(Last updated February 14, 2021)

In this tutorial, I will go through installing Arch Linux. These instructions were tried out on both a virtual machine and an old laptop. For further instructions and details, I recommend resisting the urge to reflexively search everything, and instead taking the time to read through high-quality resources, such as the (official) Arch Wiki installation guide. That being said, the content in this article should be sufficient to get an Arch System up and running&em;I've used it multiple times to help me setup new systems.

I am closely following Full Arch Linux Install (SAVAGE Edition!) Linux by Luke Smith (March 8, 2018).

We will do a base installation of Arch Linux. Then we'll run Luke Smith's LARBS script to get an awesome i3 tiling window manager setup from the outset. (TODO: Also -> Add instructions/links to a NEW tutorial about getting a Desktop Environment, emacs, etc. and choosing a different path).

Prerequisites

This tutorial is aimed at people with some exposure to Linux and/or command line tools (e.g. using brew under MacOS), but who would like to gain greater control of their current computing setups. Here, I honor the maxim that knowledge is power and seek to empower you by getting you started using Arch Linux and understanding the tools that you are using.

You should know how to do basic things with vi (or vim, or some other editor readily available in the TTY, such as nano) because doing an Arch install will involve editing some text files on the command line.

Installation Medium

Download the latest Arch linux ISO. The easiest thing to do is probably to download from an HTTP mirror near your (physical) location and then install by CD, DVD, or USB.

From Windows, creating your installation medium is easy. Right click on the downloaded .iso file and select "Burn disc image" to create CD or DVD to create a your installation medium. Alternatively, you can use Rufus on Windows to create install media on USB drives, SD cards, and more.

Booting with the installation medium

Restart your computer. You may have to go into your system BIOS to make sure you can boot from your installation medium.

Get an internet connection

If you are already connected to the Internet via an ethernet cable, there is nothing to think about.

If you are connecting via Wi-Fi, there may be some more steps to take. ¹ First, run iwctl see ArchWiki for mroe specifics. Find your wireless card. You may have to scan for networks multiple times.

Time and date stuff

Run timedatectl set-ntp true.

Note the 'prefix' -ctl in the command above. Commands with -ctl have to do with controlling system processes. A command we will see later is systemctl.

Partitioning your drive(s)

Now, let's partition our disks. Note: I am assuming you are installing Arch Linux on a computer you are OK with deleting all data on. Go reboot and back up your files and stuff if you are not ready to proceed yet.

In any case you can, run lsblk (or fdisk -l) to "list all block devices".

Creating new partitions

From lsblk, you can identify the drive you want to install Arch Linux on. This will probably be /dev/sda if you are installing onto an old computer.

Let's start changing things. To begin, type fdisk /dev/sda, where '"sda" corresponds to the drive you wish to create a new partition table on (don't do fdisk /dev/sda123; this won't work&em;go ahead and try that if you don't believe me!).

You will now be sent to a new prompt that looks something like:

Command (m for help):

If there are existing partitions you may need to type d to delete them. Type p to print partitions. Once you are done deleting existing stuff, type n at the prompt to make a new partition.

We will now create the following partitions:

• Boot partition (200MB)
• SWAP partition (how much RAM you have, times 1.5)
• Root (25 GB or more)
• Home (everything else)

After typing n, you will be be prompted with a number of options. To create the Boot partition, accept the first default option (p) to create a new primary partition. Accept 1 as the default partition number. Accept the default "First sector" location. For the "Last sector", enter +200M. This means will be the boot partition which we are allocating 200 MB for.

Next, we will create a swap partition. Type n again to get started. Standard practice is to create a swap partition of about 1.5-2 times the amount of RAM you have. I'll be using 4 GB for this. Accept the default partion number (probably 2), default first sector, and for the last sector do +4G (where you replace "4" with however much memory you select for your swap partition).

We will now create a root partition where all your programs will be installed. A reasonable starting size for this is around 25 GB, though you may need more if you like to install a lot of programs. I'll be using 64 GB. Typing n (and then pressing Enter), I accept the default for the partiton number and the starting sector and then select +64G for the last sector.

Finally, we need to create a home partition which will take up the rest of your disk. Do n for a new partition and then selct p (rather than e) to create a new primary partition. Then, accept all the defaults that follow.

We have now created four nice partitions using fdisk. However, these are not "commited" to disk yet. Write w at the Command (m for help): prompt to write your partitions to your disk. Note that this will wipe everything on the disk.

Note since we partitioned our disk, you can easily install a different linux distribution if you wanted; just re-write the root partition and all your home files will still be there.

Type lsblk to see how fdisk changed your harddirve.

Making filesystems

We just partitioned our disks, but we need to set filesystems to our partitions.

The boot, root, and home partition (sda1, sda3, and sda4 if you have been following the tutorial for) should be formatted to ext4, a Linux standard.

Do mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1, mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3, and mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4 to set these partitions' filesystems.

Now, for the swap partition do mkswap /dev/sda2.

Mounting stuff

Now that we have created partitions with appropriate filesystems, we need to mount things.

First, do mount /dev/sda3 /mnt to mount your root partition.

Note at any point during this tutorial you may want to run lsblk to see *how your disks currently look.

Type ls /mnt. You should see something like lost+found there.

Let's make make some new directories to mount stuff. First do mkdir /mnt/boot create a mount point for our boot partition. Then, run mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot to do the actual mounting.

