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Arch Linux Installation

This document provides instructions for installing Arch Linux in 3 main steps: 1. Downloading the ISO and setting up a VM with the necessary partitions and RAM. 2. Booting from the ISO and performing pre-installation steps like starting SSH. 3. Installing packages using Pacstrap, configuring boot options, and completing post-installation configuration of settings like hostname, timezone, and locales.

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Sunny Behal
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359 views8 pages

Arch Linux Installation

This document provides instructions for installing Arch Linux in 3 main steps: 1. Downloading the ISO and setting up a VM with the necessary partitions and RAM. 2. Booting from the ISO and performing pre-installation steps like starting SSH. 3. Installing packages using Pacstrap, configuring boot options, and completing post-installation configuration of settings like hostname, timezone, and locales.

Uploaded by

Sunny Behal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ARCH Linux Installation

This a guide to perform basic installation of an ARCH Linux distribution. Arch Linux
is one of the most “Vanilla” distributions out of the many distributions available
today.So the installation is not vey straight forward as other Linux
distributions(Unless you know what you’re doing). This guide walks you through the
installation of Arch Linux on a VMware workstation, but the installation steps should
not differ on other virtualization platforms.

Index
1. Downloading the ISO.
2. Booting from the ISO.
3. Pre-Installation steps.
4. Installation.
5 Post-Installation steps.

1. Downloading the ISO


The ISO can be dowloaded from the official Arch Linux Website
https://www.archlinux.org/download. It offers a direct download link and a magnet
link to download it using a torrent client of your choice(typically transmission on
Linux based desktops).

2.Booting from the ISO


Before booting we need to create a VM in Vmware, I have used the below settings:
1 HDD 8 GB
1 GB RAM – 64 bit Operating Systems require atleast 512M of RAM.
2 Nics – One for connecting to the VM over ssh. The second which connects the VM
to the internet.This is required because the packages are downloaded from
the repositories available on the internet. The IP are assigned by DHCP.
1 CPU.

Once the VM is created similar to the above settings, attach the Arch linux ISO and
boot it. You’ll see a screen similar to this one:
Select “Boot Arch Linux (x86_64)”, you’ll now see a screen similar to this one:

Wait until it boots and prompts you to a login prompt


3. Pre-Installation steps.
Before we start the actual installation we need to perform some pre-installation steps,
so that we can take an ssh connection for the installation instead of doing it over the
console.
1. Check if the addresses are assigned.
2. Start the sshd service.
3. Take a remote ssh session using IP you got from step1.

4. Installation.
Now, that we’ve take care of most of the pre-requisites, without further ado, let’s start
the installation.

4.1. check the HDD added using the “fdisk -l” command. Using “fdisk” command
create 2 partitions one for root(/), the other for swap.
4.2. Format the “Linux” partition with ext4. And the swap partition using the
“mkswap” partition.

4.3. Mount the patition (/dev/sda2) on a directory (/mnt).

4.4 Start the installation of packages using the pacstrap command.

Earlier, the “base” respository used to install the kernel and related packages, but now
it does not hence it’s necessary to install the packages separately as shown above.

The completion of the installation of packages will show a message as below:


4.5. Populate the “/mnt/etc/fstab” file, as our root(/) is still /mnt. The “U” switch
ensures the entries are populated using the UUID’s.

For the next steps we need to chroot to /mnt, so that it becomes our root. Use the
below command.
arch-chroot /mnt

4.6 Install Grub and initrd.

Write the grub and initrd configuration to the “grub.cfg” file.

We’re pretty much in a state where we can boot the system. Reboot the system and
check if it’s booting. Next we’ll complete the post-installation steps (In the Post–
Installation steps section) setting the hostname, Keyboard layout, keymap, locale
setting,Time-zones, persisting the network configuration files.For now, let’s exit
from the chrooted environment and reboot it.

A boot screen will look something like this.


5 Post-Installation steps.
5.1 let’s start by installing the ssh package, so that we can perform the rest of the
steps over ssh, instead of doing it from the console. The command to install is
“pacman -S openssh”

5.2 Next we’ll set the hostname. I have used the hostnamectl command.

5.3 Set the timezone.

5.4 Generate the locale settings use the below procedure:


1. Edit /etc/locale.gen, uncomment your locale. Based on where you’re located. For
me it’s LANG=en_US.UTF-8. Save and exit.
2. Then run the “locale-gen” command
3. set it using the localectl command : localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8
4. set the keymap : localectl set-keymap us
5. check the settings using : localectl show

5.5 Check your IP and perist it using configuration files.

Enable the netword unit .


systemctl enable networkd-systemd

5.6 Take a reboot to verify if everything’s fine and settings we made persists accross
reboots.

We’re now done with the installation and minimum settings required for a server to
be up and running.

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