How to Install Arch Linux From Scratch

In this guide, I will be showing you how to install Arch Linux from scratch. You can do this on a physical machine, but I will be doing it on a virtual machine.

What is Arch Linux?

Arch Linux is a minimal Linux distro that is meant for power users and advanced programmers. It does not come with a built-in installer, so we will have to install it manually.

Downloading the ISO

First, head to the Arch Linux downloads page, scroll down until you find the download mirrors, and then choose a link to download, preferably from your country so you get the fastest download speed.

VM Configuration

If you are installing Arch Linux on physical hardware and you are not using a VM to install Arch, skip this section.

If you are on VirtualBox, there should be an Arch Linux preset. If you are on VMware, select Other Linux 5.x Kernel (64-bit).

Giving your VM 8 GB of RAM is a lot more than needed, but if you are going to be using Arch for power-intensive tasks and don’t mind the VM taking up all your host’s RAM, go for whatever fits for you as long as it meets the system requirements of 512 MB minimum, but 2 GB recommended for streamlined daily use.

Now, give your VM any amount of storage you feel fitting, but make sure it meets the system requirements of 1 GB minimum, but 20 GB recommended.

If you want things to go a little faster on your Arch Linux VM, giving it two processors is recommended. One processor should be enough, though.

If you plan on installing a desktop environment, enable 3D acceleration and give a reasonable amount of VRAM to the guest OS.

And lastly, make sure the CD drive is set to read as the ISO you just downloaded.

Making a Bootable USB

If you are using a VM, skip this section.

Use a tool like Rufus to flash the Arch Linux ISO to a flash drive. Then plug it into the system you want to install Arch Linux to. This guide does not cover dual-booting and assumes you do not have an existing OS installed on your system.

Boot Priority Configuration

Make sure the hard disk is the first on the boot priority list. This is not required; it just makes the final step of the installation a lot quicker.

You can do this in the VM’s settings, the UEFI firmware settings, or the BIOS interface.

Starting the System

If you are on a VM, start it up. If you are on hardware, plug in the thumb drive that you flashed the ISO to and start the machine.

You should see an Arch Linux splash screen. Whichever entry comes first in the list is likely the one that boots to Arch (the name of the entry changes, but typically goes along the lines of “Boot Arch Linux (x86_64)”). Select Boot Arch Linux, or the entry that does so, and click Enter.

After running some tests, you should be dropped into a root Linux shell. Do not remove your thumb drive or installation media, as we have not installed Arch yet and need to do so using the thumb drive.

Accessing the Internet

Let’s check if we have connection to the internet by running the command below (“google.com” can be replaced with a website of your choice):

ping google.com

You should see packets return. If you do, this means you have online access, which is a necessity for this installation. You can hit Control + C to stop pinging the website.

If you are on a Virtual Machine with no internet, try making sure that you have host internet access, and then try enabling the network adapter in the VMware or VirtualBox settings.

If you are on a physical machine without internet, try using an Ethernet cable, but below you will know how to use iwctl to connect to a Wi-Fi network.

Using iwctl to Connect to a Wi-Fi Network

This part of the guide should only be followed if you do not have Internet access and want to use a wireless internet connection instead of a wired one.

Run the command below to open the iNet Wireless Daemon CTL.

iwctl

[iwd]# 

Now, you can list the wireless adapters using the command below.

device list

You should see a device called wlan0. It is best to go forward using that one, but you can select another wireless adapter if you know what you are doing. If you do not have that device, then you do not have a wireless adapter plugged into the computer, the device is connected but under a different name (which is unlikely), or the computer does not recognize it.

Use the command below to list all the wireless networks found using that device. You can replace wlan0 with the adapter you chose earlier.

station wlan0 get-networks

You should see a list of networks. Take note of the network’s SSID you want to connect to. Then, you can run the command below to connect to the wireless network, replacing “WirelessNet” with the SSID of your wireless network and wlan0 with the wireless adapter you want to connect to the network using.

station wlan0 connect WirelessNet

After typing in the Wi-Fi password (if needed), you may now connect to the network. You can test your connection by using ping google.com and waiting for packets to return. If none return, then you might have done something incorrectly when setting up the network.

Setting NTP Time

Now that we have our network up and running, we can enable network time using the command below:

timedatectl set-ntp true

Partitioning

Now comes the tricky part. We have to partition our drives manually, so make sure to follow my steps carefully.

Run the below command to get a summary of all the partitions on your drive.

lsblk

Make sure you choose the right disk to partition, as choosing the wrong one will destroy all of your data. Run the below command to set up partitioning, replacing /dev/sda with the name of the disk you want to format and install Arch Linux on.

As for the label type, it depends what your needs are. If you are installing to a new physical system with a disk size larger than 2TB, select gpt and hit Enter. If you either don’t have a physical system to install Arch to or are installing Arch to a disk smaller than 2TB, use dos. Now, at the menu with drives listed, select the free space and click New. When asked for your partition size, enter the amount needed for your bootloader. If you will be using the GRUB bootloader, enter 128M and hit Enter. If not, specify the amount needed for your bootloader.

Now, select the newly created partition and hit B to make the selected drive bootable.

Select the free space, and click New. The size should automatically default to the remaining storage on your drive. Make the partition fill up the rest of the drive, and click Enter to create the partition. You should not make this partition bootable.

Many people prefer creating home and swap partitions but these are mostly considered redundant nowdays.

Select Write and click Enter, then select Quit and click Enter.