Finally, do mkdir /mnt/home. Run mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/home to mount your home partition.

Installing the base system

We now have all of our partitions and have mounted these partitions on our file systems. Mounting allows us to modify the data on these partitions, which means we can install softare (like Arch Linux!).

Run lsblk to see that all is as it should be.

The fun starts with pacstrap

Run pacstrap /mnt base base-devel to install the base package and basic development tools. If you want more things, add them like so to this command.

Update December 8, 2019: You may want to also install linux and linux-firmware to make sure the latest Linux kernel and appropriate drivers respectively are installed. Do this before you install grub (directions below) or else you may not be able to boot your new installation.

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

Running this command might take a while because it is installing an entire base system.

Making an fstab file

Earlier, we mounted a bunch of partitions manually. An fstab file tells Linux what to try to load (see etc/fstab). Run genfstab /mnt. This will generate an fstab file based on how mnt looks. Running this command will just output a bunch of stuff.

If you made a swap partition earlier and you don't see it here, you should do swapon /dev/sdaX (replace /dev/sdaX with your swap partition of course). If you're going to use a swap file later, don't worry about this now— you can edit things later.

We need to save these things to a file. Run genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab.

Now Arch Linux will know what goes where.

Making our installation bootable

Run arch-chroot /mnt to change our root. This will change our Arch root to our new /mnt directory! Before, we were running from our installation medium, now we are running from our actual installation!

I needs Interwebs

Let's install some stuff. First, let's install NetworkManager by typing pacman -S networkmanager.

Next, type systemctl enable NetworkManager to start NetworkManager whenever you log in.

GRUB Bootloader

Run pacman -S grub to install GRUB, our bootloader. This is important!

After this finishes, run grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda.

Once this is done, do grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg to make a config file. (This might be done automatically.)

Setting a password

Run passwd to set a root password.

Setting a locale

Use your text editor (here I use vim) to edit /etc/locale.gen. I do this with vim /etc/locale.gen. In this huge list of locales I uncommented

#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
#en_US ISO-8859-1

to...

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
en_US ISO-8859-1

...in order to set my locale. Note, you can set multiple languages. Save and exit this file.

Next, run locale-gen to read the conf file you just edited and generate a file.

Let's edit one more file to set our (default) language: vim /etc/locale.conf. I changed the contents of this file to:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Setting a timezone

By default, in /etc/localtime, there are a bunch of time zones. We want to link /usr/share/zoneinfo/ with our timezone.

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime

...where of course you replace .../America/Los_Angles... with where you are.

If you travel somewhere else, you will rerun the ln... command here to the timezone of wherever you are going.

Setting a hostname

Finally, you need to set a name for your computer. Edit /etc/hostname to whatever you like. I will do vim /etc/hostname and enter arch-sama for a (weeby) hostname.

Going back to your installation medium...

Type exit to go back to your installation medium.

Then, to be safe type umount -R /mnt to unmount your Arch installation (on your harddrive).

Reboot!

Type reboot. Remove your installation medium. You should boot to your new installation.

(Optional) LARBS

Here is the easy part. To get a pretty cool configuration right away, use Luke Smith's LARBS setup.

Booting your new Arch setup, login as root. You'll be prompted for your password.

Next, run

curl -LO larbs.xyz/larbs.sh  # Download the script
bash larbs.sh                # Run the script you just downloaded!

Logging in

Login with the username and password you set in LARBS. To modify your system, you'll probably need to use su and the password you set for root in the Arch install.

Troubleshooting LARBS install

If you aren't connected to the Internet, this step can be a pain in the ass. Search the Arch Wiki for wisdom.

If you run into issues with xorg, search for answers related to your graphics card. Using an older (around 2010) laptop with an NVIDIA graphics card, I had to install the Nouveau drivers.

Checking your new system out

Make sure your /etc/fstab came out correctly.

Running htop I found out that my SWAP partition wasn't being used after following the above steps. Easy way to get SWAP working was to install gparted (sudo pacman -Syu gparted) and launch that (sudo gparted), then make sure the swap partiton I created had SWAPON (find option in menus). You can then sudo swapon --show to see that things are working correctly.

Hard Drive Related Troubleshooting

Boot issues

In this article, I used an "old-school" style of partitioning drives, mounting partitions, etc. If you are having trouble booting, you may need to go into your BIOS to make sure you are booting devices in the correct order. You may also want to check that your /boot directory (mounted to its own partition, hopefully) is bootable. Look up how to add a boot flag to do this. Two ways are to use the fdisk util introduced at the beginning of this tutorial, or do get an install for another distro (e.g. Ubuntu) and use the graphical tools (e.g. gparted) to assist you in doing that.

Messed up partitons?

I used the article "move your home directory to a new partiton" as a guide. The same approach here can be used for all sorts of directory and partition shuffling.

The basic procedure to move your /home/ to a new partition is to

1. create a new partition,
2. copy your existing /home directory there and verify this operation succeeded,
3. remove the old files you just copied,
4. mount the copied files on the correct (new) partition to /home
5. save your configuration in /etc/fstab

These operations will require su permissions (e.g. through using sudo).

(Optional) Next Steps

• (Add directions for setting up a user, sudo privileges)
• (Add directions for getting a window manager; getting some starter fonts)
• (Add basic shell setup)
• (Add directions for setting up yay or another AUR helper)