This document is a guide for installing Arch Linux using the live system booted from an installation medium made from an official installation image. The installation medium provides accessibility features which are described on the page Install Arch Linux with accessibility options. For alternative means of installation, see Category:Installation process.
Before installing, it would be advised to view the FAQ. For conventions used in this document, see Help:Reading. In particular, code examples may contain placeholders (formatted in italics
) that must be replaced manually.
This guide is kept concise and you are advised to follow the instructions in the presented order per section. For more detailed instructions, see the respective ArchWiki articles or the various programs' man pages, both linked from this guide. For interactive help, the IRC channel and the forums are also available.
Arch Linux should run on any x86_64-compatible machine with a minimum of 512 MiB RAM, though more memory is needed to boot the live system for installation.[1] A basic installation should take less than 2 GiB of disk space. As the installation process needs to retrieve packages from a remote repository, this guide assumes a working internet connection is available.
Visit the Download page and, depending on how you want to boot, acquire the ISO file or a netboot image, and the respective PGP signature.
It is recommended to verify the image signature before use, especially when downloading from an HTTP mirror, where downloads are generally prone to be intercepted to serve malicious images.
On a system with GnuPG installed, do this by downloading the ISO PGP signature (under Checksums in the page Download) to the ISO directory, and verifying it with:
$ gpg --keyserver-options auto-key-retrieve --verify archlinux-version-x86_64.iso.sig
Alternatively, from an existing Arch Linux installation run:
$ pacman-key -v archlinux-version-x86_64.iso.sig
gpg
command will output the fingerprint of the public key.The ISO can be supplied to the target machine via a USB flash drive, an optical disc or a network with PXE: follow the appropriate article to prepare yourself an installation medium from the ISO file.
For the netboot image, follow Netboot#Boot from a USB flash drive to prepare a USB flash drive for UEFI booting.
Enter
to enter the installation environment.Enter
. e
or Tab
to enter the boot parameters. The Netboot image uses iPXE and the boot parameters can be specified in the Boot options menu. See README.bootparams for a list.fbcon=font:TER16x32
can help. See HiDPI#Linux console (tty) for a detailed explanation.To switch to a different console—for example, to view this guide with Lynx alongside the installation—use the Alt+arrow
shortcut. To edit configuration files, mcedit(1), nano and vim are available. See pkglist.x86_64.txt for a list of the packages included in the installation medium.
The default console keymap is US. Available layouts can be listed with:
# localectl list-keymaps
To set the keyboard layout, pass its name to loadkeys(1). For example, to set a German keyboard layout:
# loadkeys de-latin1
Console fonts are located in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/
and can likewise be set with setfont(8) omitting the path and file extension. For example, to use one of the largest fonts suitable for HiDPI screens, run:
# setfont ter-132b
To verify the boot mode, check the UEFI bitness:
# cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size
If the command returns 64
, then the system is booted in UEFI mode and has a 64-bit x64 UEFI. If the command returns 32
, then the system is booted in UEFI mode and has a 32-bit IA32 UEFI; while this is supported, it will limit the boot loader choice to systemd-boot and GRUB. If the file does not exist, the system may be booted in BIOS (or CSM) mode. If the system did not boot in the mode you desired (UEFI vs BIOS), refer to your motherboard's manual.
To set up a network connection in the live environment, go through the following steps:
# ip link
# ping archlinux.org
In the live environment systemd-timesyncd is enabled by default and time will be synced automatically once a connection to the internet is established.
Use timedatectl(1) to ensure the system clock is synchronized:
# timedatectl
When recognized by the live system, disks are assigned to a block device such as /dev/sda
, /dev/nvme0n1
or /dev/mmcblk0
. To identify these devices, use lsblk or fdisk.
# fdisk -l
Results ending in rom
, loop
or airootfs
may be ignored. mmcblk*
devices ending in rpbm
, boot0
and boot1
can be ignored.
The following partitions are required for a chosen device:
/
.Use a partitioning tool like fdisk to modify partition tables. For example:
# fdisk /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned
Mount point on the installed system | Partition | Partition type | Suggested size |
---|---|---|---|
/boot 1
|
/dev/efi_system_partition
|
EFI system partition | 1 GiB |
[SWAP]
|
/dev/swap_partition
|
Linux swap | At least 4 GiB |
/
|
/dev/root_partition
|
Linux x86-64 root (/) | Remainder of the device. At least 23–32 GiB. |
/efi
, are possible, provided that the used boot loader is capable of loading the kernel and initramfs images from the root volume. See the warning in Arch boot process#Boot loader.Mount point on the installed system | Partition | Partition type | Suggested size |
---|---|---|---|
[SWAP]
|
/dev/swap_partition
|
Linux swap | At least 4 GiB |
/
|
/dev/root_partition
|
Linux | Remainder of the device. At least 23–32 GiB. |
See also Partitioning#Example layouts.
