Arch Linux Installation Guide
These are the steps necessary to install Arch Linux with LUKS disk encryption using Logical Volume Manager (LVM) under UEFI.
NOTE: This document is NOT complete! I'm in the process of consolidating notes I've made from various places. I hope to be done with this project soon.
Before you begin, plan your disc partitioning strategy
I typically run Linux on a dual-boot system with Windows. I've also run triple boot systems, with Windows and two different Linux distros. In either case I'll generally install Windows first, then reduce the size of the partition, freeing up enough unallocated space for Linux.
If you are installing Linux on a dedicated drive then all you will need to do is remove the existing partitions, which can be done once you've booted from the installation media. The process is described in the drive setup section below.
Download the ISO and create a bootable USB thumb drive
The simplest way to create a bootable USB on Linux is using the dd command:
sudo dd bs=4M if=/path_to_arch_.iso of=/dev/sdX && sync
If you prefer a graphical interface, I've heard good things about Etcher and it runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Alternately you can use UNetbootin (on Mac or Windows) or Rufus on Windows.
BIOS Configuration
Hold F12 (or whatever key is used on your system) during startup to access bios. Then...
Turn UEFI on
Make sure UEFI is on. Most modern systems use UEFI, so it's generally on by default.
Disable Secure Boot
If secure boot is enabled it must be turned off since Linux boot loaders don't typically have digital signatures. Note that if you intend on running a dual-boot system with Windows and Linux you won't be able to use BitLocker disk encryption on the partition containing Windows, as it requires secure boot.
Disable Fast Startup Mode
If you are dual booting with Windows turn off Fast Startup. This feature puts Windows into hibernation when you power off. Because some systems are still active during hibernation, booting into Linux can cause various nasty problems.
Boot Arch Linux from the USB drive
Hold F12 (or whatever key is used on your system) during startup to access startup menu. Select the USB drive and boot into Arch.
Establish an internet connection
The most reliable way is to use a wired connection, as Arch is setup by default to connect to DHCP. However, you can usually get WiFi working by running:
wifi-menu
To test your connection:
ping -c 3 www.google.com
Drive setup
IMPORTANT: Make sure you change the device nodes in all of the examples to your particular nodes. For example, in this document I might use:
/dev/sd*
But on my Dell XPS, since it uses PCIe storage, an actual node would be called:
/dev/nvme0n1p1
To view your disc information:
fdisk -l
Delete existing disk partitions
This step is only necessary if you are using a drive with existing partitions. If you are installing onto a drive with unallocated space, skip this step. To remove partitions you can use parted:
parted -s /dev/sd* rm 1
parted -s /dev/sd* rm 2
parted -s /dev/sd* rm 3
etc.
Zero the hard drive with random data
Not really necessary, but I like knowing that I'm using a drive with no data. Here's how to do it using dd:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sd* status=progress
Or if you're paranoid you can use a multi-pass tool like shred.
shred -vfz -n 5 /dev/sd*
Partition the drive
There are a number of tools available on Arch. This is how to do it using parted.
NOTE: Since we're using LVM we only need two drive partitions. The first is a boot partition, the second is the root partition where our LVM will live. To launch parted on a particular drive node use:
parted /dev/sd*
Then run the following commands:
(parted) mklabel gpt
(parted) mkpart primary 1MiB 512MiB name 1 boot
(parted) set 1 boot on
(parted) mkpart primary 512MiB 100% name 2 root
(parted) quit
Create a physical volume on the root partition
pvcreate /dev/sd*
Create a volume group
NOTE: I usually name the volume group lvm. If you use something else you'll need to replace it in the next three steps.
vgcreate lvm /dev/sd*
Create logical volumes for swap and root
NOTE: I typically only use two volumes (swap and root) rather than 3 (swap, root, and home) so I can encrypt the entire root volume with my home directory in it. If you prefer three volumes then you'll need to adjust all the disc operations that follow. And you'll also likely encrypt your home folder rather than root.
