Arch Linux installation notes

This is a re-write of my old Arch Linux installation notes. Originally they were just on different text files on my github repo and they became too hard to read at some point so I decided to combine these notes to a proper blog post. The blog post was originally created to my old wordpress website a couple of years ago. Decided I would migrate this to here as well.

Table of contents:

• 1 VirtualBox setup
• 2 Starting Arch Linux virtual machine
• 3 Setting up network connection
• 4 Setup disk partitions
• 5 System setup
• 6 Configure network
• 7 Install sound
• 8 Install display server
• 9 Install desktop environment
• 10 TLDR

Requirements:

• Time and patience.
• Virtual machine ( or why not a real machine )
• Arch Linux image
• 1GB RAM
• 8GB free hard disk space

Steps:

1. Install VirtualBox
2. Install Arch Linux
3. ???
4. Profit

Easy, huh? So lets begin by installing the virtual machine so we can actually launch the Arch Linux!

Download:

• https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
• https://www.archlinux.org/download/

VirtualBox setup

1. Click New
2. Select the 64-bit Arch Linux and select a machine folder
3. Allocate RAM for the virtual machine. Recommended 1024MB should be enough.
4. Create a virtual hard disk
5. Select hard disk file type: VDI
6. Set the storage as dynamically allocated so that it won’t reserve the whole space immediately.
7. Type the name for the Virtual disk and allocate the size.Recommended 8GB is just fine for messing around with virtual machine

Now the virtual machine has been setup and the virtual machine is ready to be started. Click Start, select 64-bit Arch Linux as a start-up disk and click Start.

Virtual machine setup notes:

• If you lose your mouse on VirtualBox, click right Ctrl
• You can scroll up/down the terminal window with Shift + PageUp/PageDown
• If you get stuck in scaled mode: click right Ctrl + C
• Exit full screen mode right Ctrl + F

Now on to the sweet Arch Linux installation part.

Starting Arch Linux virtual machine

2.1 Click Boot Arch Linux ( x86_64 ). After Linux boots up, you should be sitting at root@archiso shell.

2.2 ( Optional ) set the keyboardlayout temporarily to finnish. ( Or whatever your language is. Default is english )

loadkeys fi

2.3 Check the network connection by pinging a google server

ping google.com

2.4 If your connection works, skip to step 4.

Setting up network connection

3.1 Check the ethernet card status and the drivers it uses. Command lists information about PCI buses and devices. Scroll up and search for Ethernet controller portion.

lspci -v

3.2 To search for Ethernet part, and print 10 lines after that:

lspci -v | grep -A 10 "Ethernet"

Kernel driver in use: e1000 – This is your card’s driver

3.3 Now we can search for the driver in the kernel message buffer to see if it is up.

dmesg | grep e1000

Output should look something like this, when the card is up and running:

3.4 If the driver is not in use, we need to load the driver. replace [ e1000 ] with your driver shown in lspci.

rmmod e1000
modprobe e1000

Throw in another ping to google server to test the connection. I have successfully fixed my connection issues this way a few times whenever I have started a fresh Arch install.

Of course there are many possible reasons why the connection is not working, especially wireless connection, but this is all that I have documented on my notes. If this doesn’t help, some googling is required to go forward I’m afraid.

Setup disk partitions

4.1 Check the disk name:

fdisk -l

/dev/sda is the one here

4.2 Open the partitioning tool:

cgdisk /dev/sda

4.3 Create a boot partition:

Note! Consider allocating more memory than 5GB for the root file system

- Press New
- Size -> 512M
- Code -> EF00
- Name -> boot

4.4 Create a swap partition:

- Press New
- Size -> 512M
- Code -> 8200
- Name -> swap

4.5 Create a root partition:

- Press New
- Size -> 5G
- Code -> 8300
- Name -> root

4.6 Create a home partition:

- Press New
- Size -> Enter ( Uses rest of the space. )
- Code -> 8300
- Name -> home

4.7 At this point the partitioning is done and just needs to be written to the disk:

- Press Write -> Yes.

4.8 Check that the partition table got written to the disk correctly:

lsblk

Partition table should look something like this.

4.9 Format the partitions

Create boot:

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

Create swap:

mkswap /dev/sda2

Turn swap on:

swapon /dev/sda2

Create root partition:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

Create home partition:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4

Create /mnt directory:

mkdir /mnt

Mount root to /mnt:

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt

Create boot directory:

mkdir /mnt/boot

Create home directory:

mkdir /mnt/home

Create home directory:

mkdir /mnt/home

Mount sda1 to boot directory:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

Mount sda4 to home directory:

mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/home

System setup

5.1 Install the system:

pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel

Press enter to all of the questions ( to install all packages )

5.2 Generate fstab file:

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

Fstab-file can be used to define what disks / partitions are going to be mounted to the filesystem.

5.3 Check that the 4 newly created partitions exists in fstab-file:

nano /mnt/etc/fstab

Fstab should look something like this.