Once the partitions have been created, each newly created partition must be formatted with an appropriate file system. See File systems#Create a file system for details.
For example, to create an Ext4 file system on /dev/root_partition
, run:
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/root_partition
If you created a partition for swap, initialize it with mkswap(8):
# mkswap /dev/swap_partition
/dev/*_partition
with the appropriate block device path.If you created an EFI system partition, format it to FAT32 using mkfs.fat(8).
# mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/efi_system_partition
Mount the root volume to /mnt
. For example, if the root volume is /dev/root_partition
:
# mount /dev/root_partition /mnt
Create any remaining mount points under /mnt
(such as /mnt/boot
for /boot
) and mount the volumes in their corresponding hierarchical order.
--mkdir
option to create the specified mount point. Alternatively, create it using mkdir(1) beforehand.For UEFI systems, mount the EFI system partition:
# mount --mkdir /dev/efi_system_partition /mnt/boot
If you created a swap volume, enable it with swapon(8):
# swapon /dev/swap_partition
genfstab(8) will later detect mounted file systems and swap space.
Packages to be installed must be downloaded from mirror servers, which are defined in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
. On the live system, after connecting to the internet, reflector updates the mirror list by choosing 20 most recently synchronized HTTPS mirrors and sorting them by download rate.
The higher a mirror is placed in the list, the more priority it is given when downloading a package. You may want to inspect the file to see if it is satisfactory. If it is not, edit the file accordingly, and move the geographically closest mirrors to the top of the list, although other criteria should be taken into account.
This file will later be copied to the new system by pacstrap, so it is worth getting right.
/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
) gets carried over from the live environment to the installed system.Use the pacstrap(8) script to install the base package, Linux kernel and firmware for common hardware:
# pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware
The base package does not include all tools from the live installation, so installing more packages may be necessary for a fully functional base system. To install other packages or package groups, append the names to the pacstrap command above (space separated) or use pacman to install them while chrooted into the new system. In particular, consider installing:
For comparison, packages available in the live system can be found in pkglist.x86_64.txt.
Generate an fstab file (use -U
or -L
to define by UUID or labels, respectively):
# genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
Check the resulting /mnt/etc/fstab
file, and edit it in case of errors.
Change root into the new system:
# arch-chroot /mnt
Set the time zone:
# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime
Run hwclock(8) to generate /etc/adjtime
:
# hwclock --systohc
This command assumes the hardware clock is set to UTC. See System time#Time standard for details.
To prevent clock drift and ensure accurate time, set up time synchronization using a Network Time Protocol (NTP) client such as systemd-timesyncd.
Edit /etc/locale.gen
and uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
and other needed UTF-8 locales. Generate the locales by running:
# locale-gen
Create the locale.conf(5) file, and set the LANG variable accordingly:
/etc/locale.conf
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
If you set the console keyboard layout, make the changes persistent in vconsole.conf(5):
/etc/vconsole.conf
KEYMAP=de-latin1
/etc/hostname
yourhostname
Complete the network configuration for the newly installed environment. That may include installing suitable network management software, configuring it if necessary and enabling its systemd unit so that it starts at boot.
Creating a new initramfs is usually not required, because mkinitcpio was run on installation of the kernel package with pacstrap.
For LVM, system encryption or RAID, modify mkinitcpio.conf(5) and recreate the initramfs image:
# mkinitcpio -P
Set the root password:
# passwd
Choose and install a Linux-capable boot loader.
Exit the chroot environment by typing exit
or pressing Ctrl+d
.
Optionally manually unmount all the partitions with umount -R /mnt
: this allows noticing any "busy" partitions, and finding the cause with fuser(1).
Finally, restart the machine by typing reboot
: any partitions still mounted will be automatically unmounted by systemd. Remember to remove the installation medium and then login into the new system with the root account.
See General recommendations for system management directions and post-installation tutorials (like creating unprivileged user accounts, setting up a graphical user interface, sound or a touchpad).
For a list of applications that may be of interest, see List of applications.