Difference between revisions of "Beginners' guide"

Revision as of 16:27, 18 August 2012

Installation

After booting, the installation media automatically logs in as root and uses a US keyboard layout.

Changing the keymap

If you have a non-US keyboard layout you can interactively choose your keymap/console font with the command:

# loadkeys layout

where layout is your keyboard layout such as fr, uk or be-latin1

Keymaps are available for many countries and keyboard types. The keymap files can be found in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/ (you can omit the keymap path and file extension when using loadkeys).

Setup network in the live installation environment

The installer need network connection to download and install packages. So network have to be setup first.

Automatic setup

The installer will try to automatically configure a wired connection if available. You may check this was successful by using /bin/ping:

# ping -c 3 www.google.com

If you get an answer that looks like this:

PING www.l.google.com (74.125.132.105) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from wb-in-f105.1e100.net (74.125.132.105): icmp_req=1 ttl=50 time=17.0 ms
64 bytes from wb-in-f105.1e100.net (74.125.132.105): icmp_req=2 ttl=50 time=18.2 ms
64 bytes from wb-in-f105.1e100.net (74.125.132.105): icmp_req=3 ttl=50 time=16.6 ms

--- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2003ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 16.660/17.320/18.254/0.678 ms

then the network and Internet access have been properly configured. You may continue to #Prepare_hard_drive. Otherwise, if you get:

ping: unknown host www.google.com

you will need to set up the network manually, as explained below.

Set up a wired connection

Follow this procedure if your computer is connected to an Ethernet network. In most cases, you will have one interface, called eth0. If you have additional ethernet interfaces (which may be additional cards or integrated to the motherboard), their name will follow the sequence eth1, ethX,...

Dynamic IP (DHCP)

Assuming a wired Ethernet connection and access to a DHCP server (e.g. using a router), run:

# dhcpcd

to get a lease. If you have several interfaces (such as several Ethernet cards), you may specify the interface with dhcpcd <interface>, e.g:

# dhcpcd eth0

Verify your connection as explained above and if successful jump to #Prepare_hard_drive.

Static IP

If you do not have access or are not using DHCP, you need to assign a static IP address. You need to know these settings:

• Static IP address,
• Subnet mask,
• Gateway's IP address,
• Name servers' (DNS) IP addresses,
• Domain name (unless a local LAN, in which case you can make it up).

Activate the connected ethernet interface, e.g. for eth0:

# ip link set eth0 up

Add the address:

# ip addr add <ip address>/<subnetmask> dev <interface>

For example:

# ip addr add 192.168.1.2/24 dev eth0

For more options, see: man ip

Add your gateway like so:

# ip route add default via <ip address>

(Substitute your own gateway's IP address)

For example:

# ip route add default via 192.168.1.1

Edit your /etc/resolv.conf like this, substituting your name servers' IP addresses and your local domain name:

nameserver 61.23.173.5
nameserver 61.95.849.8
search example.com

Setup wireless network

Follow this procedure if you need wireless connectivity (WiFi) during the installation process.

The wireless drivers and utilities are now available to you in the live environment of the installation media. A good knowledge of your wireless hardware will be of key importance to successful configuration. Note that the following quick-start procedure executed at this point in the installation will initialize your wireless hardware for use in the live environment of the installation media. These steps (or some other form of wireless management) must be repeated from the actual installed system after booting into it.

Also note that these steps are optional if wireless connectivity is unnecessary at this point in the installation; wireless functionality may always be established later.

The basic procedure will be:

• (optional) Identify the wireless interface:

# lspci | grep -i net

or, if using a USB adapter:

# lsusb 

• Ensure udev has loaded the driver, and that the driver has created a usable wireless kernel interface with /usr/sbin/iwconfig:

# iwconfig

 lo no wireless extensions.
 eth0 no wireless extensions.
 wlan0    unassociated  ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Channel=0  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   Sensitivity=8/0
          Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

wlan0 is the available wireless interface in this example.

• Bring the interface up with:

# ip link set wlan0 up

A small percentage of wireless chipsets also require firmware, in addition to a corresponding driver. If the wireless chipset requires firmware, you are likely to receive this error when bringing the interface up:

# ip link set wlan0 up

SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory

If unsure, invoke /usr/bin/dmesg to query the kernel log for a firmware request from the wireless chipset.

Example output from an Intel chipset which requires and has requested firmware from the kernel at boot:

$ dmesg | grep firmware

firmware: requesting iwlwifi-5000-1.ucode

If there is no output, it may be concluded that the system's wireless chipset does not require firmware.

