Arch Linux is a do-it-yourself Linux distro, It’s very popular among linux geeks and developers that like to really get at the nuts and bolts of a system. Arch give you the freedom to make any choice about the system. It does not come with any pre-installed packages/drivers or graphical installer, instead It uses a command line installer. When you boot it up for the first time, you’ll be greeted with a command-line tool. It expects you to perform the entire installation from the command-line and install all the necessary program/driver by yourself and customize it the way you want it — by piecing together the components that you’d like to include on your system.
Arch Linux is a really good way to learn what's going on inside a Linux box. You can learn a lot just from the installation process. I am going to walk through the base install, as well as several common post-install things like setting up networking, sound, mounts, X11 and video drivers, and adding users. I am not going to go in great detail on each step, so if you don't know how to do a certain step you may need to seek references elsewhere.
I'll also show you some tips, tricks and tweaks on how you can change the way the GNOME desktop looks and feel to suit your own personal tastes, that is, take a plain-vanilla GNOME Shell and transform it into a desktop that you like.
WARNING: There is a very HIGH chance you can destroy other operating systems or partition, if you don't do it right. Please proceed with caution. If you are new to Linux world I HIGHLY suggest you start off with a distro like Ubuntu or Mint Linux. Ubuntu is designed for people who want an off-the-shelf type system, where all of the choices are already made and the users are expected to sacrifice control for convenience.
- Bootable USB Installer
- BIOS
- Pre-installation
- Installation
- Configure System
- Post Installation
- Extra
- Troubleshooting
- Development
- DevOps
Here's a screenshot of my desktop, built just the way I want it
First of all, you need the Arch Linux image, that can be downloaded from the Official Website.
Arch Linux requires a x86_64 (i.e. 64 bit) compatible machine with a minimum of 512 MB RAM and 800 MB disk space for a minimal installation. However, it is recommended to have 2 GB of RAM and at least 20 GB of storage for a GUI to work without hassle.
After that, you should create the bootable flash drive with the Arch Linux image.
If you're on a Linux distribution, you can use the dd command for it. Like:
$ dd bs=4M if=/path/to/archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdx status=progress oflag=sync && syncNote that you need to update the
of=/dev/sdxwith your USB device location (it can be discovered with thelsblkcommand).
Otherwise, if you're on Windows, you can follow this tutorial.
First, you need to identify the USB device. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and list all storage devices with the command:
$ diskutil list
Your USB device will appear as something like /dev/disk4 (external, physical). Verify that this is the device you want to erase by checking its name and size and then use its identifier for the commands below instead of /dev/disk4.
A USB device is normally auto-mounted in macOS, and you have to unmount (not eject) it before block-writing to it with dd. In Terminal, do:
$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4
Now copy the ISO image file to the device. The dd command is similar to its Linux counterpart, but notice the 'r' before 'disk' for raw mode which makes the transfer much faster:
# sudo dd if=/Users/sayem/Downloads/archlinux-2019.04.01-x86_64.iso of=/dev/rdisk4 bs=1m
This command will run silently. To view progress, send SIGINFO by pressing Ctrl+t. Note diskX here should not include the s1 suffix, or else the USB device will only be bootable in UEFI mode and not legacy. After completion, macOS may complain that "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". Select 'Ignore'. The USB device will be bootable.
We'll install Arch Linux on UEFI mode, so you should check your bios settings. Boot into your hardware settings or BIOS or UEFI settings. Then check following settings. It can have different names and different keyboard shortcuts to reach it.
- Disable
Secure Boot - Disable
Launch CSMorLegacy Support - Set
Boot ModetoUEFI - Enable
USB Boot - Set USB Disk as boot priority
Arch Linux standard boots into an US keyboard layout. Many of us do not have to do anything. Just check the main keyboard keys and see if they all work.
To check if the UEFI mode is enabled, run:
# ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
If the directory does not exists, the system may be booted in BIOS.
If you are connected via Ethernet, you can test the connectivity by pinging google:
ping www.google.com -c 3
PING www.google.com (172.217.12.164) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from lga25s62-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.12.164): icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=5.26 ms
64 bytes from lga25s62-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.12.164): icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=7.86 ms
64 bytes from lga25s62-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.12.164): icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=10.4 ms
--- www.google.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 6ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 5.256/7.841/10.405/2.104 ms
Once connected to the internet, it is important to synchronize the system time. This can be done by turning on the Network Time Protocol (NTP). We will first check is the service is working and if not, we will activate it.
You can check the NTP service as below:
sh-4.3# timedatectl status
If the service is not working, you can set up it as below
sh-4.3# timedatectl set-ntp true
If you have multiple hard-drives in your machine, please unplug it now so you don’t end up formatting them by mistake. Plug only the one that you will format to install Arch Linux on it.
I have 1TB of storage with 8 partitions, described on the following table below: (I will create two partitions /dev/sdc5 and /dev/sdc6 to install Arch Linux)
| Partition | Name | File System | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| /dev/sdc1 | EFI System Partition | fat32 | 200M |
| /dev/sdc2 | Macintosh HD | apfs | 558G |
| /dev/sdc3 | Ubuntu | ext4 | 70G |
| /dev/sdc4 | Linux Swap | linux-swap | 2G |
| /dev/sdc5 | Arch Linux | ext4 | 67G |
| /dev/sdc6 | Microsoft Reserved Partition | unknown | 16M |
| /dev/sdc7 | Windows 10 | ntfs | 232G |
| /dev/sdc8 | Windows Recovery Environment | ntfs | 481M |
I'll use cfdisk to create sdc4 and sdc5 partitions:
root@arch ~ # cfdisk /dev/sdc- First, select the option New in the cfdisk menu.
