Minimal Arch Linux Installation Guide: Get Ready In Half An Hour

Simon Weis — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 21:41:15 +0000

Edit 20191226: Manuall installation linux kernel, nano and dhcpcd
Edit 20190809: Installation of base-devel not required for minimal setup
Edit 20190318: Typo: sudoer => sudoers
Edit 20190208: Added: Solution if pacstrap -i does not run properly due to invalid packet data (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)
Edit 20190205: Added: loadkeys during installation ___

Step by step guide to install a minimal Arch Linux OS with graphical user interface, a terminal emulator and a browser in just 20 - 30 minutes. But of course:

"Minimal" means one partition, no swap and no special driver requirements.

If you want to try it, I would recommend you to install it first on a virtual machine, so you can't break anything.

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

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

Then load your prefered layout:

loadkeys <lang-code>

For example:

loadkeys de-latin1

Are you connected to the Internet? You absolutely need Internet for the installation! If your computer is connected to a LAN cable, that shouldn't be a problem unless you're using completely exotic hardware.

-c: n tries

ping -c 3 google.com

If you are not connected to the Internet, check your available network interfaces...

link: Manage and display the state of all network interfaces

ip link

Output could 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: enp0s25: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx brd xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
3: wlp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx brd xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

...and try to configure your favorite one with DHCP:

dhcpd <INTERFACE>

For example:

dhcpd enp0s25

Or use your WLAN interface to connect to the Internet:

wifi-menu

Update the package repository:

-Syy: Synchronizing package databases without upgrading them

pacman -Syy

Install the reflector package which generates an optimized mirror list based on the given country name. (In this case for Germany):

-S: Install (S)pecific or (S)ingle package(s)

pacman -S reflector

-c: Country in quotes
-f: The fastest n
-l: Limit the list to the n most recently synchronized servers
-n: Return at most n mirrors
--save: And save it to ...

reflector -c "Germany" -f 12 -l 10 -n 12 --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Have a look at the available hard disks and their partitions. The partitions are not important now, but it can make it easier to identify your disks and reduce the risk of overwriting the wrong one:

-l: List the partition tables for the specified devices

fdisk -l

Run cfdisk on your selected hard drive and create a primary and bootable partition. It is important not to apply cfdisk to a partition, but to the disk itself. /dev/sda != /dev/sda1

X: Disk letter

cfdisk /dev/sdX

After you have created the partition, it have to be formatted. For example with ext4 or btrfs. Now it is important to select the partition:

XY: Disk letter + Y: Partition number

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdXY

You now have to mount the partition created this way to /mnt:

mount /dev/sdXY /mnt

The following command installs the base system on the given partition:

-i: Prompt for package confirmation when needed (run interactively)

pacstrap -i /mnt base

If there are problems with incorrect packet data (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)), run the following commands and try again:

pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate archlinux
pacman-key --refresh-keys

After the installation is finished you can create the fstab file with the following command:

-U: Use UUIDs (Universally Unique Identifiers) for source identifiers (shortcut for -t UUID)
-p: Avoid printing pseudofs mounts

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

Now chroot into your currently installed system with bash:

arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Install nano:

pacman -S nano

Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment your preferred language(s) for utf-8 and en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8:

nano /etc/locale.gen

For example:

de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8 
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

And now, create your locale file(s):

locale-gen

(The next two points can be skipped if you later want to synchronize the time settings over the Internet.)

Select your time zone. (With a few chars and the tab key you can auto complete possible continents and cities):

-sf: Make symbolic links instead of hard links and remove existing destination files

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/<CONTINENT>/<CITY> /etc/localtime

For example:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin /etc/localtime

Update your hardware clock:

--systohc: System 2 hardware clock
--utc: UTC time

hwclock --systohc --utc

Give your computer a name (hostname):

echo <HOSTNAME> > /etc/hostname

Create/edit /etc/hosts and add your hostname and some needed informations:

nano /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain   localhost                    
::1              localhost.localdomain   localhost
127.0.1.1   localhost.localdomain   <HOSTNAME>

