Installing Arch Linux

29 October 2020 - 10 mins read time
Tags: Arch Linux

Arch Linux I’ve written this blog so as to easily import all my current configurations when migrating to a new system. For the official installation guide, head over to this arch wiki. It’s easy to mess up your system as you’ll have root privilages during the installation. Search the commands if you are not sure what it does. Arch wiki is the best resource at your disposal. Use it wisely ;-)

I'll use a USB flash drive to make an installation medium from the ISO image and rufus (https://rufus.ie/) to create bootable USB flash drives.

Table of Contents Pre-installation Installation and configuration Packages

Pre-installation

In the boot configuration (hardware), make sure that the bios only boots into UEFI mode, not “legacy” mode, the modern GRUB bootloader (or other bootloaders) only work on UEFI. To verify the boot mode, 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 you also have a discrete graphic card, it can cause problems in the boot or shutdown. So try the different configurations ('only integrated', 'only discrete', 'hybrid' or 'automatic').

Wifi

If you don’t have an Ethernet port to connect with the internet, follow these steps to set up the wifi.

iwctl starts a new prompt for iwd (iNet wireless daemon), next commands are within that prompt:

device list: to list existing wifi devices.
station wlan0 scan: it will scan all networks.
station wlan0 get-networks: list all found networks.
station device connect SSID: set SSID to your network name.
quit.
To make sure the network is setup, run ping archlinux.org.

Disk-partition

I’ll use GNU Parted to create partion tables.

Use lsblk to check the block devices on the disks:

# lsblk

I have both SSD (128 GB, /dev/sdb) and HDD (1 TB, /dev/sda) drivers and will make the partions to boot in UEFI using GPT partioning scheme, as given in the table below:

Mount Point Name	Partion	Partion Type	Suggested Size
`[SWAP]`	`/dev/sda`	Linux swap	At least 512 MiB
`/home`	`/dev/sda`	Home partition	At least 20 GB
`/boot`	`/dev/sdb`	EFI system partition	At least 260 MiB
`/`	`/dev/sdb`	Linux x86-64 root (/)	At least 30 GB

Start GNU Parted on device.

# parted /dev/sda

To list existing parition tables use:

(parted) print

To delete any existing partitions use:

(parted ) rm NUMBER

Set a new GUID Partition table (GPT):

(parted) mklabel gpt

Make the partion for bootable efi system and other partions:

(parted) mkpart primary fat32 1MiB 551MiB  # Create the boot partition.    
(parted) set 1 esp on                      # Set the "EFI System Partition" (esp) flag.    
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 551MiB 100%   # Set the single partition (all the remaining size)

Another way to make partions using starting and ending block points:

(parted) mkpart "root partition" ext4 261MiB 20.5GiB    
(parted) mkpart "swap partition" linux-swap 20.5GiB 24.5GiB
(parted) mkpart "home partition" ext4 24.5GiB 100%    
(parted) quit

Format the partitions and mount filesystems

Set up the file system of the root partition:

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdbX

Mount the decrypted partition into /mnt:

# mount /dev/sdbX /mnt

Mount the boot partition under /mnt/boot:

# mkfs.vfat /dev/sdbY
# mkdir /mnt/boot
# mount /dev/sdbY /mnt/boot

Mount all other partitions you may have on your system under /mnt (future root directory).

Even a small SWAP partition can be useful (atleast to avoid warnings). Once you have set up such a partition, you can format and activate it like this:

# mkswap /dev/sdaX
# swapon /dev/sdaX

genfstab will later detect mounted file systems and swap space.

Installation and configuration

Install the base operating system components:

# pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware man-db man-pages texinfo vim

Set up the file system table for the new partitions:

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

Go into the newly setup root system:

# arch-chroot /mnt

Set up the timezone and generate /etc/adjtime:

# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime
# hwclock --systohc

Setup the locale:

# vim /etc/locale.gen        
 --> Uncomment `en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8`
# locale-gen
# echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf

Setup the system’s host name:

# echo "MYNAME" > /etc/hostname
# echo "127.0.0.1        localhost"                      >> /etc/hosts
# echo "::1              localhost"                      >> /etc/hosts
# echo "127.0.1.1        MYNAME.localdomain      MYNAME" >> /etc/hosts\

Setup the kernel module by making sure that the HOOKS contain the following modules (in this order): base udev autodetect keyboard keymap modconf block encrypt filesystems fsck. Then reload the kernel:

