This article describes my installation procedure for a very basic starting point with Arch Linux. My philosophy on the initial install is to only install what is absolutely needed, especially before the first boot. That’s when you find out if you screwed up, after all.

Part 2 will describe more setup, including installation of my preferred desktop environment, Budgie.

This installation procedure will result in an Arch Linux install with the following features:

  • Systemd Boot
  • BTRFS as the file system
    • Subvolumes: root, home, pkg, and swap
  • An encrypted drive
  • A swap file

Why Arch Linux?

After many (many) years on Ubuntu and other forms of Debian, I needed a change. I wanted to have more control over my install. There is so much bloat on most distributions, and you end up with largely what someone else decided you should have. I’m a long time Linux user, so I’m comfortable hacking around in configs and troubleshooting issues. That said, another result of using a pre-prepared distrubution is that you don’t necessarily understand what’s happening under the covers. I don’t need Linux From Scratch, but I don’t want Ubuntu any more. It’s a great distribution, but it’s time for me to move on. I chose Arch to take me further towards a better understanding of my system. Does this describe you? If so, follow along.

Practice makes perfect

Of course if you want choice, you have to make decisions. I suggest you take your time while you are preparing to install Arch, before you commit it to your drives. This is especially true if you are replacing your running drive like I did. I couldn’t afford lots of downtime while I figured things out. I made extensive use of Virtual Box VMs to learn the ropes of install and make choices of how I wanted to configure my system. I’ve create and destroyed at least 20 VMs while learning the best Arch install for me. I suggest you do the same. You might find that the components I’ve chosen for my install don’t match what you need or want. Better to find that out in a VM rather than your real drive.

Configuring Virtualbox

If you choose to use Virtualbox, here are a few things I would suggest you use to configure your VM.

  1. Memory Size - I’d recommend 2048 MB. You could probably get along with 1GB if you aren’t going on to install a GUI.

  2. Hard Disk - Make your hard drive at least 25 GB. I usually use 30. Be sure to use a dynamic size. No need to take up all the space at first.

  3. After the install, click the Settings button at the top.

  4. On the System tab, check the Enable EFI checkbox.

  5. On the Display tab, increase Video Memory to 128MB and check Enable 3D Acceleration

  6. On the Network tab, click Advanced and then Port Forwarding.

    1. Click the + symbol a the right of the window to add a port forwarding rule allowing SSH into the VM. You’ll be glad you did.

    2. Use these settings
      • Name: SSH
      • Host IP: 127.0.0.1
      • Host Port: 2222
      • Guest IP 10.0.2.15
      • Guest Port: 22
    3. Click OK.

  7. On the User Interface tab: Personal choice, but I like to click the “Show at top of screen” checkbox to put the dropdown at the top rather than the bottom.

Starting the Installation

Whether it’s a VM or your computer, boot into the Arch install ISO.

Enable SSH

It is much more convenient when installing Arch to ssh into the box from another computer. This allows copy and paste and better fonts, etc.

On the new machine, after booting into the Arch ISO

# systemctl enable sshd.service --now

Set a password for root:

# passwd

Look up the IP address of the PC:

# ip a

You can now use that IP address to SSH in and continue.

Optional - If using Virtual Box

If you are doing this on a VM using Virtual Box, I highly recommend you ssh into your virtual machine. Doing so from a terminal on your main computer is much more convenient way to enter commands, allowing cut at paste. Be sure to follow the VM setup above if you are using it. If you aren’t, skip to Partitioning. You need to have followed the instructions above for configuring your VM. You will use this command:

# ssh -p 2222 root@127.0.0.1

Set up good Arch mirrors

Make sure that you are going to get as good a download as you can using reflector

# pacman -Syyy
# pacman -S reflector
# reflector --verbose --country US --latest 5 --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
# pacman -Syyy

Sync with ntp servers

# timedatectl set-ntp true

Partitioning

I assume here that you are installing Arch Linux on /dev/sda. If you aren’t, you’ll need to replace your all references to it with your drive. I prefer using cfdisk for partitioning.

# cfdisk /dev/sda

Choose the gpt label type

Create new partition table

  1. With the Free Space selected, hit enter

  2. Enter +550M for the partition size and hit enter

  3. Hit the right arrow to choose [Type]. Arrow up to the top and choose EFI. Hit enter

  4. Down arrow to choose Free Space, and then choose [New] and hit enter

  5. Accept partition size at whatever it is. It’s the rest of your drive. Hit Enter

  6. Right arrow over to [Write] and hit Enter

  7. Type “yes” and hit Enter

  8. Arrow over to [Quit] and hit Enter

Encryption

Next we’ll create an encrypted container for the root file system. You will need to have a good pass phrase that will be used to unlock your drive whenever you boot up.

We’ll use cryptsetup for these next few steps.

# cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda2

Open the container. The term “luks” is just a placeholder, you can use whatever you want to, just remember to use that same term consistently.