5.4 Chroot to /mnt.

arch-chroot /mnt

5.5 Generate locale files:

nano /etc/locale.gen

Uncomment en_US-UTF-8:

ProTip: Press Ctrl + W and search for “en_US”

5.6 Generate files:

locale-gen

5.7 Setup language:

Create locale.conf and put en_US.UTF as default language

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

Export language:

export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

5.8. Setup time

Set the timezone:

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Helsinki /etc/localtime

Setup hardware clock:

hwclock --systohc --utc

5.9 Setup package manager:

nano /etc/pacman.conf

• Uncomment [multilib] and Include below it

• Add to the end of the file:

  [archlinuxfr]
  SigLevel = Never
  Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch

Pacman.conf should look something like this.

5.10 Update the system.

pacman -Syu

5.11 Setup users and passwords.

Set the hostname and password:

echo [YOUR_HOSTNAME_HERE] > /etc/hostname
passwd [YOUR_HOSTNAME_HERE]

Add the new user to group ‘wheel’:

useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash [YOUR_HOSTNAME_HERE]

Enable sudo for user:

EDITOR=nano visudo

Remove #-sign from #%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Visudo should look something like this.

Setup root password:

passwd

5.12 ( Optional ) Skip if you are not booting in EFI-mode. ( If you followed the VirtualBox tutorial, skip this part. )

Check that EFI variables are mounted:

mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

Install EFI to boot:

bootctl --path=/boot install

5.13 Configure bootloader:

Create a folder for conf file:

mkdir -p /boot/loader/entries/

[ -p ] -tag creates folders recursively

Open and create a conf file:

nano /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

• Type to the file:

title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /intel-ucode.img      # ( if PC has an Intel CPU )
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options root=/dev/sda3 rw

Bootloader configuration file should look something like this.

5.14 Setup bootloader.

( Optional ) Install intel microcodes if you have Intel CPU:

pacman -S intel-ucode

Install bootloader:

pacman -S grub-bios

( Optional ) If bootloader installing fails and you have booted in EFI mode:

pacman -Sy efibootmgr
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=grub --recheck

Install bootloader to harddrive:

grub-install /dev/sda

Note!

Here I actually got my first error:

grub-install: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won’t be possible.
Grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blockists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

I solved it by adding —force to the command so that it will use the blocklists. Kind of an ugly way to solve a problem and I might come back to the article and update a proper way to fix this.

grub-install --force --target=i386-pc /dev/sda

Create a init ramdisk file for temporary root file system during startup:

mkinitcpio -p linux

Create a grub config-file:

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

Exit chroot:

exit

Unmount the drive:

umount /mnt/boot
umount /mnt/home
umount /mnt

Reboot the system:

reboot

5.15 Boot up the system

Open the bootloader from the menu:

- Choose 'Boot existing OS' from the menu
- Select Arch Linux

Arch Linux boot menu

GRUB bootloader

You should be sitting at login prompt.

Login with the username and password that you configured earlier. And once you log in, you can see that there is not much going on, just a black terminal window. Now we just need to install a GUI.

Congratulations! You have just installed Arch Linux!

At this point some more steps are going to be needed so that the Arch Linux build would be useful for anything, like installing sound and graphical user interface.

Configure network

Network needs to actually be re-configured, because the network setup during install has no effect on the actual system.

Once again, check the name of the network driver:

lspci -v

Check the network interface name from the dmesg output:

dmesg | grep e1000

So my interface name is enp0s3. Now it needs to be configured to the DHCP client

sudo dhcpcd enp0s3

To make the fix permanent, we need to enable the dhcpcd service, so that we have a network connection at startup.

systemctl enable dhcpcd.service

Now the network should be back up, try to ping google servers once again:

ping google.com

Install net-tools to get ifconfig working:

sudo pacman -S net-tools

Run ifconfig to see network information:

ifconfig

Install sound

Install sound card drivers ( ALSA ):

sudo pacman -S alsa-utils

Install display server

• Choose 1: libglvnd ( These containt the latest drivers from the official repo. )

• Press Y

  pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-server-utils

Install 3D acceleration:

pacman -S mesa

Choose the correct driver:

Install graphics card drivers:

sudo pacman -S xf86-video-intel
sudo pacman -S lib32-intel-dri

Install touchpad drivers, if you have a laptop:

pacman -S xf86-input-synaptics

Install desktop environment

Choose one from the wiki:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/desktop_environment.

I usually go with the Xfce4.

Click enter to all prompts ( defaults )

pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies

Configure desktop environment:

cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc

sudo nano ~/.xinitrc

To load your keyboard layout add before exec line: ( change the fi to your language )

setxkbmap -layout fi

Add line to the end of the file: ( Replace startxfce4 with your DE. for example startlxde )

exec startxfce4

Edit bash profile file:

sudo nano ~/.bash_profile

Add line to the end of the file:

[[ -z $DISPLAY && $XDG_VTNR -eq 1 ]] && exec startx

Now the Desktop Environment has been set up. You can run the DE by running:

startxfce4

Keyboard layout hasn’t been loaded yet, the system needs to be rebooted once for the keyboard layout to take effect.

sudo reboot

Install fonts:

pacman -S ttf-dejavu

Once again, Congrats!

