A Personal Arch Installation Guide

This is a personal guide so if you are lost and just found this guide from somewhere, I recommend you to read the official wiki! This guide will focus on systemd-boot, UEFI and a guide if you want to encrypt your partition with LUKS/LVM. This guide exists so that I can remember a bunch of things when reinstalling Archlinux.

Pre-installation

Before installing, make sure to:

• Read the official wiki. It is advisable to read that instead. I wrote this guide for myself.
• Acquire an installation image from here.
• Verify signature.
• Prepare an installation medium.
• Boot the live environment.

Set the keyboard layout

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

# ls /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/**/*.map.gz

To modify the layout, append a corresponding file name to loadkeys, omitting path and file extension. For example, to set a US keyboard layout:

# loadkeys us

Verify the boot mode

If UEFI mode is enabled on an UEFI motherboard, Archiso will boot Arch Linux accordingly via systemd-boot. To verify this, list the efivars directory:

# ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

If the command shows the directory without error, then the system is booted in UEFI mode. If the directory does not exist, the system may be booted in BIOS (or CSM) mode.

Connect to the internet

We need to make sure that we are connected to the internet to be able to install Arch Linux base and linux packages. Let’s see the names of our interfaces.

# ip link

You should see something like this:

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
		link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp0s0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
		link/ether 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000
		link/ether 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00

• enp0s0 is the wired interface
• wlan0 is the wireless interface

Wired Connection

If you are on a wired connection, you can enable your wired interface by systemctl start dhcpcd@<interface>.

# systemctl start dhcpcd@enp0s0

Wireless Connection

If you are on a laptop, you can connect to a wireless access point using iwctl command from iwd. Note that it's already enabled by default. Also make sure the wireless card is not blocked with rfkill.

Scan for network.

# iwctl station wlan0 scan

Get the list of scanned networks by:

# iwctl station wlan0 get-networks

Connect to your network.

# iwctl -P "PASSPHRASE" station wlan0 connect "NETWORKNAME"

Ping archlinux website to make sure we are online:

# ping archlinux.org

If you receive Unknown host or Destination host unreachable response, means you are not online yet. Review your network configuration and redo the steps above.

Update the system clock

Use timedatectl to ensure the system clock is accurate:

# timedatectl set-ntp true

To check the service status, use timedatectl status.

Partition the disks

When recognized by the live system, disks are assigned to a block device such as /dev/sda, /dev/nvme0n1 or /dev/mmcblk0. To identify these devices, use lsblk or fdisk. The most common main drive is sda.

# lsblk

Results ending in rom, loop or airoot may be ignored.

In this guide, I'll create a two different ways to partition a drive. One for a normal installation, the other one is setting up with an encryption(LUKS/LVM). Let's start with the unecrypted one:

Unencrypted filesystem

• Let’s clean up our main drive to create new partitions for our installation. And yeah, in this guide, we will use /dev/sda as our disk.

   gdisk /dev/sda
  

• Press x to enter expert mode. Then press z to zap our drive. Then hit y when prompted about wiping out GPT and blanking out MBR. Note that this will zap your entire drive so your data will be gone - reduced to atoms after doing this. THIS. CANNOT. BE. UNDONE.

• Open cgdisk to start partitioning our filesystem

   cgdisk /dev/sda
  

• Press Return when warned about damaged GPT.

  Now we should be presented with our main drive showing the partition number, partition size, partition type, and partition name. If you see list of partitions, delete all those first.

• Create the boot partition

  • Hit New from the options at the bottom.
  • Just hit enter to select the default option for the first sector.
  • Now the partion size - Arch wiki recommends 200-300 MB for the boot + size. Let’s make 1GiB in case we need to add more OS to our machine. I’m gonna assign mine with 1024MiB. Hit enter.
  • Set GUID to EF00. Hit enter.
  • Set name to boot. Hit enter.
  • Now you should see the new partition in the partitions list with a partition type of EFI System and a partition name of boot. You will also notice there is 1007KB above the created partition. That is the MBR. Don’t worry about that and just leave it there.

• Create the root partition

  • Hit New again.
  • Hit enter to select the default option for the first sector.
  • Hit enter again to input your root size.
  • Also hit enter for the GUID to select default(8300).
  • Then set name of the partition to root.

