Getting Started

Set aside some time. Getting Arch going at first is somewhat of a complex set of procedures and success will be largely determined by the quantity of time and grit that you can muster to accomplish the task. As a pure open-source thing, there is a certain liberation from all the marketing jazz with products these days, that said, there is not an instruction manual per se, or any guarantees or warranties, Arch is very much a choose your own adventure type experience, there are just so many decisions to be made, there are just so many assumptions not made, that’s what makes it beautiful. Well that and how it manages dependencies and updates with pacman, but we’ll get into that more in a bit. There is something almost magic about how the community works; It’s really an incredible feat to experience that something like this could almost self-organize. I recommend getting comfortable with git and pacman and establishing a solid innate knowledge of those tools first, then jumping into AUR Helpers like Yet Another Yogurt yay which also happens to be written in Go. Arch is a stable Linux experience for a few reasons. Arch Linux does not really impose any opinions or preferences on the user experience, in fact it is quite the opposite, the user has to explicitly define everything. This is where Arch Linux can seem to have a steep learning curve, initially, however, once the steep learning curve is complete, Arch Linux is not only a stable and reliable experience, but it can bring the joy of computing back to the user experience. Want to try it out for yourself? Great! Let’s get started! Later on, I’ll be posting on setting up video conferencing going, an audio app, calendar, email, web browser, password management for Arch. Sign up to get notified when I publish new content.

Let’s get started! First, download the Arch Linux ISO and create bootable USB drive. Second, boot from the USB and connect to the internet using iwctl

iwctl --passphrase "PSK" station wlan0 connect "SSID"

Storage

sdX is a generic reference. Use your device name here. (eg.nvme0n1, etc.)

Display Storage Devices

$ lsblk

-- and/or --

$ fdisk -l

Shred Storage Device

$ shred -v -n1 /dev/sdX

Partitioning Tools

_ Less Interactive _ $ gdisk /dev/sdX

_ More Interactive _ $ cfdisk /dev/sdX

Partitions

EFI System Partition

/dev/sda1

512 MB Partition Type - FAT32 Space for boot loaders and other files required for booting.

Swap Partition

/dev/sda2

4GB Partition Type - Linux Swap Swap space is used to extend the virtual memory beyond the installed physical memory (RAM) or for suspend-to-disk support.

Linux Partition

/dev/sda3

Remaining size of disk Partition Type - Linux Filesystem This is the root (/) partition where Arch Linux operating system, files, and other information will live.

Format Partitions

sda1… is a generic reference. Use your device name here. (eg.nvme0n1, etc.)

EFI Partition

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

Swap Partition

mkswap /dev/sda2 swapon /dev/sda2

Root Partition

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

Install Distro

Update Pacman

Update Package List

pacman -Syy

Install Keyring

pacman -Sy --needed archlinux-keyring

Mount Root Partition

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt

Pacstrap

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware vim

Handy Utilities

pacstrap /mnt iw iwd wpa_supplicant wireless_tools networkmanager dhcpcd

Generate fstab

mkdir /mnt/etc genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab cat /mnt/etc/fstab

Switch to Installed Root Partition

arch-chroot /mnt

Locale Setup

Timezone

mkdir /etc/localtime ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central /etc/localtime

Setup Clock

hwclock --systohc

Setup Locale

vim /etc/locale.gen

en_US ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

Generate Locale Config File

locale-gen

Set LANG Variable

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

Set Hostname

echo archy > /etc/hostname

vim /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.1.1 archy

Set Root Password

passwd

Add User

useradd -m -g users -s /bin/bash {username}
passwd {username}

visudo

User privilege specification

root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
{username} ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

exit
login
{username}
pacman -Syy

Bootloader

Install Grub Bootloader and EFI Boot Manager Packages

pacman -S grub efibootmgr os-prober mtools

Create mount point for /dev/sda1 and mount

mkdir /boot/efi
mount /dev/sda1 /boot/efi

Install Bootloader

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --bootloader-id=grub_uefi

Generate grub.cfg

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

Reboot

Exit chroot

exit

Unmount everything

umount -R /mnt

Reboot

shutdown now -r

Configure Network

Check Driver Status

lspci -k | more

Get the name of the interface

iw dev

Generate WPA Supplicant Config File

wpa_passphrase MYSSID passphrase > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

update_config=1
network={
ssid="SSID"
psk="PSK"
mesh_fwding=1
}

Start Services

systemctl start dhcpcd.service
systemctl start NetworkManager.service

Display WiFi Networks

nmcli device wifi list

Connect to WiFi

nmcli device wifi connect SSID password PSK

Clearing up Errors

Package signature error when running pacstrap

pacman -Sy --needed archlinux-keyring

Source: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=278518

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