You should now have a working Arch Linux installation with GUI and everything. I might do some follow up articles for the Arch Linux installation, for example customizing Xmonad Desktop Environment.

Now that I have everything setup, the root partition is taking 63% of the allocated 5GB size. You really might want to allocate a lot more for the partitions.

Notes:

If you get stuck on login screen ( X server crashing ):
Press Ctrl + ALT + F2 so you can go to reconfigure ~/.xinitrc for example # (F1 - F7) F1 has the X server running.

TLDR

These are my raw notes, terminology might not be 100% correct, might contain more typos etc.

1. loadkeys fi

2. ping google.com


    if network is not working try:
    
    - lspci -v: search for ethernet driver name for example 'tg3'
    
    -dmesg | grep tg3:
    
        if driver is down run:
    
            - rmmod tg3
    
            - modprobe tg3

3. fdisk -l # check the harddrive name for the next command

4. gdisk /dev/sda # *possibly not needed*



---------------- THIS IS FOR SSD DRIVES -------------------

----- Use alternative (cfdisk) below if you have HDD ------



5. cgdisk 

    - new 1gb boot section (EF00) # 1024MiB
    
    - new (half of ram) sized swap (8200) # 2048MiB
    
    - new 20gb root (8300) # 20000MiB
    
    - new rest of the space sized home (8300) # the rest of the space



type lsblk to check partition names



6. mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1 # create boot

7. mkswap /dev/sda2 # create swap

8. swapon /dev/sda2 # turn swap on

9. mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3 # create root partition

10. mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4 # create home partition

11. mkdir /mnt # create /mnt directory

12. mount /dev/sda3 /mnt # mount root to /mnt

13. mkdir /mnt/boot 

14. mkdir /mnt/home

15. mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

16. mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/home


(5. alternaitve) cfdisk /dev/sda

    - delete all existing partitions
    
    - create new partition sized half of your ram size
    
        - set type to primari and linux swap
    
    - create new partition with the remaining disk space
    
        - set type to primary and linux bootable
    
    - hit write
    
    
    
        - mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2 # format to ext4
    
        - mount /dev/sda2 /mnt # mount root
    
        - mkswap /dev/sda1 # make swap partition
    
        - swapon /dev/sda1 # init swap partition


17. cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup # create a backup of the mirrorlist

18. sed -i 's/^#Server/Server/' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup # uncomments all the servers in the mirrorlist.backup

19. rankmirrors -n 6 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist # ping through the mirrors

#in mirrorlist.backup and stdout them into real mirrorlist (this will take about 5-10minutes)

20. pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel # install arch linux base and base-devel packages (install all)

21. genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab # generate fstab file

22. nano /mnt/etc/fstab # cheack that the 4 partitions exists in here. Or 2 if you used the alternative partitioning example.

23. arch-chroot /mnt # chroot into /mnt

24. nano /etc/locale.gen # uncomment en_US-UTF8

25. locale-gen # generate locale files

26. echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf # create locale.conf and put en_US.UTF as default language

27. export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

28. nano /etc/vconsole.conf

# write in the file:

    #KEYMAP=fi
    
    #FONT=Lat2-Terminus16

29. ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/ # check that Helsinki is in the folder

30. ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Helsinki /etc/localtime # set timezone

31. hwclock --systohc --utc

32. echo <hostname> > /etc/hostname

33. nano /etc/pacman.conf

# uncomment [multilib] and Include below it

# add to the end of the file:

    [archlinuxfr]
    
    SigLevel = Never
    
    Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch

34. pacman -Syu # update system

35. pacman -S yaourt # install user repository package

36. passwd # setup new root password

37. useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash <username> # add new user to group 'wheel'

38. EDITOR=nano visudo # enable sudo for user. Remove #-sign from #%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL 

39. passwd <user> # change newly created user password

40. pacman -S bash-completion # helps complete package names in the shell



----------------------------------------------------

----- SKIP IF YOU ARE NOT INSTALLING FROM EFI ------

----------------------------------------------------



41. mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars # check that EFI variables are mounted

42. bootctl --path=/boot install # install EFI to boot

----------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------



43. nano /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

# type to the file:

    title Arch Linux
    
    linux /vmlinuz-linux
    
    initrd /intel-ucode.img # if pc has intel cpu
    
    initrd /initramfs-linux.img
    
    options root=/dev/sda3 rw

44. pacman -S intel-ucode # if pc has intel cpu

45. pacman -S grub-bios # download bootloader

    if this doesnt work try:
    
        pacman -Sy efibootmgr
    
        grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=grub --recheck

46. grub-install /dev/sda # install bootloader to harddrive

47. mkinitcpio -p linux # create init file for root

48. exit

49. grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg # create grub config file

50. umount /mnt # unmount the drive

51. reboot