# vim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
# mkinitcpio -p linux

Set the root password:

# passwd

Install the necessary packages and enable their systemd services:

# pacman -S intel-ucode iw iwd wpa_supplicant dialog grub nano dhcpcd efibootmgr parted networkmanager network-manager-applet

# systemctl enable NetworkManager

Use GRUB for the bootloader. Note that the GPT table is only for the DEVICE (not partition). So if you didn’t change the partition table of the device, you don’t need to worry about that. Then open /etc/default/grub and make the following corrections:

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB
# vim /etc/default/grub
 --> Set the timer to 1, so it doesn\'t wait to long.
 --> Remove "quiet" from `GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT`.
 --> GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="cryptdevice=/dev/sda2:cryptroot".
 --> uncomment `GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y`.
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Exit the chroot environment:

# exit

Unmount the partitions and reboot the system:

# umount /mnt/boot
# umount /mnt
# systemctl reboot

After the reboot (and decrypting the root partition), login as root with the password that you set.

For Wifi use the same ‘iwctl’ commands at the start.

Disable the case-speaker (if it bothers): After the first boot (where you have direct access to the kernel, not through a chroot environment), you can stop the internal case speaker from beeping with this command:

# modprobe -r pcspkr
# echo "blacklist pcspkr" > /etc/modprobe.d/nobeep.conf

Define the system users:

# useradd --create-home -s /bin/bash USERNAME
# passwd USERNAME

Enable Sudo for the users (where necessary). NOTE that the first time you run `sudo ...` you will get a warning, but that occurs only at the first time. It will not show up on the next runs of sudo.

# vim /etc/sudoers
--> Add "USERNAME ALL=(ALL) ALL" after you see a similar line
    for `root`: (replacing USERNAME with the name of the user):

Install other basic necssary software:

# pacman -S openssh gdb libcups git xarchiver ntfs-3g firefox wget dosfstools nuspell lzip rsync ifplugd aspell aspell-en exfat-utils fuse-exfat adobe-source-han-sans-otc-fonts otf-ipafont sshfs noto-fonts-extra  

# systemctl enable sshd

If you have existing SSH keys in ~/.ssh, run ssh-add to add them to the authentication agent.

If you want some environment variables to be available for all users and upon gdm startup, then you have to place them in a `.sh` file in the `/etc/profile.d/` directory

To completly wipe the disk

To completely remove the operating system from a hard disk, write random values in all the bits multiple times (hard disks are designed to keep the previous state of their bits).

for n in 1 2 3 4 5; do
  echo "rewrite $n \n"
  dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=8b conv=notrunc
done

Packages

Graphic drivers

Install the Intel graphic driver.

# pacman -S xf86-video-intel

If you have a GPU, let’s disable it for now. You can do that with these steps:

# vim /etc/modprobe.d/disable-gpu.conf
--> Insert these lines:
     blacklist nvidia
     blacklisst nouveau

Add the absolute address of the disable-gpu.conf file above to the FILES array of /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Rebuild the kernel image with:

# mkinitcpio -p linux

To use the GPU, enable the graphic card:

# pacman -S xf86-video-nouveau xf86-video-ati

For more, see this page.

GUI

Install GNOME and enable gdm (GNOME Display Manager). With the next reboot, you should go into a GUI.

# pacman -S gnome gnome-extra gdm gnome-tweak-tool evince xorg-xrandr
# pacman -R gnome-builder
# systemctl enable gdm

For more, see this page.

Audio device

# pacman -S sof-firmware alsa-utils alsa-ucm-conf

Media player

# pacman -S qt5 vlc gst-libav

Libre office

Install the “-fresh” package which gets regularly updated:

# pacman -S libreoffice-fresh

Neovim

Neovim is a fork of vim with a lot of GUI enhancements and other modern features:

# pacman -S neovim

Usb formatter

To format a USB (which might also be put into a windows system) you can use: mkdosfs -F 32 -I /dev/SDD (as root and after installing dosfstools in pacman).

# pacman -S dosfstools

Git

Install git:

# pacman -S git

Add your name and settings:

$ git config --global user.name "YOUR NAME"
$ git config --global user.email YOUR@EMAIL
$ git config --global core.editor nvim

Hardware Info

Nice tool to generally review all hardware, including the manufacturers:

# pacman -S hwinfo

Also see general recommendation for other system management directions and post-installation tutorials.

A recommended list of applications can be found here.