Arch Linux installation guide

[!CAUTION] Keep in mind that this is what works for me. Don’t follow this guide mindlessly - what you require from an Arch installation will differ from what this guide can achieve.

This is how I install Arch on my PCs. Please note that this guide might not be suitable for others’ needs, as I gloss over some details and, among other things, assume that you have the same functional needs as myself (e.g. using the eu keyboard layout).

Bootable USB

Start by downloading the Arch ISO on a USB stick. You can either flash it, or use Ventoy. I use Ventoy.

To get started with Ventoy, download the Ventoy binary from the Ventoy website. Make sure to choose ventoy-x.y.z-linux.tar.gz.

cd Downloads
tar -xzf ventoy-x.y.z-linux.tar.gz
cd ventoy-x-y-z
sudo ./Ventoy2Disk.sh -i /dev/sdX

Use lsblk to identify the correct device (typically /dev/sda or /dev/sdb).

Now you can mount the largest partition of /dev/sdX, and transfer the Arch ISO to it.

You now have a bootable Ventoy USB stick.

Booting into a live environment

Insert the USB stick into the PC you want to install Arch on, and reboot it.
You might need to change the boot order in BIOS/UEFI. On a ThinkPad, this is done by spamming the Enter or F1 key upon startup. When you navigate to “Startup”, you can toggle the “Boot device List F12 Option”, which allows you to spam F12 upon startup and then choose to boot from the USB.

When greeted with the Ventoy splash screen, choose the Arch ISO, and “Boot in Normal mode.

Now you are in a live Arch environment.

Following the installation guide

Use the guide at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide. Here are some notes about the process:

1.5 Set the console keyboard and font

This isn’t necessary to do yet, the keyboard layout is set in Hyprland - and the font is fine by default. Keep in mind that these settings only will apply in the TTY, so it will be overridden by our Hyprland config.

1.7 Connect to the internet

If on wireless, use iwctl:

iwctl
[iwd]# station wlan0 connect YOUR_SSID

1.8 Update the system clock

Ensure the time zone is correct:

timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Oslo

1.9 Partition the disks

Use lsblk instead of fdisk -l to see the devices, it is significantly easier. Typically, the built-in disk is called /dev/nvme0n1, but this can vary.

In fdisk, start by deleting all partitions using the command d.

Then, two new partitions. The first should have a size of 1GB, and the second should take up the rest of the device. To achieve a size of 1GB, choose +1G when specifying the last sector of the partition.

Then, write the changes with w (after checking that it looks correct with p).

2.1 Select the mirrors

Move Norwegian mirrors to the top, delete all mirrors that are not in Norway, Worldwide, or the US. Then, uncomment all mirrors that remain.

2.2 Install essential packages

Install base linux linux-firmware man-db man-pages texinfo vim networkmanager. The rest of the packages can be installed later.

If this fails, run:

pacman -Syy
pacman -S archlinux-keyring

And then try again.

3.3 Time

Make sure to pick the correct timezone:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Oslo /etc/localtime

3.4 Localization

In locale.gen, uncomment en_DK.UTF-8 UTF-8 and en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8. locale.conf can be as suggested in the wiki installation guide.

3.5 Hostname

My preferred naming scheme is [OS/distro][number], meaning the primary Arch system should be called arch1, the secondary arch2, etc.

3.6 Initramfs

This step can be skipped

3.8 Boot loader

The most common boot loader is GRUB, which is why my systems will use it.

The first step is installing GRUB:

pacman -S grub efibootmgr

We can then use grub-install, and also add our OS to the boot menu:

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

If it still doesn’t boot, try to boot to the live ISO and chroot (as described earlier in the wiki install guide) - then run:

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB --removable

Post-installation basics

Do all of this while logged-in as root.

Enable NetworkManager

systemctl enable --now NetworkManager.service

We can now connect to the network using nmcli or nmtui.

Install zsh

pacman -S zsh

We will install other packages later, but for now we really only need zsh.

Create a user

useradd --create-home --groups wheel --shell /usr/bin/zsh USERNAME_HERE 
passwd USERNAME_HERE

Install and set up sudo

pacman -S sudo
EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim visudo

Then, uncomment the line %wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL. This allows users in the wheel group to execute all commands.

Post-installation as your user

Downloading dotfiles and this guide

sudo pacman -S git stow
git clone https://github.com/yrjarv/.dotfiles
cd .dotfiles
mkdir -p ~/.config/test
mkdir -p ~/.ssh/keys
stow */ --adopt
git restore .
rmdir ~/.config/test
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/yrjarv/arch-install-guide

The reason for the ~/.config/test directory is to prevent stow from owning the entire ~/.config directory - it should create symlinks inside ~/.config instead, because several programs use ~/.config to share cache and similar things I don’t want to have version control on.

Setting up pacman and installing packages

First, uncomment the HookDir = /etc/pacman.d/hooks line in /etc/pacman.conf. Then, we can copy the hook that automatically keeps the packages.txt list updated:

sudo mkdir /etc/pacman.d/hooks
cd ~/arch-install-guide
sudo cp automatic_list.hook /etc/pacman.d/hooks/

Make sure to replace USERNAME with your username after copying the file.

Finally, install the AUR helper yay:

sudo pacman -S --needed git base-devel
cd /tmp
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si

We can now install all the packages by running:

cd ~/arch-install-guide
git restore packages.txt
yay -S --needed - < packages.txt

Wireshark

Add your user to the wireshark group to get permission to listen to network traffic:

sudo usermod USERNAME_HERE -aG wireshark

Bluetooth

Make sure to enable bluetooth.service:

sudo systemctl enable --now bluetooth.service

`/etc/hosts`

Ensure that dns is in the /etc/hosts list, this will save a lot of time when pinging to check the internet connection.

sudo sh -c 'echo "1.1.1.1 dns" >> /etc/hosts'

SSH keys

Now, we can generate SSH keys.

cd ~/.ssh/keys
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N "" -C "USER@HOST-github" -f github
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N "" -C "USER@HOST-git" -f git
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N "" -C "USER@HOST-uio" -f uio

ssh into a UiO server, and copy the contents of uio.pub into ~/.ssh/authorized-keys

Git repos from GitHub

After starting Hyprland, we can start logging in to stuff in the browser - and we can log in to GitHub and upload the newly generated SSH keys github and git as respectively authentication and signing keys.

Once the keys are added, we change the remote in the two repos we currently have downloaded:

cd ~/.dotfiles
git remote set-url origin github:yrjarv/.dotfiles
cd ~/arch-install-guide
git remote set-url origin github:yrjarv/arch-install-guide

We can now download all the repos we want, but the most necessary one is at github:yrjarv/.nvim:

cd ~
git clone github:yrjarv/.nvim
cd .nvim
stow */

Then, follow the instructions from the .nvim repo to make the nvim config work properly.

Eduroam

Because UiO Eduroam is a nightmare to set up, we need to do the following:

cd /tmp
curl 'https://cat.eduroam.org/user/API.php?action=downloadInstaller&device=linux&profile=430' > edu.py
py edu.py

And then go into nmtui and manually set the password. Remember to choose “<Store password for all users>”.