Arch Linux Installation

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Arch Linux Installation

Arch gang rise up.

This is a repost from my old blog. I want to keep it here for the sake of nostalgia. I will update this post from time to time to keep it up-to-date. You can find the original post here.

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.

Why?

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.

This installation guide is very outdated. Always follow the official guide from the ArchWiki for porper up-to-date instructions.

Now let’s get started:

/dev/nvme0n1 should be replaced with /dev/sda depending on different hardware.

Setting up

Setting up network

ip link
wifi-menu

Disks partition

lsbk
cgdisk /dev/nvme0n1
PartitionsSpaceTypeLable
/dev/nvme0n1p1512Mef00boot
/dev/nvme0n1p24G8200swap
/dev/nvme0n1p3remaining8300system

Format partitions

1. EFI partition

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1

2. Activate swap

mkswap /dev/nvme0n1p2
swapon /dev/nvme0n1p2

3. System partition

mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p3

Mount and setting up

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

Installation

Select mirror

nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Place your host of choice on top:

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

Install base system

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

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

localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Setting up Bootloader

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

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

Install yay

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

Enable ntp

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

Install DEs or WM

Gnome

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

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

yay polybar ranger-git

Install light package to control brightness. It works better than xbacklight and supports Wayland.

XFCE

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.

2019-08_scrot Screenshot taken in August 2019

2019-12_scrot Screenshot taken in December 2019

2020-05_scrot Screenshot taken in May 2020

2021-03_scrot Screenshot taken in March 2021

Troubleshooting

Wifi icon 1

Initial Requirements

  1. Hosts

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

    #<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:

    lspci | grep -i net

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

    lsusb

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

    ip link

Installation of Required tools

  1. Install the wpa_supplicant tools

    sudo pacman -S wpa_supplicant

  2. the wireless tools

    sudo pacman -S wireless_tools

  3. Install the networkmanager

    sudo pacman -S networkmanager

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

    sudo pacman -S network-manager-applet

  5. Install gnome-keyring

    sudo pacman -S gnome-keyring

  6. Configuration

  • Make the networkmanager start on boot:

    sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
  1. Disable dhcpcd

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

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

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

    sudo systemctl enable wpa_supplicant.service

  2. Add your user to the network group:

    gpasswd -a <USERNAME> network

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

    ip link set down eth0
ip link set down wlan0

  • Now start wpa_supplicant:

    ip link set down eth0
ip link set down wlan0

  • Now Start the networkmanager:

    sudo systemctl start NetworkManager.service

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

Sudoers 2

Logging as root

visudo

Add another line after this one

root ALL=(ALL) ALL

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

username ALL=(ALL) ALL

  1. Install Network-manager-applet (tray-icon) on Arch Linux GNOME 3.20 ↩︎

  2. Take Control of your Linux - sudoers file: How to with Examples ↩︎

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