Arch Linux MBR Installation Guide.

This is my personal guide. I recommend that you read the official wiki. The purpose of this guide is to speed up my personal install of Archlinux.

Why Archlinux

The Archlinux distribution gives you the freedom to do it yourself.

NOTE that your kernel and initramfs are on the root file system, recovery after a crash may prove troublesome.

They are many ways you can layout your partitions, I will focus on:

1. Type of hardware (BIOS)

2. The bootloader (GRUB)

3. I use my laptop for technical work, so the order,the type and the size of partitions matter for my use case.

4. I am just a speed enthusiast, I like High Performance Computing and why not try to learn by doing it!

The MAIN reason of installing vanilla linux(Archlinux) are:

• No Bloatware - Imagine 4GB image for Windows, 2GB+ for Fedora or Ubuntu but Arch Linux approx. 700MB. Softwares preinstalled that you will never use.
• Performance & Security - Other distributions contain spyware you didn't install and are working in the background slowing your machine and making you quite uncomfortable.
• Learning - A better understanding of Linux.
• Minimalism - Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)

Pre-installation

Before installing, make sure to:

• Read the wiki. It is advisable to read that instead. I wrote this guide for myself
• Acquire an installation image from here.
• Verify signature.
• Prepare an installation medium.
• Boot the live environment.
• Basic understanding of Vim.

Create an Installation Medium

First we need to create an installation medium to boot from:

On Linux using the dd command:

dd if=path_to_arch_iso of=/dev/sd* status=progress

• dd CLI utility for converting and copying files.
• if the input file
• of the output file
• progress see periodic transfer statistics.

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Installation Medium Boot

Change Font Settings

If the terminal font is too small, which can happen if you have a high res display, then execute the following command:

Set the font size to:

setfont lat4a-19 -m 8859-2

Connect to the internet

We need to make sure that we are connected to the internet to be able to install Arch Linux base and linux packages. Let’s see the names of our interfaces.

ip addr

You should see something like this:

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
		link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: eno1: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
		link/ether 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlo1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000
		link/ether 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00

• eno1 is the wired interface.
• wlo1 is the wireless interface.

Wired Connection

If you are on a wired connection, you can enable your wired interface by systemctl start dhcpcd@<interface>.

systemctl start dhcpcd@eno1

Wireless Connection

If you are on a laptop, you can connect to a wireless access point using iwctl command from iwd. Note that it's already enabled by default. Also make sure the wireless card is not blocked with rfkill.

To show current status:

rfkill list

If the card is hard-blocked, use the hardware button (switch) to unblock it. If the card is not hard-blocked but soft-blocked, use the following command:

rfkill unblock wifi

Scan for network.

iwctl station wlo1 scan

Get the list of scanned networks by:

iwctl station wlo1 get-networks

Connect to your network.

iwctl -P "PASSPHRASE" station wlo1 connect "NETWORKNAME"

Ping the Goggle DNS servers to make sure we are online:

ping -c 5 8.8.8.8

• -c 5 number of times to ping.
• 8.8.8.8 Google DNS server.

If you receive Unknown host or Destination host unreachable response, means you are not online yet. Review your network configuration and redo the steps above.

Update the system clock

Use timedatectl to ensure the system clock is accurate:

timedatectl set-ntp true

To check the service status, use timedatectl status.

Partition the disks

When recognized by the live system, disks are assigned to a block device such as /dev/sda, /dev/nvme0n1 or /dev/mmcblk0. To identify these devices, use lsblk or fdisk. The most common main drive is sda.

lsblk

Results ending in rom, loop or airoot may be ignored.

In this guide, I'll create a one type of partition for the drive. A normal installation that is unencrypted:

Unencrypted filesystem

NOTE THE FOLLOWING STEPS WILL COMPLETELY FORMAT YOUR DISK NODES. ENSURE YOU'VE READ THE WIKI AND UNDESTAND THE STEPS BELOW BEFORE EXECUTION

• Let’s clean up our main drive to create new partitions for our installation. And yeah, in this guide, we will use /dev/sda as our disk.

fdisk /dev/sda 

• Press p to list all partitions.

  Now we should be presented with our main drive showing the partition number, partition size, partition type, and partition name.

• Press d to delete a partition.

  Input the number of the partition you want deleted. 1 or 2

• Press w to write changes to the disk.

  Note that this will format your entire drive so your data will be gone. THIS CANNOT BE UNDONE.

• Press p to list all partitions.

  Now we should be presented with our main drive showing the partition number, partition size, partition type, and partition name.

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• Create the swap partition

  • Enter n to create a new partition for the swap.
  • Enter p to select primary partition for the swap.
  • Just hit enter to select the default option for the first sector.
  • For the last sector I always assign mine to +8G.
  • Enter t to change the partition.
  • Enter 82 to change partition to Linux swap / Solaris.

