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A quick and dirty guide for installing and configuring Arch Linux

Before starting, you should thoroughly read the official installation guide, as it explains the basic aspects of the installation. For an in-depth guide into configuring and working with Arch after installation, you should also read the general recommendations.

Installation

The basic gist of it is:

  1. Set up the network connection (if necessary)
  2. Partition, format, and mount the disks (/mnt, /mnt/boot, etc.)
  3. Select the fastest/closest mirror in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Be sure to read the page on Bootloaders for considerations about using UEFI/BIOS with GPT/MBR disks. Some configurations will require very specific boot partitions. Next, install and configure the base system and populate the fstab file:

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

You can also install individual packages or package groups using pacstrap, although this is entirely optional. Switch over to the newly installed system by issuing arch-chroot /mnt, and complete basic configuration. Go ahead and configure the system locale and root password while in the chroot environment:

## keyboard
echo KEYMAP=us > /etc/vconsole.conf

## locale
sed -i 's/#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/g' /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf

## timezone
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Mexico_City /etc/localtime
# timedatectl set-ntp true # will this work in chroot?

## hostname
echo yourhostname > /etc/hostname

## Set the root password
passwd

I will assume you will use GRUB to boot the system:

## Install the GRUB bootloader
pacman -S grub os-prober
grub-install /dev/sda
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Finally, exit the chroot environment, unmount all partitions (umount -R /mnt), and reboot your machine into your freshly installed system.

Post-installation

Wireless setup

wifi-menu -o
netctl enable wlan0-sihnon
netctl start wlan0-sihnon
#ip link set wlan0 up
#systemctl enable dhcpcd@wlan0.service
#ip link set wlan0 down
#systemctl disable dhcpcd@wlan0.service

Add user, change password, add to sudo

useradd -m -g users -s /bin/bash -d /home/sma sma
sed -i 's/root ALL=(ALL) ALL/root ALL=(ALL) ALL\nsma ALL=(ALL) ALL/g' /etc/sudoers
passwd sma

Software

Update system and install software

pacman -Syu --noconfirm # updates system
pacman -S ack git htop mlocate tree vim wget --noconfirm # useful utils

pacman -S ttf-dejavu ttf-inconsolata --noconfirm
pacman -S adobe-source-code-pro-fonts adobe-source-sans-pro-fonts --noconfirm # fonts

pacman -S dialog wpa_supplicant --noconfirm # wireless utils
pacman -S alsa-utils --noconfirm # sound driver and tools

pacman -S rxvt-unicode --noconfirm ## terminals
pacman -S firefox --noconfirm
pacman -S feh lxappearance --noconfirm

pacman -S xorg-server xorg-server-utils xorg-xinit --noconfirm # x11 stuff
pacman -S dmenu dunst i3 --noconfirm
#pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies --noconfirm

pacman -S texlive-most gnuplot --noconfirm # academic tools

Some miscellaneous topics

Creating SD Cards on Mac OS X, with coreutils installed

diskutil list
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX
sudo dd bs=1M if=linux.img of=/dev/rdiskX
diskutil eject /dev/diskX

When installed as Virtualbox guest

ip link set enp0s3 up
systemctl enable dhcpcd@enp0s3.service
pacman -S dkms linux-headers virtualbox-guest-utils-nox
systemctl enable vboxservice
reboot

RasPi specific

# Graphics hardware settings
sed -i 's/#disable_overscan=1/disable_overscan=1/g' /boot/config.txt
sed -i 's/gpu_mem=64/gpu_mem=128/g' /boot/config.txt

# Partitioning and formatting a 32 GB card
printf "d\n2\nn\np\n2\n\n+26.5G\nn\np\n3\n\n\nt\n3\n82\nw\n" | fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
reboot
resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2
mkswap /dev/mmcblk0p3
swapon /dev/mmcblk0p3

# Video driver for X11
pacman -S xf86-video-fbturbo