• Create the root partition

  • Hit New again.
  • Hit enter to select the default option for the first sector.
  • Hit enter again to use the remainder of the disk.
  • Also hit enter for the GUID to select default.
  • Then set name of the partition to home.

• Lastly, hit Write at the bottom of the patitions list to write the changes to the disk. Type yes to confirm the write command. Now we are done partitioning the disk. Hit Quit to exit cgdisk. Go to the next section.

Encrypted filesystem with LUKS/LVM

• Let’s clean up our main drive to create new partitions for our installation. And yeah, in this guide, we will use /dev/sda as our disk.

   gdisk /dev/sda
  

• Press x to enter expert mode. Then press z to zap our drive. Then hit y when prompted about wiping out GPT and blanking out MBR. Note that this will zap your entire drive so your data will be gone - reduced to atoms after doing this. THIS. CANNOT. BE. UNDONE.

• Create our partitions by running cgdisk /dev/sda

   cgdisk /dev/sda
  

• Just press Return when warned about damaged GPT.

  Now we should be presented with our main drive showing the partition number, partition size, partition type, and partition name. If you see list of partitions, delete all those first.

• Create the boot partition

  • Hit New from the options at the bottom.
  • Just hit enter to select the default option for the first sector.
  • Now the partion size - Arch wiki recommends 200-300 MB for the boot + size. Let’s make 1GiB in case we need to add more OS to our machine. I’m gonna assign mine with 1024MiB. Hit enter.
  • Set GUID to EF00. Hit enter.
  • Set name to boot. Hit enter.
  • Now you should see the new partition in the partitions list with a partition type of EFI System and a partition name of boot.

• Create the LVM partition

  • Hit New again.
  • Hit enter to select the default option for the first sector.
  • Hit enter again to use the remainder of the disk.
  • Set GUID to 8e00. Hit enter.
  • Set name to lvm. Hit enter.

• Lastly, hit Write at the bottom of the patitions list to write the changes to the disk. Type yes to confirm the write command. Now we are done partitioning the disk. Hit Quit to exit cgdisk. Go to the next section.

Verifying the partitions

Use lsblk again to check the partitions we created. We? I thought I'm doing this guide for myself lol

# lsblk

You should see something like this:

Unencrypted filesystem

NAME	MAJ:MIN	RM	SIZE	RO	TYPE	MOUNTPOINT
sda	8:0	0	477G	0
sda1	8:1	0	1	0	part
sda2	8:2	0	1	0	part
sda3	8:3	0	175G	0	part

sda is the main disk
sda1 is the boot partition
sda2 is the swap partition
sda3 is the home partition

Encrypted filesystem

NAME	MAJ:MIN	RM	SIZE	RO	TYPE	MOUNTPOINT
sda	8:0	0	477G	0	disk
sda1	8:1	0	1	0	part
sda2	8:2	0	1	0	part

sda is the main disk
sda1 is the boot partition
sda2 is the LVM partition

Surprise! Surprise! We will not encrypt the /boot partition.

Format the partitions

Unencrypted filesystem

• Format /dev/sda1 partition as FAT32. This will be our /boot.

   mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
  

• Format /dev/sda3 and /dev/sda4 partition as EXT4. This will be our root and home partition.

   mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3
   mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4
  

Encrypted filesystem

• Format /dev/sda1 partition as FAT32. This will be our /boot.

   mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
  

• Create the LUKS encrypted container.

   cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda2
  

• Enter your passphrase twice. Don't forget this!

• Open the created container and name it whatever you want. In this guide I'll just use cryptlvm.

   cryptsetup open --type luks /dev/sda2 cryptlvm
  

• Enter your passphrase and verify it.

• The decrypted container is now available at /dev/mapper/cryptlvm.

• Create a physical volume on top of the opened LUKS container:

   pvcreate /dev/mapper/cryptlvm
  

• Create the volume group and name it volume (or whatever you want), adding the previously created physical volume to it:

  In this guide, I'll just use volume as the volume group name.

   vgcreate volume /dev/mapper/cryptlvm
  

• Create all your needed logical volumes on the volume group. We will create root and home logical volumes. Note that the volume is the name of the volume we just created.

