Arch Linux installation guide

Introduction

These are my notes on installing Arch Linux. This is not meant to be a universal guide, but only how I like to setup Arch Linux on my workstations. Since other people might find it useful, I decided to publish it.

Here is the setup I use:

• UEFI
• systemd-boot
• LVM on LUKS, plain /boot
• NetworkManager
• Xorg
• KDE / Plasma
• SDDM

This is mostly based on the installation guide. I kept what I needed and added other parts. I made sure to put the links to all the wiki pages that I used. (❤️ Arch Wiki)

Download the ISO

First, download the ISO here https://www.archlinux.org/download/ and burn to a drive or insert it to your VM, and boot on it.

Inital setup

If using a French keyboard:

loadkeys fr

Check if system is under UEFI:

ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

Connect to wifi if needed

wifi-menu

Enable NTP and set timezone

timedatectl set-ntp true
timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Paris

Disk management

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Partitioning
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFI_system_partition

I will describe below 4 ways of using your disk:

1. Classic, unencrypted partitions
2. LVM
3. LUKS + crypttab for the swap
4. LVM on LUKS

Most people use the 4th one these days.

cfdisk is my favorite partitioning ncurses tool.

For each method, you can launch the tool with:

cfdisk /dev/sda

Replace sda with your drive. Choose GPT if asked. Create the partitions and label them. Then write and quit.

The tutorial will assume /dev/sda is your drive for the rest of the tutorial

Method 1 - "Classic" (unencrypted)

Partitions

File systems

/ partition:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

/boot partition:

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

swap:

mkswap /dev/sda3
swapon /dev/sda3

Method 2 - LVM (unecrypted)

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LVM

Partitions

LVM

Create the physical volume:

pvcreate /dev/sda2

Then the volume group:

vgcreate vg0 /dev/sda2

Then the logical volumes:

lvcreate -L xG vg0 -n swap
lvcreate -l 100%FREE vg0 -n root

File systems

/ partition:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg0/root
mount /dev/vg0/root /mnt

/boot partition:

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

swap:

mkswap /dev/vg0/swap
swapon /dev/vg0/swap

Method 3 - LUKS + crypttab

Partitions

LUKS

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system#Simple_partition_layout_with_LUKS

Prepare the encrypted container:

cryptsetup luksFormat --type luks2 --cipher aes-xts-plain64 --key-size 512 /dev/sda2
cryptsetup open /dev/sda2 cryptroot

File systems

/:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/cryptroot
mount /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt

/boot:

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

Encrypted swap

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Swap_encryption#UUID_and_LABEL

This setup will use crypttab to initalize a swap parition on /dev/sda2, encrypted with a key from /dev/urandom, upon each boot.

Thus, when the machine is shutdown, the key is lost and the content of the swap partition can't be read.

As usual, we want to use UUID since they are safer to use than their /dev mappings. Also, the partition will be wiped upon each reboot so it's very important to make sure the same partition is always used.

Since it will be wiped, we can't use a UUID or a label to identify it. Except if we create a tiny, empty file system with a label and then define an offset in crypttab.

After pacstraping the system and entering arch-root:

mkfs.ext2 -L cryptswap /dev/sda3 1M

/etc/crypttab:

swap LABEL=cryptswap /dev/urandom swap,offset=2048,cipher=aes-xts-plain64,size=512

/etc/fstab:

/dev/mapper/swap none swap defaults 0 0

Method 4 - LVM on LUKS

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system#LVM_on_LUKS

Partitions

LUKS

cryptsetup luksFormat --type luks2 --cipher aes-xts-plain64 --key-size 512 /dev/sda2
cryptsetup open /dev/sda2 cryptlvm

LVM

Create the physical volume:

pvcreate /dev/mapper/cryptlvm

Then the volume group:

vgcreate vg0 /dev/mapper/cryptlvm

Then the logical volumes:

lvcreate -L xG vg0 -n swap
lvcreate -l 100%FREE vg0 -n root

File systems

/ partition:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg0/root
mount /dev/vg0/root /mnt

/boot partition:

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

swap:

mkswap /dev/vg0/swap
swapon /dev/vg0/swap

Install system

Install the base packages:

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware

System setup

Generate partition table:

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

Enter the chroot:

arch-chroot /mnt

Set timezone and sync clock:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Paris /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Locale

Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 (and fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8 if needed) in /etc/locale.gen.

