Install Arch Linux

It’s been a long time since I have been using Arch Linux and loving it since because of its flexibility. In the mean time, I have installed the same OS for many times because I tried new things and crashed a lot of installed things. Literally, thinking about the time to repair, I just re-installed the OS. It just feels quick and easy to clear out all your garbage. However, it’s a pain to setup all those applications and configuration. That’s why I am writing this where I can find the steps I have been following to install and setup my machine my way :).

Okay, let’s start with the installation. Previously, I tried to run a live Ubuntu OS and then install either by the bootstrap image or using the LiveCD Image. But, nowadays, it seems the installing from live arch USB seems to be the easiest and quickest as it skips a lot of steps.

Connect to the internet
- Use ethernet or run wifi-menu command to connect to a WiFi Connection.
- Check connection:
```
ping archlinux.org
```
Partition the disks
- The partitions can be listed from:
```
fdisk -l
```
- Usually, I prefer to prepare the partition before the installation. Still, you can find the steps here to perform the partition actions.
- Format the partition
```
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
```
Mount the file system
```
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
```

Installation

Select and rank the mirrors, ranking the mirrors would help to perform the installation quicker.

# Backup
cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup
# Uncomment every mirror
sed -i 's/^#Server/Server/' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup
# Rank mirrors
rankmirrors /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Install the base packages:
```
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel
```
base-devel is optional, can be installed later.

Configure the system
- Fstab
```
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
```
- Chroot
```
arch-chroot /mnt
```
- Time zone
```
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
```
- Locale Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and other needed localizations in /etc/locale.gen, and generate them with:
```
locale-gen
```
  Set the LANG variable in /etc/locale.conf accordingly:
```
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
```
  To set the keyboard layout, make the changes persistent in /etc/shell.conf:
```
KEYMAP=us
```
- Hostname Create the hostname file /etc/hostname:
```
myhostname
```
  Add matching entries to /etc/hosts:
```
127.0.0.1    localhost
::1          localhost
127.0.1.1    myhostname.localdomain  myhostname
```
- Network configuration
```
pacman -S networkmanager dhclient
```
  For wifi:
```
pacman -S iw wpa_supplicant dialog
```
- Initramfs
```
mkinitcpio -p linux
```
- Root password
```
passwd
```
- Boot loader (GRUB - UEFI) Install the package grub and efibootmgr:
```
pacman -S grub efibootmgr
```
  Mount EFI partition(/dev/sda3):
```
mkir /boot/efi
mount /dev/sda3 /boot/efi
```
  Install GRUB UEFI to /boot/efi:
```
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub
```
  Generate the main configuration file:
```
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
```
  Note: For NVIDIA card holders, unless you install the nvidia drivers, add modprobe.blacklist=nouveau in /etc/default/grub and re-generate the main configuration file.
```
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet modprobe.blacklist=nouveau"
```
  Remove modprobe.blacklist=nouveau after installing nvidia drivers.
Reboot, enjoy.
For post-installation steps, refer to Arch Linux post installation.

References

Installation guide - Arch

References#

References