• If the ESSID has been forgotten or is unknown, use iwlist <interface> scan to scan for nearby networks:

# iwlist wlan0 scan

Cell 01 - Address: 04:25:10:6B:7F:9D
                    Channel:2
                    Frequency:2.417 GHz (Channel 2)
                    Quality=31/70  Signal level=-79 dBm  
                    Encryption key:off
                    ESSID:"dlink"
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s
                    Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s
                              36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s

• If using WPA encryption:

Using WPA encryption requires that the key be encrypted and stored in a file, along with the ESSID, to be used later for connection via wpa_supplicant. Thus, a few extra steps are required:

For the purpose of simplifying and backup, rename the default wpa_supplicant.conf file:

# mv /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf.original

Using wpa_passphrase, provide your wireless network name and WPA key to be encrypted and written to /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf.

The following example encrypts the key "my_secret_passkey" of the "linksys" wireless network, generates a new configuration file (/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf), and subsequently redirects the encrypted key, writing it to the file:

# wpa_passphrase linksys "my_secret_passkey" > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

# tee /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf < <(wpa_passphrase linksys "passphrase")

# cat ~/mykey | wpa_passphrase linksys > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Check WPA Supplicant for more information and troubleshooting.

• Associate your wireless device with the access point you want to use. Depending on the encryption (none, WEP, or WPA), the procedure may differ. You need to know the name of the chosen wireless network (ESSID).

• After utilizing the appropriate association method outlined above, wait a few moments and confirm you have successfully associated to the access point before continuing, e.g.:

# iwconfig wlan0

Output should indicate the wireless network is associated with the interface.

• Request an IP address with /sbin/dhcpcd <interface>, e.g.:

# dhcpcd wlan0

You should now have a working network connection. If you do not, check the detailed Wireless Setup page.

Set up Direct Modem Connection

xDSL (PPPoE)

Follow this procedure if you have a modem or router in bridge mode to connect to your ISP.

Invoke:

# pppoe-setup

If everything is well configured in the end, you can connect to your ISP with:

# pppoe-start

Analog Modem, ISDN

See Direct Modem Connection for detailed instructions.

Proxy Server

If you are behind a proxy server, you will need to export the http_proxy and ftp_proxy environment variables. Click here for more information.

Test network connection

Lastly, ensure you can route using /bin/ping:

# ping -c 3 www.google.com

PING www.l.google.com (74.125.132.105) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from wb-in-f105.1e100.net (74.125.132.105): icmp_req=1 ttl=50 time=17.0 ms
64 bytes from wb-in-f105.1e100.net (74.125.132.105): icmp_req=2 ttl=50 time=18.2 ms
64 bytes from wb-in-f105.1e100.net (74.125.132.105): icmp_req=3 ttl=50 time=16.6 ms

--- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2003ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 16.660/17.320/18.254/0.678 ms

Prepare hard drive

If you have already partitioned your hard disk, verify current disk identities and layout by invoking /sbin/fdisk with the -l (lower-case L) switch.

At the root prompt enter:

# fdisk -l

Take note of the disk(s) and/or partition(s) to utilize for the Arch installation. Each partition is identified with a number suffix. Example: sda1 specifies the first partition of a drive while sda designates the entire drive. You may now proceed to Configure block devices, filesystems, and mountpoints.

The remainder of this section shows an example configuration for a beginner's Arch installation and uses the fdisk partitioning tool. You are not required to use this configuration or this tool; it is presented here only as an example.

For more information on partitioning your hard disk, see Partitioning.

For more information on possible file system types, see File Systems.

Manually partition hard drives

Use cfdisk to open the selected target disk for manual partitioning (if you have an SSD drive other choices like gdisk or GNU Parted will be needed). This example uses the first hard disk, designated sda:

# cfdisk /dev/sda

The example system will contain a 15GB root (/) partition, a 1GB swap partition, and a /home partition for the remaining disk space. It is emphasized again that partitioning is a personal choice and this example is only for illustration.

Choose New -> 'Primary' and enter the desired size (15.44 GB in this example) for the root (/) filesystem. The partition will be put at the beginning of the disk. Select the Type and designate it as 83 Linux. The created / partition will appear as sda1. Thereafter select "Bootable" to flag root as bootable.

Next, create a second partition for swap. Select an appropriate size (~1 GB here) and specify the Type as 82 (Linux swap / Solaris). The created swap partition will appear as sda2.

The remaining space is used to create a third partition for the /home directory. Identify it as a primary partition and set the size. Select the Type as 83 Linux. The created /home partition will appear as sda3.

