Arch Install Guide


Author	Keith Patton
Date	2019-05-24
Revision	1.0

Configuration

These instructions will walk you through the process of installing Arch Linux in the following format:

UEFI
x86_64
(Full partition details below)
Single LVM Physical Volume
Single LVM Volume Group
LVM Logical Volumes for : root, home
GRUB2 bootloader
SWAP file rather than partition
Dual boot Arch and Windows

Disk layout

             ╔═════════════════════╗╔════════════╗
             ║    /root (100GB)    ║║/home (30GB)║ [LVM Logical Volumes]
             ╚═════════════════════╝╚════════════╝

             |---------------vg-00---------------| [LVM Volume Group]

┌───────────┐┌───────────────────────────────────┐┌──────────────────────┐
│EFI (500MB)││          [LVM] PV (130GB)         ││     empty (100GB)    │
└───────────┘└───────────────────────────────────┘└──────────────────────┘

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                           PHYSICAL DISK (256GB)                        │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Reasoning

The above disk layout provides a dual-boot environment with Arch Linux being the mainstay OS and Windows being a less important / destructable OS.

Using LVM allows for realtime snapshot and resizing of the Arch Linux install that may be useful for backups / upgrades.

The remaining free disk space can be used to install Windows once Linux is installed.

Instructions

Boot up the install media using UEFI.
Set the keyboard layout for the installation steps

loadkeys uk

Verify we are booting using UEFI

ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

Confirm the efivars directory exists - if not, you have not booted the machine using UEFI

Connect to internet for install

Check your network interface is detected and shows as UP

ip link

Confirm you have an IP on your interface

ip a

Ping a public IP to confirm network activity

ping 1.1.1.1

Ping a public FQDN to confirm DNS routing

ping www.google.co.uk

Update system clock

timedatectl set-ntp true

Partition the disks

Use lsblk to identify your disks

lsblk

An example layout: The following shows a system with 1x 1TB SATA disk, and 1x 240GB SSD (NVMe) - each with a single partition.

    NAME                  MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
    sda                     8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk
    └─sda1                  8:1    0 931.5G  0 part
    nvme0n1               259:0    0 232.9G  0 disk
    └─nvme0n1p1           259:1    0    10G  0 part

The following shows 2x unpartitioned disks.

    NAME                  MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
    sda                     8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk
    nvme0n1               259:0    0 232.9G  0 disk

In the above examples, the disk we will choose to work with would be nvme0n1 as our main OS disk. Please note : your disk may be different. If you only have sda (SSD) disks and not NVMe (nvme01) then use /dev/sda as your disk to partition.

a. Partition the main OS disk

Connect to the main disk Create a new partition table Create a new physical partition for EFI (500MB) Mark the partition type as EFI Label the partition EFI Create a new physical partition for LVM physical volume (100GB) Mark the partition type as LVM Label the partition Linux

```bash
# NOTE : where it asks for confirmation, choose 'y'

gdisk /dev/nvme0n1
# (or /dev/sda if you only have SSD disks)

o

n
# (confirm)
# (accept default partition start point)
+500M
ef00
c
EFI

n
# (confirm)
# (accept default partition start point)
+130G
8e00
c
# (choose your partition - likely 2)
Linux

w
```

Confirm the partitions have been written to disk. If successful, you should now have a partition table similar to the example below.

lsblk

      NAME                  MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
      sda                     8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk
      nvme0n1               259:0    0 232.9G  0 disk
      ├─nvme0n1p1           259:1    0   512M  0 part
      └─nvme0n1p2           259:2    0   130G  0 part

b. Create LVM Volumes

First, load the device mapper.

modprobe dm_mod

Confirm the system is seeing the newly partitioned disk as containing an LVM capable partition on the NVMe drive.

lvmdiskscan

   /dev/nvme0n1   [    <232.89 GiB]
   /dev/nvme0n1p1 [     512.00 MiB]
   /dev/nvme0n1p2 [     130.00 GiB]
   0 disks
   2 partitions
   0 LVM physical volume whole disks
   0 LVM physical volume

Create the LVM physical volume on the second partition of the main disk. Do not create an LVM Physical Volume on the first partition as this will be used by your bootloader which may not recognise LVM partitions (GRUB does, but that is outside the scope of this quick guide).

pvcreate /dev/nvme0n1p2

Confirm the LVM volume got created

pvdisplay

   --- Physical volume ---
   PV Name               /dev/nvme0n1p2
   VG Name               
   PV Size               130.00 GiB / not usable 4.00 MiB
   Allocatable           yes
   PE Size               4.00 MiB
   Total PE              33279
   Free PE               33279
   Allocated PE          0
   PV UUID               <this-will-be-unique>

Create the LVM volume group that will hold all of the LVM logical volumes. LVM can manage multiple groups (from m=numerous physical volumes), each containing multiple logical volumes. For simplicity we will call this first, main, volume group vg-00 on the LVM physcial volume.

vgcreate vg-00 /dev/nvme0n1p2

Confirm the LVM volume group got created

vgdisplay

   --- Volume group ---
   VG Name               vg-00
   System ID             
   Format                lvm2
   Metadata Areas        1
   Metadata Sequence No  3
   VG Access             read/write
   VG Status             resizable
   MAX LV                0
   Cur LV                0
   Open LV               0
   Max PV                0
   Cur PV                1
   Act PV                1
   VG Size               <130.00 GiB
   PE Size               4.00 MiB
   Total PE              33279
   Alloc PE / Size       0 / <130.00 GiB
   Free  PE / Size       33279 / 0   
   VG UUID               <this-will-be-unique>

Create the LVM logical volumes that will hold your filesystems. As outlined previously we will be creating /root (100GB) and /home (30GB).