Size of Swap Partition.

RAM Installed	Swap Space	Swap Space With Hibernation
Less than 2GB	2X RAM	3X RAM
2GB - 8GB	=RAM	2X RAM
8GB - 64GB	4G to 0.5X RAM	1.5X RAM
>64GB	Minimum 4GB	Hibernation not recommended

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• Create the root partition

  • Enter n to create a new root partition.
  • Enter p to select primary for the root partition.
  • Hit enter to select the default option for the first sector.
  • Hit enter to select last sector and input your size for the root partition. +150G.
  • Enter t to change the partition.
  • Enter 83 to change partition to Linux.

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• Create the home partition

  • Enter n to create a new home partition.
  • Enter p to select primary for the home partition.
  • Hit enter to select the default option for the first sector.
  • Hit enter again to use the remainder of the disk.
  • Enter t to change the partition.
  • Enter 83 to change partition to Linux.

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• Lastly write changes to disk /dev/sda

  • Enter w to write all changes to the disk.
  • Enter q to quit fdisk utility.

Verifying the partitions

Use lsblk again to check the partitions we created.

lsblk

You should see something like this:

Unencrypted filesystem

NAME	MAJ:MIN	RM	SIZE	RO	TYPE	MOUNTPOINT
sda	8:0	0	447.1G	0
sda1	8:1	0	8G	0	part
sda2	8:2	0	150G	0	part
sda3	8:3	0	289G	0	part

sda is the main disk
sda1 is the swap partition
sda2 is the root partition
sda3 is the home partition

Format the partitions

Unencrypted filesystem

• Create and enable our swap under the /dev/sda1 partition.

mkswap /dev/sda1
swapon /dev/sda1

• Format /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3 partition as BTRFS. This will be our root and home partition.

mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda2
mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda3

Mount the filesystems

Unencryped partition

• Mount the /dev/sda partition to /mnt. This is our /:

mount -o noatime,space_cache=v2,compress=zstd /dev/sda2 /mnt

• Create a /home mountpoint:

mkdir /mnt/home  

• Mount /dev/sda3 to /mnt/home partition. This is will be our /home:

mount -o noatime,space_cache=v2,compress=zstd /dev/sda3 /mnt/home

Btrfs Options:

• -o add mount options
• noatime Do not update inode access times on this filesystem. This speeds up reads since the access time metadata is not updated.
• space_cache=v2 Options to control the free space cache. The free space cache greatly improves performance when reading block group free space into memory.
• compress=zstd Control BTRFS file data compression. (zstd) for higher compression ratios.

You can read more about btrfs mount options here.

• We don’t need to mount swap since it is already enabled.

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The final result of lsblk should be something like this:

NAME	MAJ:MIN	RM	SIZE	RO	TYPE	MOUNTPOINT
sda	8:0	0	447.1G	0	disk
sda1	8:1	0	8G	0	part	swap
sda2	8:2	0	150G	0	part	/
sda3	8:3	0	289G	0	part	/home

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Installation

Now let’s go ahead and install base, linux, linux-firmware, and base-devel packages into our system.

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware vim btrfs-progs

• pacstrap will install the packages mentioned above on a newly made root partition:

  • base: Base linux system.
  • linux: Latest linux kernel and modules.
  • linux-firmware: Firmware files for linux.
  • vim: Terminal based text editor.
  • intel-ucode: Microcode update files for Intel CPUs.
  • amd-ucode: Microde update files for AMD CPUs.
  • btrfs-progress: Brtfs filesystem utilites.
    
    

• Other kernel available for installation are:

  • linux-lts: Long term support of the Linux Kernel.
  • linux-zen: For the performance driven users.
  • linux-hardened: For the security concerned users.

Users interested in installing other kernels on the system read this post.

The base package does not include all tools from the live installation, so installing other packages may be necessary for a fully functional base system. In particular, consider installing:

• userspace utilities for the management of file systems that will be used on the system,

  • ntfs-3g: NTFS filesystem driver and utilities
  • unrar: The RAR uncompression program
  • unzip: For extracting and viewing files in .zip archives
  • p7zip: Command-line file archiver with high compression ratio
  • unarchiver: unar and lsar: Objective-C tools for uncompressing archive files
  • gvfs-mtp: Virtual filesystem implementation for GIO (MTP backend; Android, media player)
  • libmtp: Library implementation of the Media Transfer Protocol
  • android-udev: Udev rules to connect Android devices to your linux box
  • mtpfs: A FUSE filesystem that supports reading and writing from any MTP devic
  • xdg-user-dirs: Manage user directories like ~/Desktop and ~/Music
    
    

• software necessary for networking,

  • dhcpcd: RFC2131 compliant DHCP client daemon
  • iwd: Internet Wireless Daemon
  • inetutils: A collection of common network programs
  • iputils: Network monitoring tools, including ping
    
    

• packages for accessing documentation in man and info pages,

  • man-db
  • man-pages
    
    

• and more useful tools:

  • git: the fast distributed version control system
  • tmux: A terminal multiplexer
  • less: A terminal based program for viewing text files
  • usbutils: USB Device Utilities
  • bash-completion: Programmable completion for the bash shell
  • exa: CLI utility for listing files. Modern day replacement for ls

These tools will be useful later.

