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Arch Linux Install

·1127 words·6 mins·
Table of Contents

I’m no stranger to the linux terminal. I’ve been daily driving arch linux derivatives like Manjaro, Endeavour OS and recently Cachy OS for almost 4 years now. But have never really played with the source. Too scared i would miss something crucial in the install and suffer the consequences days later. Finally had proper go with assistance from Kubecraft and a spare laptop previously running Pop OS

Hardware Specs:

  • Laptop Model: Dell Latitude E7450
  • CPU: Intel Core I5 5330u
  • Memory: 8GB
  • Disk: Samsung 850 EVO 256GB SSD
  • System Configuration: UEFI x64 | LVM on LUKS | Systemd-boot | KDE

Boot Mode
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Verifying Boot Mode to confirm UEFI x64 is in use, UEFI x32 has increasingly limited software/boot support and shouldn’t be used on hardware newer than 2009/2013. More details available here

cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size

Internet Connectivity
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Connected to wlan0 to TPLINK_OC4D via iwctl, which manipulates iwd

iwctl

Entered following commands within the interactive prompt to connect to WIFI

device list
station wlan0 scan
station wlan0 connect TPLINK_OC4D
exit

Verified Internet Connectivity by pinging “ping.archlinux.org” or “station wlan0” in iwctl

ping ping.archlinux.org

Used timedatectl to set correct timezone, default setting was an hour behind

timedatectl list-timezones
timedatectl set-timezone Europe/London

System can now be accessed via ssh once a root password is set, default config settings allow root password login

Disk Partitioning
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  • A boot, root and optionally a swap partition need to be created
  • Queried visible drives with lsblk
  • Used fdisk to partition 1gb for boot partition and set file type to efi, used remaining disk space for second partition for root
# fdisk interactive prompt
# m select partition, first and last sector used
# t select file type
# p print out partition layout 
# w confirm and write changes to disk

Encryption
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Following on from kubecraft classroom, i setup full disk encryption including boot partition via LVM on LUKS using the diagram below as a reference I would personally setup disk encryption just for the home dir on a personal desktop, limine encryption support will determine if this or full disk encryption will be done

Would do full encryption on a laptop or work installation though

lvm on luks

# Create the LUKS encrypted container at the designated partition. Enter the chosen password twice
cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda2 
# Open/Unlock container
cryptsetup open /dev/sda2 cryptlvm

LVM
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Using LVM allows for easier management of the drives over formatting drives directly with a filesystem i.e ext4, xfs or btrfs. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system#Preparing_the_logical_volumes

# Create a physical volume on top of the opened LUKS container
pvcreate /dev/mapper/cryptlvm
# Create a volume group (in this example named `echo`, but it can be whatever you want) and add the previously created physical volume to it:
vgcreate echo /dev/mapper/cryptlvm
# Create all your logical volumes on the volume group
lvcreate -L 4G -n swap echo
lvcreate -L 32G -n root echo
lvcreate -l 80%FREE -n home echo

Created required filesystems

mkfs.ext4 /dev/echo/root 
mkfs.ext4 /dev/echo/home
mkswap /dev/echo/swap

Mounted filesystems to chroot folder (don’t forget home directory)

mount /dev/echo/root /mnt
mount --mkdir /dev/echo/home /mnt/home
swapon /dev/echo/swap

Configured and mounted boot partition

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
mount --mkdir /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

System Configuration
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Installed essential packages to chroot folder

pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware

Used “genfstab” to generate fstab records for booting

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

Records in “/etc/fstab”

# /dev/mapper/echo-root
UUID=b38f1acb-7d94-4afd-84dd-f9af7d41a58e       /               ext4            rw,relatime     0 1

# /dev/sda1
UUID=6451-8F86          /boot           vfat            rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortn>

# /dev/mapper/echo-home
UUID=dd9e2e20-bb83-4faa-8f4a-bd67caefd5c6       /home           ext4            rw,relatime     0 2