- Now specify the size of the partition you want to create. In my example:
sdc4- allocate 2G for swap memorysdc5- allocate 67G for/
- To save the changes, select the option write in the cfdisk menu.
- Print the partition table and verify the new partition using
fdisk -l /dev/sdccommand.
Now that our partitions have been created, we can format it as below:
root@arch ~ # mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdc5Now we should mount the partitions which have been created and formatted so that Arch Linux can point to them. We will mount the root partition to the /mnt folder.
root@arch ~ # mount /dev/sdc5 /mntThe process for swap partition is slight different:
root@arch ~ # mkswap /dev/sdc4
root@arch ~ # swapon /dev/sdc4
Before installation, is recommended to select the best mirror servers. So open the file /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist (using nano or vi to do that) and move the best mirror to the top of the file.
root@arch ~ # nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
Server = https://arch.mirror.constant.com/$repo/os/$arch
Server = https://mirror.wdc1.us.leaseweb.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = https://mirrors.rit.edu/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = https://archlinux.olanfa.rocks/$repo/os/$arch
Server = https://arch.mirror.square-r00t.net/$repo/os/$arch
Tip: That link generates a mirror list based on your location, you can use them as reference.
Now that the mirrors are already set, we can use pacstrap to install the Arch Linux bases system with the command below:
root@arch ~ # pacstrap /mnt base base-devel
Generate a fstab with the genfstab script to define how disk partitions, block devices or remote file systems are mounted into the filesystem.
# genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
We can use the chroot command to access your newly-installed operating system.
root@arch ~ # arch-chroot /mntNow, if you want to install some package, do it with
pacman -S <package_name>
# pacman-key --init
# pacman-key --populate archlinux
If you want your OS be able to have automatically an IP address for your router or the dhcp server of your network, it is import to activate the dhcpd service at the system startup
# systemctl enable dhcpcd
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/dhcpcd.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/dhcpcd.service.
We can now select the default language of the system by editing the /etc/locale.gen file
sh-4.3# nano /etc/locale.genOn the list of languages, uncomment the one that you need. I will uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8.
Now we need generate the locale information with the command below
sh-4.3# locale-genNow we must set the LANG variable in /etc/locale.conf
sh-4.3# echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
sh-4.3# export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
Create a symbolic link with your timezone (to check available timezones, see the files/folders in /usr/share/zoneinfo/)
# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime
# hwclock --systohc --utc
I am going to use linux as a hostname:
# echo linux > /etc/hostname
Change
linuxto your hostname (Computer Name)
After that, open the file /etc/hosts and add the following lines to /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
::1 localhost.localdomain localhost
127.0.1.1 linux.localdomain linux
Remember to change the
myhostnameto your own)
Check the DNS again (using Google DNS). Open /etc/resolv.conf and write:
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4
To create root password, type
sh-4.3# passwd
The first important thing to do for installing Grub on Arch Linux is to locate the EFI partition.
Let’s run the following command in order to locate this partition:
sh-4.3# fdisk -l
We need to check the partition marked as EFI System
After that, we need to mount this partition, for example, on /boot/efi:
sh-4.3# mkdir /boot/efi
sh-4.3# mount /dev/sdc1 /boot/efi
If you already have another Linux Distribution installed in your system, you can skip this section and update the Grub from that distribution to recognize Arch Linux. For example, you can run
sudo update-grubfrom Ubuntu to include Arch Linux in its Grub bootloader
In order to install the bootloader, we need to install the following packages grub, os-prober and efibootmgr. Grub is boot manager and os-prober detects if there are other operating systems installed on the system.
sh-4.3# pacman -S grub os-prober efibootmgr
Now install the grub on the disk using the command below:
sh-4.3# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB
Create a grub.cfg file using the command below:
sh-4.3# mkinitcpio -p linux
Now we can generate the grub
sh-4.3# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Exit chroot environment by pressing Ctrl + D or typing exit
Unmount system mount points:
# umount -R /mnt
Reboot system:
# reboot
Remember to remove USB stick on reboot
Now you're on your successfull Arch Linux installation.
Login with your user and follow the next steps.
Now We're gonna install the Window Manager.
I'll show the steps to install Gnome.
First of all, run the installation command with pacman:
$ sudo pacman -S gnome gnome-extraWhen the installation finishes, enable gdm to be started with system on boot:
$ sudo systemctl enable gdm.service
To enable multilib repository, uncomment the [multilib] section in /etc/pacman.conf:
# nano /etc/pacman.conf
Scroll down and un-comment the ‘multilib’ repo:
#[testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
[core]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
[extra]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
#[community-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
[community]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
# If you want to run 32 bit applications on your x86_64 system,
# enable the multilib repositories as required here.
#[multilib-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
# An example of a custom package repository. See the pacman manpage for
# tips on creating your own repositories.
#[custom]
#SigLevel = Optional TrustAll
#Server = file:///home/custompkgs
# pacman -Sy
It is recommended that you create a normal user account
# useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power,lp,network,audio,video,optical -s /bin/bash sayem
Now we must change the password for the user with the passwd command
# passwd sayem
We must edit the /etc/sudoers file with the visudo command to add the new user :
# EDITOR=nano visudo
Add the new user sayem ALL=(ALL) ALL to /etc/sudoers
##
## User privilege specification
##
sayem ALL=(ALL) ALL
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
$ sudo pacman -Sy networkmanager-dispatcher-ntpd cronie networkmanager network-manager-applet acpid cups avahi dbus udisks2
$ systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
$ systemctl start NetworkManager.service
$ systemctl enable cronie.service
$ systemctl start cronie.service
$ systemctl enable ntpd.service
$ systemctl start cronie.service
$ systemctl enable acpid.service
$ systemctl start acpid.service
$ systemctl enable avahi-daemon.service
$ systemctl start avahi-daemon.service