The installation of Arch Linux is often seen as a daunting proposition for those who are unfamiliar with the command line hackery many admins perform day-to-day. Although the initial learning curve is quiet steep, you will find yourself all the better for it after you can complete the installation with minimal hassle. To this end, I have thrown what I had on hand at the wall and written about the particular pieces that have stuck. This may not be the most thorough and technical walk through, but I hope that it can provide some assistance to those who find themselves baffled as to what to do next. This particular walk through is intended to work on the Lenovo Thinkpad L380. While some steps may work for other computers and installations, I will not make any promises as the the efficacy of this walk through for any other device.
Preparing the device
For this portion, you will need to obtain the Arch Linux iso. Specifically, you will need the iso file that is intended for the x86-64 chipsets. You will also need to download a program, such as Rufus, to create a bootable drive that will allow you to load the operating system for installation.
First, ensure that you have all you important files backed up to prevent the loss of important data. This installation process will make your files irrecoverable because we will later be formatting the drive to install the operating system.
Second go the the system’s bios menu and disable secure boot. This is done by pressing f1 at boot. The option will be under the “Security” tab and it will be called “Secure boot.” Save and restart the device.
Finally, with the USB device inserted, press f12 to enter the boot menu. In this menu, you will select the device containing Arch Linux to boot from. Choose the “Arch Linux” and enter the Arch Linux environment.
Step One: Wifi-menu
Although there are other methods to get your device online, I did not have the appropriate adapter for physically connecting my laptop to my network. I met some difficulties using wpa_supplicant but I found that wifi-menu was able to easily get me online. Simply run the following command:
root@archiso~# wifi-menu -o
You will be presented with an interface that will show you the surrounding available networks. Choose your own and enter your password to connect to the internet. Run the “ping” command to ensure that you have connectivity.
Step Two: Clock sync
Next we will set the system clock to ensure that logs are accurate and enter a second command to check that the initial command worked:
root@archiso~# timedatectl set-ntp true root@archiso~# timedatectl status
Step 3: Partitioning
For this step, I have elected to create 3 partitions. The first partition will store the boot information, the second partition will house my root directory, and the third partition will be for user home directories. I decided to not create a swap partition because I came to the conclusion that a swap file would afford more flexibility.
Begin by finding the names of the storage devices connected to your computer
root@archiso~# lsblk
NAME… SIZE… TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0
sda //this is my bootable flashdrive
mmcblk0 //this was an sd card I forgot to remove
nvme0n1 //this the laptop ssd
Your device will be referred to as /dev/[device name] in all the following commands
Run gdisk to begin the partitioning process. I will put the entirety of this in one section with comments that will briefly describe or provide some context.
root@archiso~# gdisk
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.4
Type device filename, or press <enter> to exit: /dev/nvme0n1
Partition table scan: //this may be different for you
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR: using GPT
Command (? for help): d //delete the exiting partitions
Partition (1 - 3): 1 //repeat these deletions for all partitions
Command ( ? for help): i //this will show information about the partitions
No partitions
Command ( ? for help): n //add a new partition
Partition number(1-128, default 1): 1 //select the first position
First sector (2048-XXXX, default = 2048) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: //default is fine
Last sector (2048-XXXX, default = XXXX) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: +550M
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300): ef02
Changed type of partition to 'Linux x86-64 root (/)'
Command ( ? for help): n //add a new partition
Partition number(2-128, default 1): 2 //select the first position
First sector (YYYY-XXXX, default = YYYY) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: //default is fine
Last sector (YYYY-XXXX, default = XXXX) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: +28G
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300): 8304
Changed type of partition to 'Linux x86-64 root (/)'
Command ( ? for help): n //add a new partition
Partition number(3-128, default 1): 3 //select the first position
First sector (YYYY-XXXX, default = YYYY) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: //default is fine
Last sector (YYYY-XXXX, default = XXXX) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: //default is fine if you are using the rest of the disk, otherwise specify
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300): 8302
Changed type of partition to 'Linux /home'
Command ( ? for help): i //look at your partitions to ensure that they are correct
Command ( ? for help): w //write the changes to the disk
Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING PARTITIONS!!
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/nvme0n1.
The operation has completed successfully.
root@archiso~#
If it seems unclear or you prefer a different partitioning program, google how to apply the following:
- bios boot partition(code: EF02), size: 550.0 MiB
- linux x86-64 root (/)(code: 8304), size: 28 GiB (splitting the difference here, feel free to use more or less space(within the recommendations))
- linux /home (code: 8302), size: remainder of the disk
Now that the partitions have been created, we need to format them for use by Arch. I have elected to use ext4 because it is well supported and has the proper utilities to keep the ssd healthy. Run “lsblk” to find the name of your partitions. These will be referred to as “/dev/[device partition name]” in all the following commands.
root@archiso~# lsblk
Name SIZE TYPE MOUNTPOINT
...
...
