Arch Linux Bare Installation

Notes

This is an abridged version based on https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide and https://linuxiac.com/arch-linux-install/. The purpose is to create a dumbed down guide that blasts past whatever precautions and warnings on the wiki. I. AM. SPEED. (Though is not gonna be as fast as this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8utpbbdj0LQ)

Warning

Make sure you have backed up all data before proceeding. This includes: your USB devices and your system disks.

Disclaimer: Proceed with the setup steps with extreme cautions. You must know what you are doing. I am not held responsible for your negligence.

Download `.iso` image

https://archlinux.org/download/

Example download script (using University of Waterloo repository mirror)

cd ~/Downloads && curl -O http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/archlinux/iso/2022.02.01/archlinux-2022.02.01-x86_64.iso

Create the USB installation medium with `dd`

dd if=/path/to/archlinux.iso of=/dev/somedisk bs=4M conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress

Example:

dd if=~/Downloads/archlinux-2022.02.01-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress

Note: Use lsblk to list the disks mounted on your system. A USB device should typically be in the form of sdx.

Restart and Boot into the USB

Lenovo: Enter → F12
Dell: F12
ASUS motherboard: Delete or F2

After a bit of initializations, you should now be staring at the live boot TTY command line as root, denoted by #.

Networking

Check the interfaces

ip link

If interface, wlan0 for example, is shown as DOWN, do:

sudo ip link set wlan0 up

Wireless (from Arch Linux Wiki)

iwctl

device list

station device scan

station device get-networks

station device connect SSID

Wired

Should run without much configurations. Typically, installation occurs in a DHCP environment.

For static IP configurations

IP assignment

ip address show

ip address add address/prefix_len broadcast + dev interfaces

Routing table

ip route show

ip route add PREFIX via address dev interface

Update `pacman` repository listing

```sh
pacman -Syy
```

Create new partition table

Make sure you have backed up all data before proceeding. These steps assume that you are using a whole disk as installation target.

List available disks
```
fdisk -l
```
Create partition table
```
cfdisk /dev/sdx
```
If prompted for label type, select gpt.
Delete all partitions.

Partition table should be:

Partition	Type	Size	Format
/dev/sda1	EFI System Partition	512M	FAT32
/dev/sda2	Linux Swap	4G
/dev/sda3	Linux Partition	`Enter`	EXT4

Write changes to disk.

Formatting the partitions

EFI System:
```
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
```
Linux Swap:
```
mkswap /dev/sda2
swapon /dev/sda2
```
Linux Partition /:
```
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3
```

Install Arch Linux

Mount root partition on system disk to live boot environment
```
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
```

pacstrap-ing

pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware sudo vim

If PGP signature is not trusted, keyring needs to be updated.

```
pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring
```

System Configurations

fstab
```
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
```
Change root into the installed system
```
arch-chroot /mnt
```

Timezone

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime

Locale

This sed script needs to be verified!!

```sh
sed -i 's/#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/' /etc/locale.gen
sed -i 's/#en_US ISO-8859-1/en_US ISO-8859-1/' /etc/locale.gen
```

Or manually:

```
vim /etc/locale.gen
```

Locale (cont.)

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

Hostname

echo "your-pc-name-of-choice" > /etc/hostname

echo -e "127.0.0.1\tlocalhost\n::1\t\tlocalhost\n127.0.1.1\tyour_pc_name" > /etc/hosts

Should look something like this

# /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1   localhost
::1         localhost
127.0.1.1   your-pc-name

Set root password
```
passwd
```

Install grub bootloader

pacman -S grub efibootmgr os-prober mtools

mkdir /boot/efi
mount /dev/sda1/ /boot/efi
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --bootloader-id=grub_uefi
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Install Desktop Environment of choice

Prerequisites

Install Xorg
```
pacman -S xorg-server xorg-apps
```

Install GPU drivers

# NVIDIA
pacman -S nvidia-utils

# AMD
pacman -S xf86-video-ati

# Intel
pacman -S xf86-video-intel

Desktop Environments

Not all DE’s are covered here. Only the 2 most used: gnome and kde. For other DE’s, the Arch wiki covers them all.

GNOME

pacman -S gnome gnome-extra networkmanager
systemctl enable gdm
systemctl enable NetworkManager # THIS SHIT IS CASE-SENSITIVE

KDE

pacman -S xorg plasma plasma-wayland-session kde-applications networkmanager
systemctl enable sddm.service
systemctl enable NetworkManager # THIS SHIT IS CASE-SENSITIVE

Create a user account

useradd -m -G wheel account_name
passwd account_name
EDITOR=vim visudo

Find and uncomment the line # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

In vim Normal Mode, type /%wheel ALL=(ALL) to search for that line. If you feel lazy, in Normal Mode, type :set ignorecase to ignore case for search query.

Finalization

exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot

After the reboot, it should boot straight into the Arch installation on your system (assuming you have only 1 disk, 1 OS installed, lol).

Keyboard shortcuts

script-convenience-store

Wireless (from Arch Linux Wiki)