Install from USB stick

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[edit] The New and Improved Way, .img file

As of 2008.04, USB images are provided. Download them from your local mirror (they are the .img files). To install, use the following command: 

dd if=image.img of=/dev/sd[x]

where if= is the path to the img file and of= is your USB device. Make sure to use /dev/sdx and not /dev/sdx1.

Note: This will irrevocably delete all files on your USB stick, so make sure you don't have any important files on the stick before doing this.

Note: 2008.04-rc arch-core img files are broken. Use the ftp img file for a successful install.

[edit] Old Method from ISO, deprecated

  • Prepare USB stick:

The arch-ftp.img is about 150 MB, so it should fit on a 256 MB USB stick. The arch-core.img is ~300 MB and should fit on a 512 MB stick.

1. Partition the USB stick. Create one partition with FAT16 type, make it bootable. Remember its name, such as /dev/sd[x]1. 

cfdisk /dev/sd[x]

2. Make a FAT16 filesystem (you need dosfstools) 

mkdosfs /dev/sd[x]1

3. Get the arch-base install ISO from www.archlinux.org

4. Mount the iso to an temporary directory 

mkdir -p /mnt/archcd
mount -o loop /Path/to/iso /mnt/archcd

5. Mount the USB Stick 

mkdir -p /mnt/usb/
mount /dev/sd[x]1 /mnt/usb/

6. Copy the .iso to the USB Stick 

cp -ra /mnt/archcd/* /mnt/usb/


7. Copy the boot data 

cd /mnt/usb/isolinux/
cp vmlinuz /mnt/usb/
cp initrd.img /mnt/usb/
cp boot.* /mnt/usb/
cp isolinux.cfg /mnt/usb/syslinux.cfg

8. Install MBR and syslinux 

lilo -M /dev/sd[x] mbr(1
syslinux -s /dev/sd[x]1

[edit] After booting from the USB stick:

Mount the source media on the stick to the /src directory. 

mount /dev/sd[x] /src

[edit] Troubleshooting:

If you happen to run into "Cluster sizes larger than 16K not supported" error when running syslinux - don't panic, that just means you need to install more recent version of syslinux.

1) Using lilo is not really needed because syslinux does the "floppy" loading stuff. But if you get some error like "Can't load operating system" you have to perform the lilo command.

Retrieved from "http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Install_from_USB_stick"
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