Arch Linux Installation

Why?

As you can notice, there are various tutorials in the net for the keyword “Arch installation”. As an Arch user, I will recommmend you to take a look at the Arch wiki for such an installation progess instead. So what is the purpose of this post? You may ask.

First of all, this post serves as a snippset for my arch installation. I don’t want to forget anything esstensial for my daily workflow incase I have to make a complete reinstall. Secondly, as personalized as this installation guide may seems, it may help new users in some ways.

Now let’s get started:

Setting up

Setting up network

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ip link
wifi-menu

Disks partition

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lsbk
cgdisk /dev/nvme0n1

Format partitions

1. EFI partition

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mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1

2. Activate swap

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mkswap /dev/nvme0n1p2
swapon /dev/nvme0n1p2

3. System partition

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mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p3

Mount and setting up

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$ mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt
$ mkdir /mnt/boot
$ mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot
$ df

Installation

Select mirror

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$ nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Place your host of choice on top:

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Server = http://abcdxyz.example.com/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

Install base system

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$ pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware neovim
$ genfstab -U /mnt
$ genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
$ cd /mnt/etc
$ cat fstab

Chroot into system: setting up timezone, passwd,…

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$ arch-chroot /mnt
$ ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/ /  /etc/localtime
$ hwclock --systohc --utc
$ nvim  /etc/locale.gen` then uncomment `en_US.UFT-8`
$ locale-gen
$ echo "LANG=en_US.UFT-8" > /etc/locale.conf
$ nvim /etc/hostname
$ passwd
$ useradd -g users -G wheel,storage,power -m ashpex

or

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localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Setting up Bootloader

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$ pacman -S grub efibootmgr
$ grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB
$ pacman -S os-prober
$ grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Setting up wifi

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$ pacman -S networkmanager wireless_tools wpa_supplicant network-manager-applet
$ exit
$ reboot

Install yay

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$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
$ cd yay
$ makepkg -si

Enable ntp

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$ pacman -S ntp
$ systemctl enable ntpd
$ systemctl start ntpd
$ timedatectl set-ntp 1

Install DEs or WM.

Gnome

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$ sudo pacman -Syu
$ sudo pacman -S xorg xorg-server
$ sudo pacman -S gnome
$ sudo systemctl start gdm.service
$ sudo systemctl enable gdm.service
$ sudo pacman -S pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa

i3

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$ sudo pacman -S i3-gaps dunst dmenu picom feh mpd mpv ranger rofi scrot neovim xorg xorg-server pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa alsa-utils nemo alacritty firefox git zathura

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$ yay polybar ranger-git

XFCE

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sudo pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies

Conclusion

That’s pretty much the whole installation of your Arch Linux system. You can customize your OS more later such as things like ricing,… The fun has just begun. Here are some screenshots of my machine over time.

Troubleshooting

Wifi icon ¹

Initial Requirements

1. Hosts

   Check the configuration of your /etc/hosts file, a valid configuration looks like this:

   1	#<ip-address> <hostname.domain.org> <hostname> 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain yourHostname ::1 localhost.localdomain yourHostname

2. Devices

• You can identify your networking devices like this:

  1	lspci | grep -i net

• If your device is not listed, it is maybe an usb-device, so try this command:

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  lsusb

• With the following command you can check the current state of all your network-devices:

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  ip link

Installation of Required tools

1. Install the wpa_supplicant tools

   1	sudo pacman -S wpa_supplicant

2. the wireless tools

   1	sudo pacman -S wireless_tools

3. Install the networkmanager

   1	sudo pacman -S networkmanager

4. Install the network-manager-applet aka nm-applet

   1	sudo pacman -S network-manager-applet

5. Install gnome-keyring

   1	sudo pacman -S gnome-keyring

6. Configuration

• Make the networkmanager start on boot:

  1	sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

7. Disable dhcpcd

• Since networkmanager wants to be the one who handles the dhcpcd related stuff, you have to disable and stop dhcpcd:

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  $ sudo systemctl disable dhcpcd.service $ sudo systemctl disable dhcpcd@.service $ sudo systemctl stop dhcpcd.service $ sudo systemctl stop dhcpcd@.service

8. Enable wpa_supplicant, if you want to use your wireless connection:

   1	sudo systemctl enable wpa_supplicant.service

9. Add your user to the network group:

   1	gpasswd -a <USERNAME> network

10. Turn off your network interface controllers, in my case eth0 and wlan0:

    1 2	$ ip link set down eth0 $ ip link set down wlan0

• Now start wpa_supplicant:

  1 2	$ ip link set down eth0 $ ip link set down wlan0

• Now Start the networkmanager:

  1	sudo systemctl start NetworkManager.service

Finally, you should see the tray-icon on the top bar.

Sudoers ²

Logging as root

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visudo

Add another line after this one

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root ALL=(ALL) ALL

With: (by pressing O, then :X to save)

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username ALL=(ALL) ALL