This is how the example will look:

Name    Flags     Part Type    FS Type           [Label]         Size (MB)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
sda1    Boot       Primary     Linux                             15440       #root
sda2               Primary     Linux swap / Solaris              1024        #swap
sda3               Primary     Linux                             133000      #/home

Be aware that this operation will destroy data on your disk so double check all of your work and make sure you are happy with the partition sizes as well as the partition table layout before continuing. If you would like to start over, you can simply select Quit to quit without saving changes and then restart cfdisk.

Once satisfied choose Write to finalize and write the partition table to the disk. After the partition table is written it will automatically exit cfdisk.

For more information on partitioning your hard disk, see Partitioning.

Configure block devices, filesystems, and mountpoints

Use the mkfs utility to format the partitions into filesystems. In this example configuration, we are using the ext4 filesystem for both root and home partitions.

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

Format and activate the swap partition:

# mkswap /dev/sda2 && swapon /dev/sda2

For more information on possible file system types, see File Systems.

Mount the partitions

Mount the root partition on /mnt.

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Create a directory for the /home partition and mount it:

# mkdir /mnt/home && mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/home

Select installation mirror

Before installing, you may want to edit /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist such that your preferred mirror is first. This copy of the mirrorlist will be installed on your new system by pacstrap as well, so it's worth getting it right.

Install the base system

The base system is installed using the pacstrap script. A minimal system requires the base package group; also installing the base-devel package group at this time is highly recommended. If you require other packages at this time, simply add them to the pacstrap command.

# pacstrap /mnt base base-devel

• base: Software packages from the [core] repo to provide the minimal base environment.
• base-devel: Extra tools from [core] such as make, and automake. Most beginners should choose to install it, as it will likely be needed to expand your new system. The base-devel group will be required to install software from the Arch User Repository.

This will give you a basic Arch system. Other packages can be installed later using pacman.

Generate fstab

Generate an fstab file with the following command. (If you prefer to use UUIDs or labels, add the -U or -L option, respectively.)

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

Chroot into system

Next we chroot into our newly installed system.

# arch-chroot /mnt

Configure the system

At this stage of the installation, you will configure the primary configuration files of your Arch Linux base system.

Configuration files

/etc/rc.conf is the configuration file for Arch's initscripts, and in the past used to also contain configurations for other parts of the system. Unless you are using an alternate init system like systemd, /etc/rc.conf configures which daemons to start during boot-up and some networking and storage information.

Configuration files can simply be created if they do not exist already and you wish to change the defaults. During this procedure you use the editor nano. For example to edit your hostname file in /etc/hostname you'll type:

# nano /etc/hostname

you press Template:Keypress to either save changes or close the file. When prompted to save changes, press Template:Keypress or Template:Keypress, and Template:Keypress to write the file

Hostname

Add your hostname in /etc/hostname. Example:

myhostname

Set it to your liking. This is the name of your computer.

Add also your hostname in /etc/hosts, coinciding with the one specified in /etc/hostname as an alias, so that it looks like this:

127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain   localhost myhostname
::1         localhost.localdomain   localhost myhostname

If you use a static IP, add another line using the syntax: <static-IP> <hostname.domainname.org> <hostname> e.g.:

192.168.1.100 myhostname.domain.org myhostname

192.168.1.90 media
192.168.1.88 data

Console fonts and keymap

Edit /etc/vconsole.conf.

KEYMAP

The available keymaps are in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps. Please note that this setting is only valid for your TTYs, not any graphical window managers or X.

FONT 

Available alternate console fonts reside in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/. The default (blank) is safe.

FONT_MAP 

Defines the console map to load with the setfont program at boot. Possible maps are found in /usr/share/kbd/consoletrans, if needed. The default (blank) is safe.

Example:

KEYMAP=us
FONT=
FONT_MAP=

Timezone

Available time zones and subzones can be found in the /usr/share/zoneinfo/<Zone>/<SubZone> directories.

To view the available <Zone>, check the directory /usr/share/zoneinfo/:

# ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/

Similarly, you can check the contents of directories belonging to a <SubZone>:

# ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe

Create a symbolic link /etc/localtime to your zone file /usr/share/zoneinfo/<Zone>/<SubZone> using this command:

# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/<Zone>/<SubZone> /etc/localtime

Example:

# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Minsk /etc/localtime

If you are using systemd's timedated, you might wish to also edit the file /etc/timezone and write your Zone/Subzone.

Example:

Europe/Minsk

Read man 5 timezone for more options.

The need for /etc/timezone might go away in the future [1].