There is only one problem left to solve now – the drives are not in the format of ext4. To solve this, run the commands below, replacing /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 with the names your newly created boot and OS partitions.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

Mounting our Partitions

Now that we are done with arguably the hardest part of Arch installation, we need to mount our drives, which is where the preparation ends and the actual installation starts.

To begin, lets mount our root partition (the partition that is not bootable, /dev/sda2 in my case) to a mount point (this can be anything you want, but traditionally this has always been /mnt. I will be using /mnt, as I do not see any reason to stray from tradition in my case). We can do this using the command below.

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

In our mount point, let’s create a folder called boot to mount our other drive to.

mkdir /mnt/boot

Now, let’s mount our boot partition (the one that we flagged bootable earlier, /dev/sda1 in my case) to the folder we just created.

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

To see if we did everything correctly, we can run the command below.

lsblk

In the output, you should be able to see partitions under the drive /dev/sda and their respective mount points.

Installing Arch Using pacstrap

Now, we can begin installing system files to Arch.

We can use pacstrap to install Arch Linux and some other packages we want pacstrap to bundle in with our Arch installation. Replace /mnt with the mount point you mounted your root drive to, and vim with some other text editor that you prefer and some other pre-installed packages you want on Arch.

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

Below ae explanations of some of the packages:

• Base: This package contains basic tools that you would want no matter which Linux distribution you are installing.
• Base-Devel: This contains developer tools such as compilers, which are needed for some Linux components.
• Linux: This is the core Linux kernel that runs everything behind the scenes.
• Linux-Firmware: This contains firmware that makes Arch compatible with common hardware
• Vim: This can be replaced with any text editor. There is some text editing we are going to have to do, so we need a text editor.

Once pacstrap exits, we can generate an fstab file that lists all the drives Linux could try booting from.

Generating our FSTab File

This is extremely easy to do. Run the command below, replacing /mnt with the mount point you specified earlier.

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

What the command should do is write a FSTab file to the drives. The -U flag makes the file reference drives by UUID instead of drive name. This is good because drive names may change in the future, which could mess up your boot configuration if you don’t reference drives by UUID, as UUID never changes.

Jumping to our Arch Installation

It is finally time to change from our installation medium to our disk. Do not remove your installation medium until the end of this guide. You might need it if something breaks.

arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

After this command, do not reboot yet. We still have to install our boot manager.

Installing Basic Components

Now that we are in Arch, we have access to the Pacman package manager. We can use it to install basic components like a network manager for accessing the internet, and a boot manager so we can boot into the system. I will be installing GRUB as a boot manager, but you can install something else.

Use the command below to install these components.

pacman -S networkmanager grub

Configuring the Network Manager to Run on Startup

If we want internet at boot, we are going to have to enable NetworkManager’s system service. we can do this using the command below.

systemctl enable NetworkManager

Configuring the GRUB Boot Manager

Now, we have to configure what our system boots using. When we ran the Pacman command, we downloaded GRUB, but we did not install or configure it. Let’s install GRUB using the command below, replacing /dev/sda with whatever drive you are using to install Arch. We are not going to be using /dev/sda1 or /dev/sda2 because it is critical that you install it to the drive, not the drive partition.

grub-install /dev/sda

Now, we can make a GRUB configuration file using the command below.

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

Take a look at the output and make sure that it says both an initrd image and a Linux image were found. If it does not find these images, the most likely cause is incorrectly installing the Linux kernel using pacstrap.

Setting a Password

Now, run the command below to create a password for your root user.

passwd

Configuring Locales and Timezones

Use the command below to enter the locale configuration file, replacing vim with whatever text editor you installed earlier.

vim /etc/locale.gen

Now, use the arrow keys or the scroll wheel to scroll down to the locale you want to use. I will be using United States English, so I will scroll down to en_US and uncomment (remove the # before) both the UTF and ISO formats. If you are using Vim, you might have to hit the I key on your keyboard before you can actually type anything.

Write the file and exit your text editor. To write and exit Vim, we can hit the Escape key on our keyboard and type :wq.

Now that we have our locales configured, we have to apply the changes by generating the locales. We can do this using the command below.

locale-gen

Now, we also have to create a file called locale.conf to define our language in. Use the command below, once again replacing vim with your desired text editor.

vim /etc/locale.conf

In the file, type LANG=en-US.UTF-8, once again replacing en-US with whatever locale you are using. Exit Vim.

Now that we have the timezones prepared, we have to link them to make our system clock show the right timezone. Type ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo and click Tab. This will list all the broadest timezones. Keep making the directories more specific, hitting Tab to see the available options every time, and after you are done typing a city, hit Space and type /etc/localtime.

Setting Our Hostname

Now, we can set our hostname. This is the name that the Arch machine will use to communicate with other devices over your network. By default, your hostname is archiso. If you are happy with that and don’t want to change it, you can skip this section.

Use your prefered text editor to create /etc/hostname. Do not include a file extension. Type whatever you want your system hostname to be, and exit.

Unmounting Our Disk

Now, we can exit our chroot jail by using the command below.

exit

Now would be a good time to check and make sure your hard drive is first boot priority. Make sure that when you return, you are in your installation medium and not in the actual Arch installation.

Unmount our Arch installation with the command below, replacing /mnt with the mount point you specified earlier.

umount -R /mnt

Now, we can boot into our new installation of Arch Linux using the command below. Once you have booted in, you may remove the installation medium.

reboot