The briefest Arch Linux installation guide

Are you wanting an incredibly quick (to the point of being useless, or painfully truncated) guide for how to install Arch Linux on your computer?

Do you want to throw caution to the wind, booting from UEFI using systemd-boot instead of the more usual GRUB? Are you interested in Wayland/Sway instead of a more traditional Xorg/i3? Do you want to use a swap file instead of a partition? Do you desire UK specific keyboard layouts and timezone, even if you don’t want them?

Well why didn’t you say? Step aboard traveller..! Welcome to my personal guide (primarily for reference usage) on installing the venerable Arch Linux.

• Boot your installation medium

• Check for network connectivity ping archlinux.org.

• Update your package manager repository pacman -Syy.

• Set the keymap to UK loadkeys uk.

• Make sure the time and date are vaguely correct timedatectl set-ntp true.

• Identify the drives you’re working with (in my case, sda) using lsblk.

• Now make an EFI boot partition, and root partition gdisk /dev/sda > o y n 1 {enter} 512M EF00 n 2 {enter} {enter} {enter} w y.

• Check everything’s okay with the above via gdisk -l /dev/sda.

• Format those new partitions mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1 && mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2.

• Now mount those partitions mount /dev/sda2 /mnt && mkdir /mnt/boot && mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot.

• Install the base operating system pacstrap /mnt/ base base-devel dhcpcd linux linux-firmware neovim openssh.

• Create your fstab file using genfstab -U /mnt > /mnt/etc/fstab.

• Chroot into it arch-chroot /mnt/.

• Enable DHCP systemctl enable dhcpcd.

• Now install and configure your (UEFI) bootloader bootctl install.

• Configure said bootloader default printf "default arch\ntimeout 2">/boot/loader/loader.conf.

• Now add your Arch entry printf "title ArchLinux\nlinux /vmlinuz-linux\ninitrd /initramfs-linux.img\noptions root=/dev/sda2 rw">/boot/loader/entries/arch.conf.

• Set your hostname printf "minerva">/etc/hostname.

• Set your console keymap printf "KEYMAP=uk">/etc/vconsole.conf.

• Set the locale language printf "LANG=en_GB.UTF-8">/etc/locale.conf.

• Another locale step, I guess nvim /etc/locale.gen you want to uncomment en_GB.UTF-8.

• Set up a symlink for the timezone ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime.

• Finally we can generate the locale locale-gen.

• Add your non-root user useradd -m -G wheel,users -s /bin/bash peter.

• Set your new accounts’ password passwd peter.

• Set up sudo EDITOR=nvim visudo, you’ll need to uncomment the %wheel group line.

• Set your root password passwd.

• Exit the chroot environment exit.

• Lastly, reboot from to your new OS reboot.

Now we’re logged in, we can set up the swap file as an alternative to a swap partition (mentioned earlier).

Lastly, I’d like to autologin my user, without using a display manager:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d
printf "[Service]\nExecStart=\nExecStart=-/usr/bin/agetty --autologin username --noclear %%I $TERM" | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf

Replacing username with whatever the use you want to login as.

• Edit 2019-10-21: Add update package manager repo step, may resolve some problems

• Edit 2019-10-24: Add base package, swap file link and autologin instructions

• Edit 2020-01-20: Using ext4 over btrfs, the less said about it the better.

• Edit 2020-01-21: Alternate instructions for using BIOS/Grub are below:

fdisk /dev/sda > a {enter} w {enter}
sudo pacman -S grub
grub-install /dev/sda
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

• Edit 2020-06-03: Added fstab instruction, seemingly missed.

• Edit 2020-06-17: Replaced nano references with neovim.

• Edit 2020-06-28: Merge pacstrap and pacman commands.

• Edit 2024-07-10: Add openssh to initial pacstrap.