...
nvme0n1 disk
nvme0n1p1 550M part
nvme0n1p2 28G part
nvme0n1p3 210G part
Next we will format the partitions. The boot partition will need to be in fat32 and the two remaining OS partitions will be in ext4.
root@archiso~# mkfs.fat /dev/nvme0n1p1 //boot directory root@archiso~# mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p2 //root directory root@archiso~# mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p3 //home directory
Now that the partitions are ready, we need to mount them. We will need to create two additional directories within /mnt to mount all our partitions
root@archiso~# mkdir /mnt/boot root@archiso~# mkdir /mnt/home root@archiso~# mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt root@archiso~# mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /boot root@archiso~# mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /home
Step Four: Rank your mirrors
We’re going to begin by ranking mirrors so that we use the fastest mirrors. Begin by backing up your mirror list
root@archiso~# cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup
Now download the mirror list for your area. I will be using Los Angeles.
root@archiso~# curl -s "https://www.archlinux.org/mirrorlist/?country=US&protocol=https&use_mirror_status=on" | sed -e 's/^#Server/Server/' -e '/^#/d' >> mirrorlist.new
Open the downloaded file to ensure that you downloaded the correct file.
root@archiso~# cat /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.new
Now we can rank the mirror list and refresh it.
root@archiso~# rankmirrors -n 6 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.new
root@archiso~# cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.new /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
root@archiso~# pacman -Syyu
Step 5: Initial installation and configuration
At this point, you should have your partitions formatted with the proper filesystems and mounted to the proper mount points. If not, go back and follow the steps to complete these two tasks.
First, were going to install the ‘base’ package to /mnt where out root directory is located. It will complete with a couple warnings that we can safely ignore.
root@archiso~# pacstrap /mnt base
After that completes, generate the fstab file. It is important that all your partitions are mounted at this point. If you don’t, you may face issues trying to boot later and you will need to manually edit the fstab file to fix the issue.
root@archiso~# genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
At this point, you should now log into the root account of the installed system. Be aware that while you have access to the tools on the USB drive at this point, removing and rebooting will leave you with many of these tools missing due to the minimalist nature of the installed OS.
root@archiso~# arch-chroot /mnt
The shell will now look something like this
[root@archiso /]#
From here, we will be following the Arch Installation guide pretty closely. I will be putting the options that I have chosen for the Los Angeles, US area beginning with the Time Zone.
[root@archiso /]# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime
Next we generate the /etc/adjtime file
[root@archiso /]# hwclock --systohc
Now, localization changes and generate the configuration file. Remove the “#” from the “en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8” line and generate.
[root@archiso /]# nano /etc/locale.gen //ctrl + X to save and exit from nano editor [root@archiso /]# locale-gen
Now, create the locale.conf file and set LANG variable to your language. I will be adding the line, LANG=en_US.UTF-8
[root@archiso /]# nano /etc/locale.conf //ctrl + X to save and exit
Finally, set the keyboard layout by adding the line “KEYMAP=us” for US key mapping
[root@archiso /]# nano /etc/vconsole.conf //ctrl + X to save and exit
Step 6: Network Configuration
Unfortunately, the base package does not install the necessary utilities to connect wirelessly. While you can skip this step if you can physically connect to a network, I was not able to do so. This required me to install some extra packages for wireless connectivity.
[root@archiso /]# pacman -S wpa_supplicant [root@archiso /]# pacman -S dialog
Now we can create a hostname file for the machine and matching entries in the hosts file
[root@archiso /]# nano /etc/hostname //add line that contains your pc hostname without surrounding ""
"hostname"
[root@archiso /]# nano /etc/hosts //should look like the following
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.1.1 "hostname".localdomain "hostname"
Step 6: GRUB configuration
This will be different from a typical installation due to having a separate boot partition. Although it it is not necessary, having the boot files on a separate partition affords more flexibility for utilities that I can use with the main partitions.
Begin by installing the “grub” and “efibootmgr” packages that will be used to install GRUB.
[root@archiso /]# pacman -S grub [root@archiso /]# pacman -S efibootmgr
Direct the grub application to install to the /boot partition. Earlier, we mounted this to /boot. If you mounted this somewhere else, specifiy the location in the “–efi-directory=XXXX” portion. “–bootloader-id=GRUB” identifies the grub boot entry.
[root@archiso /]# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB
Now we need to enable microcode updates for the cpu. This particular laptop has an intel chip; so, we will use the intel microcode updates.
[root@archiso /]# pacman -S intel-ucode
We are now ready to generate the grub configuration file
[root@archiso /]# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Now you can exit the root environment, shutdown, remove the installation media, and reboot.
[root@archiso /]# exit root@archiso~# shutdown -P now
After booting into the system, login and create a root password
[root@archiso /]# passwd
Use wifi-menu to connect to the internet, the -o option will let you use netctl later to automatically connect to the internet.
[root@archiso /]# wifi-menu -o
We also want to install sudo to enable us to use an account besides the root account to make system changes. This is good for having multiple users on a single system because you can dictate what privileges they have.
[root@archiso /]# pacman -S sudo
You can now create a new user and give him or her sudo access
[root@archiso /]# useradd -m USER_NAME [root@archiso /]# passwd USER_NAME
We will now add the user to a file that grants sudo access. There are other methods to do this, one of which is using the wheel group and adding the user to the wheel group. For the sake of simplicity, I will only show the first method.
[root@archiso /]# visudo //Add "USER_NAME ALL=(ALL) ALL" to the visudo opened file to give "USER_NAME" sudo privileges
Congratulations!
At this point, you should now have a working bare bones Arch Linux installation. From here, I recommend installing a desktop that you find pleasant. I opted to use KDE plasma which I installed using the linked tutorial. If you find any errors in my walk through or know of a better way to go through the installation, let me know and I’ll do my best to include the information in the guide. If you find that you don’t understand something or want a more thorough explanation about why something is happening, I wholly endorse reading through the Arch Linux installation guide. Thank you for reading this far, and I hope I was able to be of some help.