  • Create our root. In this guide, I'll use 100GB.

     lvcreate -L 100G volume -n root
    

    This will create /dev/mapper/volume-root.

  • Create our home sweet home. I'll just assign the remaining space to it.

     lvcreate -l 100%FREE volume -n home
    

  This will create /dev/mapper/volume-home.

• Format the logical partitions under the LVM volume.

  • Format our root and home partitions.

     mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/volume-root
     mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/volume-home
    

Mount the filesystems

Unencryped partition

• Mount the /dev/sda partition to /mnt. This is our /:

   mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
  

• Create a /boot mountpoint:

   mkdir /mnt/boot  
  

• Mount /dev/sda1 to /mnt/boot partition. This is will be our /boot:

   mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
  

• Create a /home mountpoint:

   mkdir /mnt/home  
  

• Mount /dev/sda4 to /mnt/home partition. This is will be our /home:

   mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/home
  

Encrypted partition

• Mount the /dev/mapper/volume-root partition to /mnt. This is our /:

   mount /dev/mapper/volume-root /mnt
  

• Create a /boot mountpoint:

   mkdir /mnt/boot  
  

• Mount /dev/sda1 to /mnt/boot partition. This is will be our /boot:

   mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
  

• Create a /home mountpoint:

   mkdir /mnt/home  
  

• Mount /dev/mapper/volume-home to /mnt/home partition. This is will be our /home:

   mount /dev/mapper/volume-home /mnt/home
  

  We don’t need to mount swap since it is already enabled.

Installation

Now let’s go ahead and install base, linux, linux-firmware, and base-devel packages into our system.

# pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-zen linux-firmware

I will install linux-zen since it has necessary modules for gaming.

The base package does not include all tools from the live installation, so installing other packages may be necessary for a fully functional base system. In particular, consider installing:

• software necessary for networking,

  • dhcpcd: RFC2131 compliant DHCP client daemon
  • iwd: Internet Wireless Daemon
  • inetutils: A collection of common network programs
  • iputils: Network monitoring tools, including ping

• utilities for accessing RAID or LVM partitions,

  • lvm2: Logical Volume Manager 2 utilities (if you are setting up an encrypted filesystem with LUKS/LVM, include this on pacstrap)

• Zram

  • zram-generator

• a text editor(s),

  • nano
  • vim
  • vi

• packages for accessing documentation in man and info pages,

  • man-db
  • man-pages

• Microcode

  • intel-ucode/amd-ucode

• tools:

  • git: the fast distributed version control system
  • tmux: A terminal multiplexer
  • less: A terminal based program for viewing text files
  • usbutils: USB Device Utilities
  • bash-completion: Programmable completion for the bash shell

• userspace utilities for the management of file systems that will be used on the system,

  • ntfs-3g: NTFS filesystem driver and utilities
  • unrar: The RAR uncompression program
  • unzip: For extracting and viewing files in .zip archives
  • p7zip: Command-line file archiver with high compression ratio
  • unarchiver: unar and lsar: Objective-C tools for uncompressing archive files
  • gvfs-mtp: Virtual filesystem implementation for GIO (MTP backend; Android, media player)
  • libmtp: Library implementation of the Media Transfer Protocol
  • android-udev: Udev rules to connect Android devices to your linux box
  • mtpfs: A FUSE filesystem that supports reading and writing from any MTP devic
  • xdg-user-dirs: Manage user directories like ~/Desktop and ~/Music

These tools will be useful later. So future me, install these.

Generating the fstab

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

Check the resulting /mnt/etc/fstab file, and edit it in case of errors.

Chroot

Now, change root into the newly installed system

# arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Time zone

A selection of timezones can be found under /usr/share/zoneinfo/. Since I am in the Philippines, I will be using /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Manila. Select the appropriate timezone for your country:

# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Manila /etc/localtime

Run hwclock to generate /etc/adjtime:

# hwclock --systohc

This command assumes the hardware clock is set to UTC.