ALSO: The amount of swap space is a function of how much ram you have. The minimum, assuming you have at least 8GB of RAM, should be 4GB, up to 1.5 times RAM (ie, 8GB RAM = 12GB swap) if you typically run multiple RAM intensive processes simultaneously. The average user won't need much swap.
The sizes below can be specified in megabytes (100M) or gigs (10G)
lvcreate -n swap -L 500M lvm
lvcreate -n root -l 100%FREE lvm
Encrypt the root partition
cryptsetup luksFormat -v -s 512 -h sha512 /dev/mapper/lvm-root
Decrypt the newly encrypted partition
cryptsetup open /dev/mapper/lvm-root root
Create filesystems on the two partitions
mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/root
Mount the volumes
mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
Update mirrorlist
By default Arch has a selection of servers from various countries listed in the local mirrorlist. While you might get adequate results with the defaults, to ensure the best possible download speeds it's recommended that you update the mirrorlist with servers from your country. To do that you use an application called reflector.
Install reflector:
Note that reflector has two dependencies (rsync and curl) which should be installed by default in Arch, but to be safe we specify them:
sudo pacman -S reflector rsync curl
Backup your local mirrorlist
sudo cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.bak
Create the new mirrolist
Note: If you are in a different country change "United States" to your country.
sudo reflector --verbose --country 'United States' -l 5 --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
Install Arch Linux
Yay!
pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel
Configure fstab
We now need to update the filesystem table on the new installation. Fstab contains the association between filesystems and mountpoints. You won't be able to boot without it. To update it run:
genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
You can verify fstab with:
cat /mnt/etc/fstab
Change to your root directory
Since we're still booted on the USB drive, in order to configure our new system we need to change root:
arch-chroot /mnt
Install and configure bootloader
While there are various bootloaders that may be used, since the Linux kernel has a built-in EFI image, all we need is a way to execute it. For that we will install systemd-boot, a minimalist boot manager:
bootctl --path=/boot install
Update the loader.conf file
Using nano we can edit the config file:
nano /boot/loader/loader.conf
Make sure that only the following lines are in the file:
default arch
timeout 3
editor 0
Notes: The timeout setting is the number of seconds the menu is displayed. The editor setting determines whether the kernel parameters editor is accessible. For security reasons we disable this.
Get the UUID for root
In the next step we will update the boot loader config file. But first, we need to determine the UUID of our root partition. In order to get the UUID you first need to know what device node root is on. Look it up using:
fdisk -l
The device node will be something like
/dev/sda2
You can now get the UUID that corrisponds to the root node you just looked up using:
ls -l /dev/disk/by-partuuid/
Or alternately you can look it with:
blkid -s PARTUUID -o value /dev/sda2
Update the arch.conf file
Armed with the UUID we just gathered in the previous step we can now insert it into the arch config file. Open the file using:
nano /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
And add the following info. Make sure to replace YOUR-UUID with the ID gathered previously, and if your root drive is formatted with something other than ext4 update that info as well.
title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options root=PARTUUID=YOUR-UUID rootfstype=ext4 add_efi_memmap
### Update the bootloader
bootctl update
Add NVMe to mkinitcpio
This step is only necessary if your computer is running PCIe storage rather than SATA. NVMe is a specification for accessing SSDs attached through the PCI Express bus. The Linux kernel includes an NVMe driver, so we just need to tell the kernel to load it. This is done by updating the MODULES variable in mkinitcpio (which is responsible for creating the initial ramdisk).
nano /etc/nkintcpio.conf
Add nvme to the MODULES variable:
MODULES="nvme"
Now update the initramfs image with our module change:
mkinitcpio -p linux
Set language
Open the locale.gen file and uncomment your preferred language (I'm using en_US.UTF-8):
nano /etc/local.gen
Now save the file and generate the locale:
locale-gen
Add your language choice to the locale.conf file:
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
Lastly, export the language as an environmental shell variable:
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8