Archlinux Installation Guide

The arch install process is very manual, so you get the joy of knowing exactly what’s going on. There are these general steps:

• pre-installation - Setting up install media
• disk formatting - Getting the disk set up
• pacstrap - Installing needed packages on the system first from the installation environment
• chroot - Going into the system from the installation environment and doing some more setup
• first boot - Booting for first time, it wil be pretty barebones at this stage
• more setup - More. Setup.

0. Pre-installation

• Make arch install USB (e.g. can use Rufus on windows or UUSB etc.)
• Recommend connecting LAN cable
• Normally I would do BIOS mode if possible but sometimes youre locked into UEFI :(

1. Disk Partitioning

choose the correct disk

lsblk
fdisk -l
fdisk /dev/sdX

fdisk steps

BIOS/MBR

• need to use gpt as well - g
• delete all partitions (d, d, d)
• (if doing UEFI need to make ESP - 300mb or something i.e +300M, t ef)
• add new partition (for swap, size = to your RAM size) (n, p, 1 ( /enter enter enter, first sector default, last sector +32G or however many G of ram you have, yes remove signature)
• t to change type of last one to linux swap - 82
• create new partition with rest of space for your system - n, enter enter enter use all space
• t and then 83 (probably the default anyway)
• w - write (no going back)

UEFI/GPT

• esp - 1
• linux swap - 19
• linux filesystem - default
• etc

Set up newly created partitions

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sdX1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX2
mkswap /dev/sdX1
swapon /dev/sdX1
mount /dev/sdX2 /mnt

2. Base Installation

Install the base system. Can be worth grabbing other packages you’ll need here too, espeically if needed during the coming steps, e.g. a text editor. If you were trying to install on wifi you would need some wifi utilities here.

pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware base-devel nvim git

Initial Config

# pretty sure this is how it knows what disks to automatically mount
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
# chroot! (change root)
arch-chroot /mnt

Congratulations, you are now inside the system. Be sure to set up these other things:

# Timezone - tab to autocomplete
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Sydney /etc/localtime
# idk what this does or if its important
hwclock --systohc
# locales or something. does it just say en-us in /etc/locale. Not sure its right, might need more steps. but i dont think its used much anyway.
locale-gen
# Root passwd
passwd
# Add your user
useradd username
passwd username

Sudoers config also needed.

export EDITOR=nvim && visudo

go down to the line root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL put your user, recommend NOPASSWD option like it says there wq

Bootloader Setup

This assumes BIOS mode was used. If you used EFI, all I can say is, have fun. LMAO

pacman -S grub
grub-install /dev/sdX
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

UEFI mode:

mkdir -p /efi
mount /dev/sdb1 /efi
bootctl install

WARNING: May need to disable secure boot in bios if it won’t boot

uefi sucks ok always choose /boot maybe make it bigger

Reboot the system.

exit
reboot

Post-installation

Recommended Softwares:

• openssh
• networkmanager
• less

  X Stuffs (eg to build DWM)

• xorg-xinit
• xorg-server
• libxinerama
• fontconfig
• libxft

  Nvidia

• nvidia nvidia-utils nvidia-settings

nb suckless way is it copies itself to /usr/local/bin/whatever

Second Reboot - Internet & repo folder

NetworkManager Setup

sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager
sudo systemctl start NetworkManager
nmcli device wifi list
nmcli con show
nmcli device wifi connect "SSID" password "yourpassword"

Me also

• dwm from my repo
• dmenu from suckless git
• alacritty (wanna try wezterm tho)

Ok well i have internet now

Can u use tmux as your window manager? lol

(arch linux speedrun any%)

Gpt script

Installing X

sudo pacman -S xorg-xinit xorg-server

Sound

User must be added to the sound group. Probably was enough to get stuff working with ALSA but also theresmore stuff you can do for pipewire

AUR Manager

(or yay, 1 less letter lmao) This is needed. Paru in rust

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/paru.git
cd paru
makepkg -si

Appendix 1: Repository Manager

• Repman add kennoath gnomes
  • Clones to appropriate folder and locates to there
• Repman status
  • Clean
  • Behind (yellow)
  • Ahead (red)
• Repman sync name commitmsg
  • cd, git add *, git commit -m "commitmsg", git push

Support for adding shit to your path etc.

Appendix 2: Question / Agent

Just like, ? how do I set up networkmanager? If thats possible

• .agent file stores per directory context
• Agent does a pass to determine what the strategy is to get all the info it needs, then gathers the info, then answers info (or thinks)

?? finish the function at relic.rs:256 Makes a commit or a patch that u review and approve etc Does vim have a patch viewer? Surely. Or maybe it just makes a commit that u can remove. Or commit at current point. Commit msg of prompt