# cryptsetup open /dev/sda2 luks

File System Creation

Format the EFI partition with FAT32 and give it the label EFI. The label is your choice.

# mkfs.vfat -F32 -n EFI /dev/sda1

Format the root partition with Btrfs and give it the label ROOT. Again, choose whatever you want for this partition label. Remember to adust your name for the luks container if you changed it.

# mkfs.btrfs -L ROOT /dev/mapper/luks

Create and Mount Subvolumes

Create subvolumes for root, home, the package cache, snapshots, swap, and the entire Btrfs file system:

mount /dev/mapper/luks /mnt
btrfs sub create /mnt/@
btrfs sub create /mnt/@home
btrfs sub create /mnt/@pkg
btrfs sub create /mnt/@snapshots
btrfs sub create /mnt/@swap
btrfs sub create /mnt/@btrfs
umount /mnt

Mount the subvolumes

mount -o noatime,nodiratime,compress=zstd,space_cache,ssd,subvol=@ /dev/mapper/luks /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/{boot,home,var/cache/pacman/pkg,.snapshots,btrfs,swap}
mount -o noatime,nodiratime,compress=zstd,space_cache,ssd,subvol=@home /dev/mapper/luks /mnt/home
mount -o noatime,nodiratime,compress=zstd,space_cache,ssd,subvol=@pkg /dev/mapper/luks /mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg
mount -o noatime,nodiratime,compress=zstd,space_cache,ssd,subvol=@snapshots /dev/mapper/luks /mnt/.snapshots
mount -o noatime,nodiratime,space_cache,ssd,subvol=@swap /dev/mapper/luks /mnt/swap
mount -o noatime,nodiratime,compress=zstd,space_cache,ssd,subvolid=5 /dev/mapper/luks /mnt/btrfs

Mount the EFI partition

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

Base System and /etc/fstab

Install Arch Linux

There may be other packages that you need here. If you don’t want to use vi, you can install nano or emacs instead. You may also want to install wifi tools if your machine isn’t using ethernet.

# pacstrap /mnt linux linux-firmware base base-devel btrfs-progs intel-ucode networkmanager network-manager-applet wireless_tools wpa_supplicant dialog os-prober mtools dosfstools openssh vi

Generate /etc/fstab

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

System Configuration

chroot into the new system

# arch-chroot /mnt

Swap

I’m using a swap file here instead of a partition.

Start by creating zero byte file and giving it attributes that btrfs has to have when using a swap file. These commands disable Copy on Write and compression.

# cd /swap
# truncate -s 0 ./swapfile
# chattr +C ./swapfile
# btrfs property set ./swapfile compression none

Create the swap file. This creates a 2GB file. Change to suit your needs.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap/swapfile bs=1M count=2048 status=progress

Set secure file permissions

# chmod 600 /swap/swapfile

Make it a swapfile

# mkswap /swap/swapfile

Turn it on

# swapon /swap/swapfile

Add it to the fstab

# echo "/swap/swapfile                                  none            swap            defaults        0 0" >> /etc/fstab

Set host name

# echo <YOUR HOST NAME> /etc/hostname

Set locale

# echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf

Uncomment the following rows of /etc/locale.gen:

#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

Generate locale

# locale-gen

Set time zone

Use the zoneinfo for your timezone

# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Mountain /etc/localtime

Define hosts in /etc/hosts:

#<ip-address>	<hostname.domain.org>	<hostname>
127.0.0.1	localhost <YOUR-HOSTNAME>.localdomain	<YOUR-HOSTNAME>
::1		localhost.localdomain	localhost

Set root password

# passwd

Initramfs

Configure the creation of initramfs by editing /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. Change the line HOOKS=… to

HOOKS="base keyboard udev autodetect modconf block keymap encrypt btrfs filesystems"

Recreate initramfs

# mkinitcpio -p linux

Boot Manager

Install systemd-boot

# bootctl --path=/boot install

Determine the UUID of your encrypted partition

# blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/sda2

Create file /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf and fill it with this, replacing <UUID-OF-ROOT-PARTITION> with the UUID determined just above.

title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /intel-ucode.img
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options cryptdevice=UUID=<UUID-OF-ROOT-PARTITION>:luks:allow-discards root=/dev/mapper/luks rootflags=subvol=@ rd.luks.options=discard rw

Edit file /boot/loader/loader.conf and fill it with:

default  arch.conf
timeout  4
console-mode max
editor   no

Networking

Make sure that networking starts up after you reboot

# systemctl enable NetworkManager

Final Steps

Exit chroot, unmount partitions and reboot

# exit
# umount -R /mnt
# reboot

Done, for now

Your machine or VM should reboot. It will ask you for the pass phrase you used when you encrypted the drive. You now have a very basic Arch linux install. Add whatever you need with Pacman or AUR. In Part 2, I’ll guide you through installing Budgie and LightDM as a GUI.

References

Installing Arch Linux with Btrfs, systemd-boot and LUKS | Nerdstuff

Swap Arch Wiki