Locale

Enable locales

The /usr/sbin/locale-gen command reads from /etc/locale.gen to generate specific locales. They can then be used by glibc and any other locale-aware program or library for rendering text, correctly displaying regional monetary values, time and date formats, alphabetic idiosyncrasies, and other locale-specific standards:

# nano /etc/locale.gen

By default /etc/locale.gen is an empty file with commented documentation. Once edited, the file remains untouched. locale-gen runs on every glibc upgrade, generating all the locales specified in /etc/locale.gen.

Choose the locale(s) you need by removing the # in front of the lines you want, e.g.:

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

Then run:

# locale-gen

Setting up system-wide locale

Set locale preferences in /etc/locale.conf.

Example:

/etc/locale.conf

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8

Setting only LANG should be enough. It acts as the default value for all other locale settings.

You can override parts of a locale using LC_* variables – for example, setting LC_COLLATE=C disables locale-aware sorting, but keeps all other features. You can see all LC_* variables by running locale.

LC_ALL overrides all other settings. Because of that, you cannot set it from locale.conf. It is recommended that you use LC_ALL only when needed – do not put it in your default environment.

For the ramdisk creation that will follow later, you should now set the LANG variable. Example:

# export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Hardware clock time

This is set in /etc/adjtime. Set the hardware clock mode uniformly between your operating systems on the same machine. Otherwise, they will overwrite the time and cause clock shifts (which can cause time drift correction to be miscalibrated).

You can generate /etc/adjtime automatically by using one of the following commands.

• UTC (recommended)

# hwclock --systohc --utc

• localtime (discouraged) - Used by default in Windows

# hwclock --systohc --localtime

Setting time in a Windows dual boot setup

If you are setting up a dual-boot with Windows on your system, you have two options:

• Recommended: Set both Arch Linux and Windows to use UTC (a quick registry fix is needed, see this page for instructions). Also, be sure to prevent Windows from synchronizing the time with the Internet, as it will make the hardware clock use localtime again. If you want such functionality (NTP sync), you should use ntpd on your Arch Linux installation instead.

• Not recommended: Set Arch Linux to localtime and later (in Configure the system) remove hwclock from the DAEMONS array in /etc/rc.conf (Windows will take care of hardware clock corrections).

Kernel modules

Edit /etc/modules-load.d/ to configure kernel modules to load during boot in a static list. Each configuration file is named in the style of /etc/modules-load.d/<program>.conf. The configuration files should simply contain a list of kernel module names to load, separated by newlines. Empty lines and lines whose first non-whitespace character is # or ; are ignored. Example:

/etc/modules-load.d/virtio-net.conf

# Load virtio-net.ko at boot
virtio-net

Daemons

Daemons are programs that run in the background, waiting for events to occur and offering services. A good example is a web server that waits for a request to deliver a page (e.g.: httpd) or an SSH server waiting for a user login (e.g.: sshd). While these are full-featured applications, there are also daemons whose work is not that visible. Examples are a daemon which writes messages into a log file (e.g. syslog, metalog), and a daemon which provides a graphical login (e.g.: gdm, kdm).

These programs can be added to the DAEMONS line in /etc/rc.conf and will be started when the system boots. The DAEMONS array simply list the names of those scripts contained in /etc/rc.d/ which are to be started during the boot process, and the order in which they start.

DAEMONS=(network @syslog-ng netfs @crond)

• If a script name is prefixed with a bang (!), it is not run.
• If a script is prefixed with an "at" symbol (@), it is run in the background; the startup sequence will not wait for successful completion of this daemon before continuing to the next (this may shorten system boot time). Do not background daemons that are needed by other daemons. For example mpd depends on network, so backgrounding network may cause mpd to break.
• Edit this array whenever new system services are installed, if starting them automatically during boot is desired.

Configure the network

You need to configure the network again, but this time for your newly installed environment. The procedure and prerequisites are very similar to the one described above, except we are going to make it persistent and automatically run at boot.

Wired Network

If you only use a single wired network connection, you can use the network daemon, a simple solution for both dynamic and static IP addressing. First, insure that the daemon is listed in the DAEMONS array:

/etc/rc.conf

DAEMONS=(... network ...)

Then configure the NETWORKING section of /etc/rc.conf as follows, depending on your IP addressing type.

Dynamic IP (DHCP)

Assuming the network interface to activate at start is eth0, use this configuration:

interface=eth0
address=
netmask=
gateway=

Your DNS server addresses will be automatically filled in by the dhcpcd daemon.