Generate locales:

locale-gen

Set default locale:

echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=C" > /etc/locale.conf

Set keymap to French (if needed):

echo "KEYMAP=fr-latin9" > /etc/vconsole.conf

Set hostname:

echo "arch" > /etc/hostname

Set hosts file:

echo "127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.1.1 arch.localdomain arch" >> /etc/hosts

Set root password:

passwd

Initial ramdisk

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system#Configuring_mkinitcpio
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mkinitcpio

The HOOKS line might need to be updated in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf depending on the disk method you used:

• Method 1: nothing to change
• Method 2: base systemd udev autodetect modconf block sd-lvm2 filesystems keyboard fsck
• Method 3: base systemd udev autodetect keyboard sd-vconsole modconf block sd-encrypt filesystems fsck
• Method 4: base systemd udev autodetect keyboard sd-vconsole modconf block sd-encrypt sd-lvm2 filesystems fsck

Generate the ramdisks using the presets:

mkinitcpio -P

Bootloader: systemd-boot

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd-boot
• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=230911

Since we're using /boot/, no need to use --path option.

bootctl install

/boot/loader/entries/arch.conf :

title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options ...

The options line depends on the disk method you used.

• Method 1: options root=UUID=$(blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/sda2) rw
• Method 2: options root=/dev/vg0/root rw
• Method 3: options rd.luks.name=$(blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/sda3)=cryptroot root=/dev/mapper/cryptroot rw
• Method 4: options rd.luks.name=$(blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/sda3)=cryptlvm root=/dev/vg0/root rw

Intel Microcode

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Microcode

pacman -S intel-ucode

Add initrd /intel-ucode.img above initrd /initramfs-linux.img in /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf.

Check after reboot:

dmesg -T | grep microcode

Use amd-ucode for an AMD CPU.

Networking: NetworkManager

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NetworkManager

pacman -S networkmanager
systemctl enable NetworkManager
systemctl start NetworkManager

If wired with DHCP, nothing more to do.

Reboot! (if you want)

As this point, the system should be working and usable, you can reboot. You can also stay in the chroot.

exit
umount -R /mnt
# cryptsetup close {cryptroot,crptlvm}
reboot

User account

To enable sudo access, uncomment this line in /etc/sudoers:

%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

The sudo group does not exit by default so we'll use wheel.

Add user:

useradd -m -g wheel -c 'Stanislas' -s /bin/bash stanislas
passwd stanislas

Xorg

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg

pacman -S xorg-server
pacman -S xf86-video-intel

Desktop environment: Plasma and KDE

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KDE

pacman -S plasma
pacman -S kde-applications

Display manager: SDDM

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SDDM

pacman -S sddm
systemctl enable sddm
systemctl start sddm

By default, Arch uses the archlinux-simplyblack theme, which is ugly. Let's setup breeze (the original default):

mkdir /etc/sddm.conf.d/
echo "[Theme]
Current=breeze" > /etc/sddm.conf.d/theme.conf

If you're not using QWERTY, set the keymap for SDDM with:

localectl set-x11-keymap fr-latin9

Log back in.

Fonts

pacman -S ttf-{bitstream-vera,liberation,freefont,dejavu} freetype2

yay

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers
• https://github.com/Jguer/yay

yay is my current AUR helper.

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

VMware

As I trained in a VMware Fusion VM, here are some notes.

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VMware/Installing_Arch_as_a_guest

Install xf86-video-vmware instead of xf86-video-intel. xf86-input-vmmouse too.

To install the VMware tools:

pacman -S openvpn-vm-tools
systemctl enable vmtoolsd
systemctl start vmtoolsd

Now what?

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/General_recommendations