Arch Linux installation guide

So you want to install Arch Linux but got lost in the Wiki. This is a quick guide for installing a basic system. It is far from being feature-complete, as it makes some basic assumptions.

Assumptions

1. You want to use the entire disk for Arch Linux without dual-booting another operating system.
2. You use either a physical or a virtual x86 64 bit machine which is capable booting in either BIOS or EFI mode.
3. You use an Intel CPU.
4. Your desired root filesystem is BTRFS.

The steps

1. Boot into Arch Linux live installation media. Make sure that you know which disk is used for your installation. We'll assume it's /dev/sda.
2. If you're using Wifi, launch wifi-menu. You're network should be automatically configured if you're using wired network.
3. Optional - You can launch an SSH server and continue your installation remotely from another computer. In order to do that:
   1. Set a root password using passwd
   2. Start the SSH server using systemctl start sshd
   3. Figure out your IP using ip a
   4. SSH to your installation disk from another computer and continue the installation as usual.
4. Partition your disk:
   1. BIOS - Just mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda the entire disk and then mount /dev/sda /mnt
   2. EFI - Use cfdisk for partitioning:
      1. Choose GPT partitioning
      2. Create a 512MiB partition. Set its type to EFI System
      3. Create a partition for the rest of the drive.
      4. mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sda1
      5. mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda2
      6. mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
      7. mkdir /mnt/boot
      8. mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
5. pacstrap /mnt base intel-ucode sudo btrfs-progs
6. genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
7. arch-chroot /mnt
8. ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime
9. Uncomment en_US.UTF-8and other needed localizations in /etc/locale.gen
10. locale-gen
11. Edit /etc/locale.conf and write LANG=en_US.UTF-8
12. Networking
    1. Laptop - Use NetworkManager
       1. pacman -S networkmanager
       2. systemctl enable NetworkManager
       3. Once you have a GUI environment set up - configure the network using the GUI
    2. PC/VM - Use systemd-networkd
       1. systemctl enable systemd-{network,resolve}d
       2. Use ip link to determine the name of your network interface
       3. Edit /etc/systemd/network/dhcp.network:

       [Match]
       Name=en*
       
       [Network]
       DHCP=ipv4
       Domains=extra.domains.that.you.need.example.com
       
       [DHCP]
       UseDomains=yes
       

       1. rm /etc/resolv.conf ; ln -s /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
13. echo hostname > /etc/hostname
14. passwd - Set the root password
15. useradd -m your_username
16. usermod -G wheel -a your_username
17. visudo - Comment out the line containing the wheel group
18. Install the bootloader
    1. BIOS - GRUB
       1. pacman -S grub
       2. grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda
       3. grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
    2. EFI - systemd-boot
       1. bootctl --path=/boot install
       2. Edit /etc/pacman.d/hooks/systemd-boot.hook:

          [Trigger]
          Type = Package
          Operation = Upgrade
          Target = systemd
          
          [Action]
          Description = Updating systemd-boot...
          When = PostTransaction
          Exec = /usr/bin/bootctl update
          

       3. Edit /boot/loader/loader.conf:

          default  arch
          timeout  4
          

       4. Figure out your root UUID By running blkid
       5. Create /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

          title          Arch Linux
          linux          /vmlinuz-linux
          initrd         /intel-ucode.img
          initrd         /initramfs-linux.img
          options        root=PARTUUID=THE-UUID-YOU-FOUND-OUT rw
          

19. Leave chroot - exit
20. If this is a server installation you might want to enable SSH before rebooting. See the instructions at the bottom.
21. Reboot - systemctl reboot

Extras

GNOME

pacman -S gnome && systemctl enable --now gdm

Setting up an SSH server

pacman -S openssh && systemctl enable --now sshd.socket

Yay

Building packages from AUR isn't possible to do as root. In order to install Yay you have to configure sudo and run these commands as a regular user.

1. sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git
2. cd /tmp
3. git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay-bin.git && cd yay-bin && makepkg -i && cd - && rm -rf yay-bin