lvcreate -L 100G vg-00 -n arch-lv-root
lvcreate -L 100%FREE vg-00 -n arch-lv-home

Confirm the LVM logical volumes got created.

lvdisplay

   --- Logical volume ---
   LV Path                /dev/vg-00/arch-lv-home
   LV Name                arch-lv-home
   VG Name                vg-00
   LV UUID                <unique>
   LV Write Access        read/write
   LV Creation host, time archiso, <datetime>
   LV Status              available
   # open                 1
   LV Size                30.00 GiB
   Current LE             7680
   Segments               1
   Allocation             inherit
   Read ahead sectors     auto
   - currently set to     256
   Block device           254:0

   --- Logical volume ---
   LV Path                /dev/vg-00/arch-lv-root
   LV Name                arch-lv-root
   VG Name                vg-00
   LV UUID                <unique>
   LV Write Access        read/write
   LV Creation host, time archiso, <dateime>
   LV Status              available
   # open                 1
   LV Size                <100.00 GiB
   Current LE             25599
   Segments               1
   Allocation             inherit
   Read ahead sectors     auto
   - currently set to     256
   Block device           254:1

Online the devices.

vgscan
vgchange -ay

You should now have LVM configured in the following way: Physical volume /dev/nvme0n1p2 (130GB) Volume Group vg-00 + Logical Volume /dev/vg-00/arch-lv-root (100GB) + Logical Volume /dev/vg-00/arch-lv-home (30GB)

Configure the init creator /etc/mkinitcpio.conf to recognise LVM partitions on boot.

vim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Add systemd and sd-lvm2 hooks to the config as follows :

   HOOKS=(base systemd autodetect modconf block sd-lvm2 filesystems keyboard fsck)

Format the partitions

Format the EFI partition using FAT32.

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1

Format / and /home to ext4 using the new LVM logical volume mappings.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg-00/arch-lv-root
mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg-00/arch-lv-home

Mount the filesystems

Importantly, mount the root / filesystem first, then mount every other filesystem to the correct mountpoint on top of /.

Mount Arch root partition to / Create the boot directory Mount EFI partition to /efi Create the home directory Mount the Arch home partition to /home

mount /dev/vg-00/arch-lv-root /mnt

mkdir /mnt/efi
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/efi

mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/vg-00/arch-lv-home /mnt/home

Bug fix There is a current (2019-05-28) bug in lvm2 / systemd which does not like chroot into LVM volumes. Correct the issue by mount the LVM runtime details into a mountpoint in chroot

mkdir /mnt/hostlvm
mount --bind /run/lvm /mnt/hostlvm

Install the base packages

Firstly, populate the pacman GPG keyring.

pacman-key --populate archlinux
pacman-key --refresh-keys
pacman -Syy

Now install the base Arch Linux packages along with any additional packages. Here I have added packages for an additional Linux LTS kernel, git and wget for installing yay (AUR), and some packages for connecting to wifi from TTY.

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel git wget sudo vim lvm2 linux-lts iw wpa_supplicant dialog

Create the permanent Filesystem Table config

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

Change the root environment to the new install

arch-chroot /mnt
ln -s /hostlvm /run/lvm
modprobe dm_mod
vgscan
vgchange -ay

Set the timezone for you new install

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Dublin /etc/localtime

Create the time offset

hwclock --systohc

Set the localization of the new install

Tell the system which locales you wish to use in the system. Typically English (UK) and English (USA).

Uncomment en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8, en_GB ISO-8859-1 and en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8, en_US ISO-8859-1 as below:

vim /etc/locale.gen

    ...
    ...
    en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8
    en_GB ISO-8859-1
    ...
    ...
    en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
    en_US ISO-8859-1
    ...
    ...

Generate the locales

locale-gen

Create the system-wide LANG variable. Add LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 to /etc/locale.conf (For International English)

vim /etc/locale.conf

    LANG=en_GB.UTF-8

Set the terminal keyboard layout.

vim /etc/vconsole.conf

    KEYMAP=uk

Configure system hosts

Create your system's hostname.

vim /etc/hostname

    <set-your-hostname-to-something>

Add your hostname to the system hosts file

vim /etc/hosts

     127.0.0.1		localhost
     ::1			  localhost
     127.0.1.1		<your-system-hostname>.localdomain	<your-system-hostname>

Generate an initial boot disk for the bootloader

mkinitcpio -p linux

Install the CPU microcode

Install one of the following packages:

If using Intel : intel-ucode
If using AMD : amd-ucode

Firstly create the pacman-keyring

pacman-key --populate archlinux
pacman-key --refresh-keys
pacman -Syy

Install the microcode package (Intel)

pacman -S intel-ucode

Install the microcode package (AMD)

pacman -S amd-ucode

Install the bootloader

Install GRUB2

pacman -S grub efibootmgr os-prober
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Allow the wheel group to use sudo

chmod o+w /etc/sudoers
vim /etc/sudoers

    ## Uncomment to allow members of group wheel to execute any command
    %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

chmod o-w /etc/sudoers

Create a new user for yourself

useradd -c "<some-comment-here-about-you>" -mUG wheel <your-username-here>

Set a password for the new user

passwd <your-new-user>

Change the root password for security

passwd

Leave CHROOT, umount the disks and reboot to your new install

exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot

Final Steps

At this point, if everything went well, your system should boot up to the newly installed Arch distro with only a terminal session. You should login as your new user and perform any additional installations / configurations.

For example to install the nVidia drivers and Gnome Desktop

sudo pacman -S nvidia gnome gnome-extra gnome-control-center gdm networkmanager

For a full list of final recommendations see : https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/General_recommendations