Change the root password:

passwd

Install sudo, grub and the kernel. Optional: dialog, netctl, dhcpcd and wpa_supplicant if you have set up your Internet connection with wifi-menu, so you can use wifi-menu again after the next reboot:

pacman -S grub sudo dialog netctl wpa_supplicant dhcpcd linux linux-headers linux-firmware

Install Grub on your hard disk (not the partition). If you have other non Linux/Unix-like operating systems on your computer (e.g. Windows) and want to be able to boot them via Grub then install os-prober and mount it, Grub should recognize the operating system then:

grub-install /dev/sdX

Create the grub configuration file:

-o: Out. Specify the output file

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

At this point you should enable the dhcpcd daemon to your preferred network interface to avoid doing this at every new startup. (Not necessary if you used wifi-menu and want to stay with it):

enable: Enable this service/daemon...
--now: NOW! You don't really need this parameter here, but it's still good to know that it exists

systemctl enable dhcpcd@<INTERFACE> --now

Exit the chroot environment:

exit

Unmount the arch partition:

-R: Recursively

umount -R /mnt

Reboot your system (Important: Did you configure grub correctly and without error messages? If this is not the case, you can only boot into your newly installed system under certain circumstances {boot from live medium again, mount your existing /mnt partition, chroot into it and try to install grub again}. So you should be sure now):

reboot

Login as root and create a new user:

-m: Create the home dir
-g: The group name or ID for a new user's initial group, in this case: users
-G: A list of supplementary groups which the user is also a member of, in this case: wheel (Administration group, later needed for our sudo command)
-s: The path to the user's standard/login shell, here: /bin/bash

useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash <USERNAME>

Change the password for your new user:

passwd <USERNAME>

Edit the /etc/sudoers file and uncomment the following line:

nano /etc/sudoers

%wheel     ALL=(ALL) ALL

Exit the root environment:

exit

Login as new created user and install X, a window manager with a simple menu and status bar, audio, a terminal emulator and a web browser (In this example i3 with dmenu and i3status, the xfce4 terminal and chromium):

sudo pacman -S pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa alsa-utils xorg xorg-xinit i3-wm dmenu i3status chromium xfce4-terminal

Put i3 in your ~/.xinitrc file, so startx knows what to do:

$ echo "exec i3" > ~/.xinitrc

Start X:

startx

No sound?

Type win + enter (to open the installed terminal) execute the following command and try again:

alsactl init

There you go. Now you have a minimal Arch Linux operating system on your computer. Without garbage and only with the software you wanted. With win + d a small menu opens at the top of the screen - from there you can start your programs.

TODO

UEFI Installation

Some useful Pacman commands

Simon Weis — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 06:17:38 +0000

originally posted on my blog

Here are some Pacman commands that I find quite useful and that may not be known by everyone:

This command shows all packages you have installed yourself, except "base" and "base-devel" packages which were installed during the installation of Arch:

pacman -Qei | awk '/^Name/ { name=$3 } /^Groups/ { if ( $3 != "base" && $3 != "base-devel" ) { print name } }'

Shows all installed packages and their individual memory sizes starting with the smallest:

pacman -Qi | awk '/^Name/{name=$3} /^Installed Size/{print $4$5, name}' | sort -h

Uninstall all unneeded packages and their unused dependencies. Quite useful to clean up here and there occasionally:

sudo pacman -Rsn $(pacman -Qdtq)

With this command you can display all packages you have received via the AUR. (Lists all foreign packages, which, for most users, means AUR):

pacman -Qqm

Pacman stores fetched packages and does not automatically delete old or uninstalled packages. Of course, this has a few advantages:

So you can easily downgrade packages.
Packages that have been uninstalled and need to be reinstalled can be installed directly from the cache folder (of course only if there is no newer version in the repos).

However you should clean up this cache here and there so that it does not become infinitely large.
For this there is a script called paccache. It uninstalls all stored package data of the installed and uninstalled packages except the last three. And that should normally be enough:

sudo paccache -r

It is also possible to automate paccache. With the following command paccache deletes the cache weekly:

sudo systemctl enable paccache.timer --now

DEV Community: Simon Weis

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Minimal Arch Linux Installation Guide: Get Ready In Half An Hour

Some useful Pacman commands