Static IP

If you need to use a static IP address, use this configuration:

interface=eth0
address=192.168.0.2
netmask=255.255.255.0
broadcast=192.168.0.255
gateway=192.168.0.1

You will also need to add your name servers' (DNS) IP addresses and your local domain name to your /etc/resolv.conf like this:

nameserver 61.23.173.5
nameserver 61.95.849.8
search example.com

Wireless network

The network daemon is not sufficient to handle Wireless networking, which requires additional configuration. You will need to install other programs to configure and manage wireless network profiles, such as netcfg. NetworkManager and Wicd are popular alternatives.

• Exit the chroot environment:

# exit

• Install the required packages:

# pacstrap /mnt wireless_tools netcfg

• If you use WPA/WPA2 wireless encryption, install:

# pacstrap /mnt wpa_supplicant wpa_actiond

• If your wireless adapter requires a firmware (as described in #Setup_wireless_network and Wireless_Setup#Drivers_and_firmware), install the package containg your firmware, e.g.:

# pacstrap /mnt zd1211-firmware

• Chroot back:

# arch-chroot /mnt

• Create a network profile for your wireless connection in the /etc/network.d directory:
  • Copy and rename a configuration template from /etc/network.d/examples/ to /etc/network.d/mynetwork (mynetwork being an example; the name is not a network setting and does not need to match the wireless network name (SSID)). These templates are adapted to the type of your wireless connection, such as wireless-wep or wireless-wpa. See Netcfg#Configuration for a list of available templates and their usage.
  • Set INTERFACE to the correct wireless interface. This can be checked with iwconfig.
  • Ensure the ESSID and KEY (passkey) are set correctly for wireless connections. Typos in these fields are common errors.
    • Note that WEP string keys (not hex keys) must be specified with a leading s: (e.g. KEY="s:somepasskey").
    • For WPA-Personal, it is possible to specify the passkey in plain text or as an encoded hex.

• Add net-auto-wireless to the DAEMONS array in /etc/rc.conf:

/etc/rc.conf

DAEMONS=(... net-auto-wireless ...)

And specify the desired wireless interface with the WIRELESS_INTERFACE variable in /etc/conf.d/netcfg:

/etc/conf.d/netcfg

WIRELESS_INTERFACE="wlan0"

It is also possible to define a list of network profiles that should be automatically connected with the AUTO_PROFILES variable in /etc/conf.d/netcfg. If AUTO_PROFILES is not set, all wireless networks will be tried.

Direct Modem Connection

For xDSL, analog modem (dial-up) and ISDN, see Direct Modem Connection for detailed instructions.

Create an initial ramdisk environment

Configure /etc/mkinitcpio.conf as needed (see mkinitcpio) and create an initial ramdisk with

# mkinitcpio -p linux

Install and configure a bootloader

Install either Syslinux or GRUB. There is no need to install both. Syslinux is considered to be easier to understand and to configure because it has only one configuration file. In spite of GRUB's many configuration files (for which the recommended method is to re-generate the grub.cfg file each time you change anything in one of those files), using GRUB could make it more comfortable to transition to BURG in the future, a much more customizable GRUB fork. Of course, Syslinux can also be customized. (*)

Syslinux

Install the syslinux package and edit syslinux.cfg to point to the right root partition. This step is vital. If it points to the wrong partition, Arch Linux will not boot.

# pacman -S syslinux
# nano /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg

...
LABEL arch
        ...
        APPEND root=/dev/sda3 ro
        ...

Change /dev/sda3 to reflect your root partition (if you partitioned your disk as we did in the example, your root partition is sda1). Do the same for LABEL archfallback.

Then type the following command to install the files (-i), mark the partition active with the boot flag (-a), and install the MBR boot code (-m):

# syslinux-install_update -iam

For more information on configuring and using Syslinux, see Syslinux.

GRUB

For BIOS motherboards:

# pacman -S grub-bios
# grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/sda

For UEFI motherboards:

# pacman -S grub-efi-x86_64
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck

To prevent a (harmless) error message at boot time:

# mkdir -p /boot/grub/locale
# cp /usr/share/locale/en\@quot/LC_MESSAGES/grub.mo /boot/grub/locale/en.mo

Create the grub.cfg file:

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

For more information on configuring and using GRUB, see GRUB.

Root password

Set the root password with:

# passwd

Unmount the partitions and reboot

Exit from the chroot environment:

# exit

Since the partitions are mounted under /mnt, we use the following command to unmount them.

# umount /mnt/{boot,home,}

Exit the install, and reboot:

# reboot

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