Installation of ArchLinux on x86¶

This guide describes ArchLinux installation on a modern computer via USB bootable medium . The network is provided by the modem (4G) on an Android device via Wifi HotSpot

Prepare the bootable install medium¶

Download ( https://www.archlinux.org/download/ ) and write the image onto the USB drive

dd bs=4M if=/path/to/archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdx status=progress && sync

once this is done .Boot the machine you will be installing the OS using the USB drive. ArchLinux will boot up and provide you with a root shell

Setup WIFI Networking¶

ip link

Will show the network adaptor. It was named wlp5so in my case

ip link set wlp5s0 up

The following command will show available networks .Look for the SSID row

iw dev wlp5s0 scan|less

Android Wifi Hostspot is normally WPA/WPA2 encrypted which rquire the wpa_supplicant daemon to connect Run the following single line command .Replace hotspot name and password with whats yours.

wpa_supplicant -B -D nl80211,wext -i wlp5s0 -c <(wpa_passphrase "AndoidHotspot" "my_secure_password")

Run the dhcpcd to manage the IP lease from your hotspot

dhcpcd wlp5s0

Ensure ping and domain name resolution works

Update system clock¶

timedatectl set-ntp true

Partition the disk¶

I will create a single ext4 partition and setup a GUID partition table. The laptop I am using has Legacy BIOS and not UEFI or I in short i will use BIOS+GPT .Your method may vary with UEFI+GPT or BIOS+MBR Since my bootloader is GRUB,I will also need something called a BIOS boot partition .Note that this is not needed in BIOS+MBR scheme as MBR has fixed size and GRUB can embed its core.img after this fixed size .

parted

(parted)mklabel gpt
(parted)unit Mib
(parted)mkpart 1 1 2             #creates partition 1 with 1Mib size from 1Mib to 2Mib
(parted)set 1 bios_grub on
(parted)mkpart ext4 2 100%       #creates a single partition that extends to the full disk space
(parted)quit

Create the ext4 filesystem on the block device which will hold your files

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2      #assuming sda2 is the partition where you will b installing linux

Mount the block device to /mnt for installing Linux

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

Bootstrap Archlinux into the block device¶

pacstrap /mnt base         #This is the bare minimum

Generate fstab entries for the new installation¶

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

Its time to chroot to the new install and configure¶

arch-chroot /mnt

Set time-zone, locale, keyboard layout, hostname,root password

#Set timezone
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime

#Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and other needed localizations in /etc/locale.gen, and generate them with:
locale-gen

#Set the LANG variable in locale.conf(5) accordingly, for example:
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.conf

#Set the keymap
echo "KEYMAP=us" >> /etc/vconsole.conf

#Set the hostname
echo "thinkpad.gnusys.net" >> /etc/hostname

#Set root password
passwd

We install some additional packages required for networking to work that was not included in the pacstrapping of base

pacman -S iw wpa_supplicant dialog wpa_actiond
wifi-menu
systemctl enable netctl-auto@wlp5s0.service

Initramfs is normally automatically created when the linux package is installed with pacstrap in the chroot

mkinitcpio -p linux  #not needed as the initramfs is already created as mentioned above

Install the BootLoader¶

Install grub and run grub-install

pacman -S grub
grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda    #Assuming /dev/sda is your harddrive
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Reboot into the new installation¶

exit  #exit from chroot
reboot

You should now be rebooted into the new ArchLinux installation with a working network. You can now proceed to install additional software and a GUI . There are multiple choices of Desktop Environments available https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/desktop_environment

Install a Desktop Environment¶

pacman -S gnome gnome-extra
pacman -S firefox noto-fonts  #change firefox font to noto from firefox settings
systmctl enable gdm

Thats it . Enjoy your ArchLinux Gnome3 Desktop after a reboot