the following command dd if=archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=your_buffer_size

  2. Boot from the installation media.

  3. Partition the discs with something like fdisk or parted

    • One EFI partition (of around 1G) (prefferably fat32) 5
    • One Root partition (ext4, btrfs, etc.)
    • (optionally) one 'home' partition
    • (optionally) one SWAP partition

  4. Format the partitions.

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/efi_partition # EFI partition should be FAT32
mkfs.ext4 /dev/root_partition     # root can be anything
mkswap /dev/swap_partition
  1. Mount the partitions.
mount --mkdir /dev/root_partition /mnt      # root goes first
mount --mkdir /dev/efi_partition /mnt/efi   # This is supposed to be the
											# recommended mount point.
mount --mkdir /dev/home_partition /mnt/home # optional
swapon /dev/swap_partition
  1. Update the mirrorlist file
reflector --latest 20 \
		  --country US,CO, \
		  --sort rate \
		  --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Install and configure the new system

  1. Install packages with pacstrap. Below is a list of packages that you'd want to install.
    • Required: base, linux, linux-firmware
    • Essentials:
      • Networking
        • networkmanager
        • (some DHCP server)
      • compiling/developing software
        • base-devel
        • git
      • Misc system administration
        • sudo
        • openssh
        • reflector
        • rsync
      • text editing
        • nano
        • micro
        • vi
        • vim
        • emacs
      • documentation
        • man
        • man-db
        • man-pages
        • texinfo
      • console fonts
        • terminus-font
# dont forget the -k :P
pacstrap -k mnt base linux linux-firmware networkmanager git sudo micro nvim openssh rsync
  1. generate and copy the fstab file
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
  1. Change root
arch-chroot /mnt
  1. Set the timezone and sync the hardware clock
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Bogota /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
  1. Edit /etc/locale.gen, uncommenting the line with en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
  2. run:
locale-gen
echo 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/locale.conf
echo 'FONT=ter-120n' >> /etc/vconsole.conf
  1. Set the system hostname and enable the network manager daemon
echo 'arch-btw' > /etc/hostname
systemctl enable NetworkManager
  1. Change the root password
passwd
  1. Create a user, add it to the wheel group and change their password
useradd -m -G wheel yourname 
passwd yourname
  1. Edit the sudoers file, uncomment the line with %wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
visudo
  1. install a bootloader and reboot

Bootloader Installation

GRUB

For GPT partition tables: There must be a 'BIOS Boot' type partition where grub can be installed. For MBR partition tables: You don't need extra partitions Now that you have the partitions thing sorted out, install grub and run the installation

pacman -S grub
grub-install

Next generate the configuration. It is not recommended to manually edit the resulting configuration file, instead, you should edit it through the system's configuration such as the /etc/default/grub and scripts inside /etc/grub.d/ Once you are ready to generate the config, make sure to either be booted or chrooted into the system and run:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

The installation is done and you can now reboot

Systemd Boot

  1. make sure you are chrooted
  2. make sure the boot partition is set to /boot
  3. run bootctl install

I'll probably need information about the drives for configuring systemd

sudo blkid -s PARTUUID -o value /dev/sda2 # outputs the UUID of /dev/sda2

Example of an entry in /boot/loader/entries/2025-07-03_23-10-35_linux.conf:

# Created by: archinstall
# Created on: 2025-07-03_23-10-35
title   Arch Linux (linux)
linux   /vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
options root=PARTUUID=e3d79530-83df-462f-9943-da776a3e42b7 zswap.enabled=0 rw rootfstype=ext4

Post Installation

  1. Log in as root, install sudo and vim, then edit the sudoers file and then add a user with wheel as a secondary group if it isn't done in creation.
pacman -S --needed sudo vim
useradd -mG wheel yourname
# or this if you already have a user with a home dir
usermod --append --groups wheel yourname # same as -a -G
visudo # here uncomment the line that contains `%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL`
  1. Install useful packages (e.g. man-doc, micro, bat, or anything from [[#Cool programs|here]])
  2. Enable systemd-resolved to use mDNS and find computers on your local LAN through their hostname.
systemctl enable --now systemd-resolved.service
# now you can ping machines on your network
ping rpi.local # this should work
  1. Pacman eye-candy: in the [options] section of your /etc/pacman.conf file, add the options Color and ILoveCandy.
  2. Install a display manager like ly
sudo pacman -S ly
# for ly, since it's a tty application we have to swap getty for ly
systemctl disable getty@tty1 && systemctl enable ly@tty1

Misc

Mount ntfs drives with correct unix permissions

Inside fstab, use the following mount options:

uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=022,fmask=133,windows_names,nofail,exec

Example /etc/fstab from my current system

# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/sda2
UUID=3e4c8041-f2cd-4f91-a03e-e52f49a055af   /               ext4   rw,relatime                                                                                             0 1

# /dev/sda1
UUID=DE85-8853                              /boot           vfat   rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro   0 2

UUID=4289FA0220A3A689                       /media/data     ntfs   nofail,users,dmask=022,fmask=133,uid=1000,gid=1000,windows_names,exec                                   0 0
UUID=F0C07D94C07D6230                       /media/win-c    ntfs   nofail,users,dmask=022,fmask=133,uid=1000,gid=1000,windows_names,exec                                   0 0
UUID=889E68EC9E68D3EA                       /media/backup   ntfs   nofail,users,dmask=022,fmask=133,uid=1000,gid=1000,windows_names,exec                                   0 0

[!note]+ the 1000 corresponds to the user and group id, check your user's id by running the id command

Cool programs

just some fun and cool programs