“I use Arch btw”

I like using Arch, however, it was something that I always had difficulty with. I got frustrated at the archinstall command and figured for me at least, it would be simpler to install it manually. I tried many things, but would fail. I finally found a formula that works for me. This install is based on booting UEFI. This follows directions I found at https://github.com/dreamsofautonomy/arch-from-scratch. In that he goes into setting things up differently than how I do, and maybe that set is better than mine for your needs, or at least has options I don’t cover.

Prepare installation media

First thing to obviously do is download the ISO from https://archlinux.org/download/. Once that is downloaded you need to get it ready to use. I know there are ways to create a bootable drive, but since I do not usw Windows at all, I am unfamiliar with how they work I’m sure there are a ton of tutorials for that. For me I use a quick method on an already Linux computer. I’m going to assume my iso is named “arch.iso” and my usb drive is /dev/sdb

dd if=arch.iso of=/dev/sdb

This will remove all data from the USB device, so make sure you don’t need what is already on there. If you are doing this on virtualbox or vmware, then all you need to do is point it to the iso when you set up your VM

Boot the ISO

Like I previously said, this covers UEFI. One trick to know you are booting UEFI is the first prompt you get when it boots.

This is the screen you should see. If you see a more colorful one, then you are booting in BIOS Mode. That is fine, and everything should still work. You will just have to adjust your commands once we get into the grub portion.

Once it boots, you come to a simple terminal window

If you are using a VM or the asset is in another room, and you want to just copy/paste commands from here to there, then you can ssh. First thing you will do is find your ip

ip a

From here you can see my IP is 10.0.2.15. I am building this on virtualbox. It currently has a NAT network. It will reach out to the internet just fine, however, you will need to switch it to a bridged network in the VM setting in order to SSH into it.

The next thing to do is set the root password

passwd

Set the password to anything at this point. This is not your root password for your system, it is only for the installation. No need for high security here.
The last thing to do is to make it so root can SSH into the machine

nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Uncomment the line that starts with “PermitRootLogin”, and change prohibit-password to yes. Hit CTRL+X , y, and enter to continue. Then restart ssh and you should now be able to log in.

systemctl restart sshd

From another computer: ssh root@10.0.2.15, of course changing your IP to yours

Setting up the disks

First thing I do and I search and make sure not only my disks are listed, but I know which ones I want to install on.

ll /dev/sd*
On VMs, they might be listed under vd* instead of sd*. If you do not see it under one, try the other

This shows I have 1 disk without any partitions. You will first need to partition it.

fdisk /dev/sda
This will open up the fdisk utility.

Create your first partition. This will be your “/boot/efi” partition. If you are installing this under BIOS, skip this step

First type “g” to ensure you are using gpt
Type “n” for new, “p” for primary, “1” for partition 1 (or hit enter), Hit enter when it asks about the first sector, type “+1G” for the last sector, Hit enter. You will need to change the type of the partition so type “t”, then “1” for EFI.
The next partition will be your boot partition
Type “n” for new, “p” for primary, “2” for partition 2 (or hit enter), Hit enter when it asks about the first sector, type “+10G” for the last sector, Hit enter.
If you want a swap set that up
Type “n” for new, “p” for primary, “3” for partition 3 (or hit enter), Hit enter when it asks about the first sector, type “+15G” for the last sector, Hit enter. You will need to change the type of the partition so type “t”, then “3” for the partition number, then “19” for swap.
Last partition is your root partition
Type “n” for new, “p” for primary, “4” for partition 4 (or hit enter), Hit enter when it asks about the first sector, hit enter for the last sector to use all remaining space, Hit enter.
You might have extra disks, or need to add extra partitions. Set those up according to your needs
Once you are finished partitioning the disk, type “w” to write the partition data to the disk

Now we need to format the partitions.
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
mkswap /dev/sda3
swapon /dev/sda3
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4

The last thing we need to do is mount the disks, and create a /boot, and /boot/efi directory
mount /dev/sda4 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot
mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi

Installing the base packages

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

This will install all the base packages and prepare it for a chroot environment

Now, you need to set up the fstab in your new install.

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

All that is left is to chroot into your new system

arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Configuration

Some tutorials have you install packages individually. I tend to install everything I need in one go, and then carry on from there. Note: These are the packages I install for a barebones system. You can add more, make changes, set your system up however you want/need. This is just my way.

pacman -S nano efibootmgr grub sudo intel-ucode networkmanager openssh wget rsync fcron chrony ufw apparmor unzip less linux-headers clamav

Once that is completed, you are ready to configure.

I use nano instead of vi, so I have to make a change in fcron to switch the editor

sed -i 's/vim/nano/' /etc/fcron/fcron.conf

Be sure to enable the services so they start on boot

systemctl enable sshd NetworkManager clamav-daemon apparmor ufw chronyd fcron

GRUB
Grub is necessary in order to boot your new Linux distribution. Depending on UEFI vs BIOS you have different commands.
UEFI:
grub-install --efi-directory=/boot/efi
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/arch/grub.cfg

BIOS:
grub-install /dev/sda
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Misc Configuration
Set your timezone: ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern /etc/localtime

Set your locales: nano /etc/locale.gen – Uncomment the language you use and then run locale-gen

Set your hostname: echo "hostname" > /etc/hostname

Users and passwords: Now you need to set up the root password for your system, and it could be helpful to set up a user account with sudo access.
passwd
useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash username
passwd username
You need to add the wheel group to your sudoers config
EDITOR=nano visudo
Uncomment this line: %wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
CTRL+X, y, and hit enter

One last thing I like to do is to get ll working. ll is an alias for ls -al, and just makes it easier for my to type
echo “alias ll=’ls -alF'” >> /etc/bash.bashrc
echo “alias ll=’ls -alF'” >> /home/username/.bashrc
echo “alias ll=’ls -alF'” >> /etc/skel/.bashrc

Finalizing
The basic setup is now complete. You should have a working minimal install of Arch ready to boot into. To end, first you must exit the chroot environment
exit
Then unmount all mounted partitions
umount -R /mnt
Finally
reboot

Conclusion
I hope you found this tutorial helpful, whether you followed along completely or just grabbed a command or two. I’m sure there are probably better and different ways to do this, this is just what I found to work for me.