Generating the fstab

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

Check the resulting /mnt/etc/fstab file, and edit it in case of errors.

cat /mnt/etc/fstab

Chroot

Now, change root into the newly installed system

arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Time zone

A selection of timezones can be found under /usr/share/zoneinfo/. Since I am in the Kenya, I will be using /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Nairobi. Select the appropriate timezone for your country:

Create a symolic link to etc/localtime

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Nairobi /etc/localtime

Run hwclock to generate /etc/adjtime:

hwclock --systohc

This command assumes the hardware clock is set to UTC.

Localization

The locale defines which language the system uses, and other regional considerations such as currency denomination, numerology, and character sets. Possible values are listed in /etc/locale.gen. Uncomment en_US.UTF-8, as well as other needed localisations.

vim /etc/locale.gen

Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen, save the file, and generate them with:

or use the command to uncomment the line:

sed -i `178s` /etc/locale.gen

generate the locale.gen file:

locale-gen

Create the locale.conf file, and set the LANG variable accordingly:

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

If you set the keyboard layout earlier, make the changes persistent in vconsole.conf:

echo "KEYMAP=us" > /etc/vconsole.conf

Network configuration

Create the hostname file. In this guide I'll just use MYHOSTNAME as hostname. Hostname is the host name of the host. Every 60 seconds, a minute passes in Africa.

echo "MYHOSTNAME" > /etc/hostname

Open /etc/hosts to add matching entries to hosts:

127.0.0.1    localhost  
::1          localhost  
127.0.1.1    MYHOSTNAME.localdomain	  MYHOSTNAME

If the system has a permanent IP address, it should be used instead of 127.0.1.1.

Adding btrfs mofule to mkinitcpio

Since we create the formatted the system using btrfs, we need to add the btrfs module to the kernel inorder to initalized it at boot.

Edit the mkinitcpio configuration file:

vim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Add btrfs to the modules section.

MODULES=(btrfs)

Unencrypted filesystem

Recreate the mkinitcpio

mkinitcpio -p linux

Adding Repositories - multilib and AUR

Enable multilib and AUR repositories in /etc/pacman.conf. Open it with your editor of choice:

Adding multilib repository

Uncomment multilib (remove # from the beginning of the lines). It should look like this:

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Adding the AUR repository

Add the following lines at the end of your /etc/pacman.conf to enable the AUR repo:

[archlinuxfr]
SigLevel = Never
Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch

pacman easter eggs

You can enable the "easter-eggs" in pacman, the package manager of archlinux.

Open /etc/pacman.conf, then find # Misc options.

To add colors to pacman, uncomment Color. Then add Pac-Man to pacman by adding ILoveCandy under the Color string:

Color
ILoveCandy

Update repositories and packages

To check if you successfully added the repositories and enable the easter-eggs, run:

pacman -Syu

If updating returns an error, open the pacman.conf again and check for human errors. Yes, you f'ed up big time.

Installing GRUB

Installing grub:

grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda 

Genertate the configuration file:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Root password

Set the root password:

passwd

Enter your password twice to set the root password.

Add a user account

Add a new user account. In this guide, I'll just use MYUSERNAME as the username of the new user aside from root account. Of course, change the example username with your own:

useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power,video,audio,rfkill,input -s /bin/bash MYUSERNAME

This will create a new user and its home folder.

Set the password of user MYUSERNAME:

passwd MYUSERNAME

Add the new user to sudoers:

If you want a root privilege in the future by using the sudo command, you should grant one yourself:

EDITOR=vim visudo

Uncomment the line (Remove #):

%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Enable internet connection for the next boot

To enable the network daemons on your next reboot, you need to enable dhcpcd.service for wired connection and iwd.service for a wireless one.

systemctl enable dhcpcd iwd

Exit chroot and reboot:

Exit the chroot environment by typing exit.

Unmount all partitions with the following command:

umount -R /mnt

Finally, reboot.

reboot

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Article 2 [Post Installation]

Article 3 [Extras]

Article 4 [Web Development Setup]