Localization

The locale defines which language the system uses, and other regional considerations such as currency denomination, numerology, and character sets. Possible values are listed in /etc/locale.gen. Uncomment en_US.UTF-8, as well as other needed localisations.

Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and other needed locales in /etc/locale.gen, save, and generate them with:

# locale-gen

Create the locale.conf file, and set the LANG variable accordingly:

# locale > /etc/locale.conf

If you set the keyboard layout earlier, make the changes persistent in vconsole.conf:

# echo "KEYMAP=us" > /etc/vconsole.conf

Not using us layout? Replace it, stoopid.

Network configuration

Create the hostname file. In this guide I'll just use MYHOSTNAME as hostname. Hostname is the host name of the host. Every 60 seconds, a minute passes in Africa.

# echo "MYHOSTNAME" > /etc/hostname

Open /etc/hosts to add matching entries to hosts:

127.0.0.1    localhost  
::1          localhost  
127.0.1.1    MYHOSTNAME.localdomain	  MYHOSTNAME

If the system has a permanent IP address, it should be used instead of 127.0.1.1.

Initramfs

Creating a new initramfs is usually not required, because mkinitcpio was run on installation of the kernel package with pacstrap. This is important if you are setting up a system with encryption!

Unencrypted filesystem

```
# mkinitcpio -P
```

DO NOT FORGET TO RUN THIS BEFORE REBOOTING YOUR SYSTEM!

Encrypted filesystem with LVM/LUKS

• Open /etc/mkinitcpio.conf with an editor:

• In this guide, there are two ways to setting up initramfs, udev (default) and systemd. If you are planning to use plymouth(splashcreen), it is advisable to use a systemd-based initramfs.

  • udev-based initramfs (default).

    Find the HOOKS array, then change it to something like this:

    OOKS=(base udev autodetect keyboard modconf block encrypt lvm2 filesystems fsck)
    

  • systemd-based initramfs.

    Find the HOOKS array, then change it to something like this:

    OOKS=(base systemd autodetect keyboard sd-vconsole modconf block sd-encrypt lvm2 filesystems fsck)
    

  • Regenerate initramfs image:

     mkinitcpio -P
    

    DO NOT FORGET TO RUN THIS BEFORE REBOOTING YOUR SYSTEM!

Making Swap File and ZSwap

Time to create a swap file! I'll make two gigabytes swap file.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=2048 status=progress

Set the right permissions

# chmod 0600 /swapfile

After creating the correctly sized file, format it to swap:

# mkswap -U clear /swapfile

Activate the swap file

# swapon /swapfile

Finally, edit the fstab configuration to add an entry for the swap file in /etc/fstab:

/swapfile none swap defaults,pri=10 0 0

Install zram-generator:

# pacman -S zram-generator

Let's make a config file at /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf ! I prefer having HALF of my TOTAL RAM as zswap size. My laptop have 4 cores, so I'll distribute it to FOUR zram devices. So I'll uthis config :

[zram0]
zram-size = ram/8
compression-algorithm = zstd
swap-priority = 100

[zram1]
zram-size = ram/8
compression-algorithm = zstd
swap-priority = 100

[zram2]
zram-size = ram/8
compression-algorithm = zstd
swap-priority = 100

[zram3]
zram-size = ram/8
compression-algorithm = zstd
swap-priority = 100

No need to enable/start anything, it will automatically initialize zram devices! Just reboot and run swapon -s to check the swap you have.

Adding Repositories - multilib and AUR

Enable multilib and AUR repositories in /etc/pacman.conf. Open it with your editor of choice:

Adding multilib repository

Uncomment multilib (remove # from the beginning of the lines). It should look like this:

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

Adding the AUR repository

Add the following lines at the end of your /etc/pacman.conf to enable the AUR repo:

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

pacman goodies

You can enable the "easter-eggs" and goodies in pacman, the package manager of archlinux.

Open /etc/pacman.conf, then find # Misc options.

To add colors to pacman, uncomment Color. Then add Pac-Man to pacman by adding ILoveCandy under the Color string. To enable parallel downloads, uncomment it too:

Color
ILoveCandy
ParallelDownloads = 3

Update repositories and packages

To check if you successfully added the repositories and enable the easter-eggs, run:

# pacman -Syu

If updating returns an error, open the pacman.conf again and check for human errors. Yes, you f'ed up big time.