# /dev/mapper/echo-swap
UUID=c55d8326-4ece-449e-96ef-a2a18d8ee456       none            swap            defaults        0 0

Chrooted into install

arch-chroot /mnt

Time and localization
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Set correct timezone via symlink:

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

Used hwclock to generate /etc/adjtime

hwclock --systohc

Un-commented US and GB locale values in “/etc/locale.gen” and ran “locale-gen”. Copied from Cachyos install (variables pulled from calamere installer)

en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

Copied Language variables from cachyos “/etc/locale.conf”

LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_NAME=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8

Set console keyboard layout to US in “/etc/vconsole.conf”

KEYMAP=us

Set hostname to “arch-kubecraft” in “/etc/hostname”

Networking
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Networking in the guide is done with systemd-networkd

systemctl enable systemd-networkd.service
systemctl enable systemd-resolved.service

Created the following file in “/etc/systemd/network/25-wireless-network”

[Match]
Name=wlan0

[Network]
DHCP=yes
IgnoreCarrierLoss=3s

Followed by installing and enabling iwd

pacman -S iwd
systemctl enable iwd.service

Configuring mkinitcpio
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mkinitcpio is a Bash script used to create initramfs images, which is a temp root file system used during the boot process of Linux systems, allowing the kernel to load necessary drivers and mount the real root file system Amended “/etc/mkinitcpio.conf” to include the following:

HOOKS=(base **systemd** autodetect microcode modconf kms **keyboard** **sd-vconsole** block **sd-encrypt** **lvm2** filesystems fsck)

Regenerated initarmfs with “mkinitcpio -P” after making sure “linux and lvm2 were installed.

Bootloader
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Insert post > BIOS > Bootloader picture What is a bootloader Systemd loader needs to reference a file which contains the linux kernel (vmlinuz-linux) and initramfs-linux.img generated by mkinitpcio

As of 23/10/25 bootctl needs to run outside chroot to work properly

bootctl --esp-path=/mnt/boot install
arch-chroot /mnt
bootctl install

/boot/loader/entries/arch.conf template with decryption instructions taken from wiki

title   Arch Linux
linux   /vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
options rd.luks.name=device-UUID=cryptlvm(or MyVolgroup name if renamed) root=/dev/MyVolGroup/root rw

My file which references the root encrypted container device lvm is deployed on top of (i.e /dev/sda2) pulled via “blkid”, and the root directory within the lvm volumes

title   Arch Linux
linux   /vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
options rd.luks.name=163bdea6-6c73-4708-a6f4-848c4fdfb4eb=echo root=/dev/echo/root rw

Normal User Creation
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Created a “echo” user via useradd and give it sudo permissions and a password. User -m argument to autocreate home directory

useradd -m echo
usermod -aG wheel echo
passwd echo

Uncomment %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL from sudo file with “EDITOR= visudo”

visudo

Verify sudo is working with normal user

su - echo
id
sudo whoami

Desktop Environment
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I would personally use a window manager like hyprland, but installed the KDE desktop environment for simplicity

sudo pacman -Syu # Updates mirrors and installed packages
sudo pacman -S plasma-meta sddm # Installs KDE deskop environment 
sudo pacman -S sddm # Installs SDDM (Graphical Login Program)
sudo systemctl enable sddm.service # Set sddm to launch on system startup
sudo systemctl start sddm.service # Starts sddm

Additional Goals for Setup
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I’m quite comfortable with cachy os on my main rig using Limine Bootloader and BTRFS filesystem for native snapshots support while booting (absolute lifesaver). But i do have a couple of things i would want to try on a new installation:

  • Limine boot support for secure boot and encrypted btrfs subvolumes
  • Reflector script to update package repo’s with fatest sources
  • Learn vim
  • Frequently investigating results of arch-audit
  • Considering blacklisting certain files from BTRFS/ZFS Snapshot to preventing mismanagement of sensitive data snapshot
  • Test Install of minimal fedora with Cachy OS optimizations

Beats to Listen to (Formatting test)
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