Root password

Set the root password:

# passwd

Add a user account

Add a new user account. In this guide, I'll just use MYUSERNAME as the username of the new user aside from root account. (My phrasing seems redundant, eh?) Of course, change the example username with your own:

# useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power,video,audio,rfkill,input -s /bin/bash MYUSERNAME

This will create a new user and its home folder.

Set the password of user MYUSERNAME:

# passwd MYUSERNAME

Add the new user to sudoers:

If you want a root privilege in the future by using the sudo command, you should grant one yourself:

# EDITOR=vim visudo

Uncomment the line (Remove #):

# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Install the boot loader

Yeah, this is where we install the bootloader. We will be using systemd-boot, so no need for grub2.

• Install bootloader:

  We will install it in /boot mountpoint (/dev/sda1 partition).

   bootctl --path=/boot install
  

• Create a boot entry /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf, then add these lines:

Unencrypted filesystem

```
title Arch Linux  
linux /vmlinuz-linux  
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img  
options root=/dev/sda3 rw
```

If your `/` is not in `/dev/sda3`, make sure to change it. 

Save and exit.

Encrypted filesystem

Remember the two-types of initramfs earlier? Each type needs a specific kernel parameters. So there's also a two type of entries here. Remember that volume is the volume group name and /dev/mapper/volume-root is the path to /.

• udev-based initramfs

  itle Arch Linux  
  inux /vmlinuz-linux  
  nitrd  /initramfs-linux.img  
  ptions cryptdevice=UUID=/DEV/SDA2/UUID/HERE:volume root=/dev/mapper/volume-root rw
  

  Replace /DEV/SDA2/UUID/HERE with the UUID of your LVM partition. You can check it by running blkid /dev/sda2. Note that cryptdevice parameter is unsupported by plymouth so it's advisable to use systemd-based initramfs if you are planning to use it.

  Tip: If you are using vim, you can write the UUID easier by typing :read ! blkid /dev/sda2 then hit enter. Then manipulate the output by using visual mode.

• systemd-based initramfs

  itle Arch Linux
  inux /vmlinuz-linux
  nitrd /intel-ucode.img
  nitrd /initramfs-linux.img
  ptions rd.luks.name=/DEV/SDA2/UUID/HERE=volume root=/dev/mapper/volume-root rw
  

  Replace /DEV/SDA2/UUID/HERE with the UUID of your LVM partition. You can check it by running blkid /dev/sda2.

  Tip: If you are using vim, you can write the UUID easier by typing :read ! blkid /dev/sda2 then hit enter. Then manipulate the output by using visual mode.

Update boot loader configuration

Update bootloader configuration

# vim /boot/loader/loader.conf

Delete all of its content, then replaced it by:

default arch.conf
timeout 0
console-mode max
editor no

Microcode

Processor manufacturers release stability and security updates to the processor microcode. These updates provide bug fixes that can be critical to the stability of your system. Without them, you may experience spurious crashes or unexpected system halts that can be difficult to track down.

If you didn't install it using pacstrap, install microcode by:

For AMD processors:

# pacman -S amd-ucode

For Intel processors:

# pacman -S intel-ucode

If your Arch installation is on a removable drive that needs to have microcode for both manufacturer processors, install both packages.

Load microcode. For systemd-boot, use the initrd option to load the microcode, before the initial ramdisk, as follows:

# sudoedit /boot/loader/entries/entry.conf

title   Arch Linux
linux   /vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /CPU_MANUFACTURER-ucode.img
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
...

Replace CPU_MANUFACTURER with either amd or intel depending on your processor.

Enable internet connection for the next boot

To enable the network daemons on your next reboot, you need to enable dhcpcd.service for wired connection and iwd.service for a wireless one.

# systemctl enable dhcpcd iwd

Exit chroot and reboot:

Exit the chroot environment by typing exit or pressing Ctrl + d. You can also unmount all mounted partition after this.

Finally, reboot.

Finale

If your installation is a success, then yay!!! If not, you should start questioning your own existence. Are your parents proud of you?

[POST INSTALLATION] [EXTRAS]