Talk:Installation guide

Notice for editors

systemd tools such as hostnamectl, timedatectl and localectl do not work in the installation chroot environment, so please do not propose to use them in the guide unless you can prove that they have been made to work also in that case. See [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5] for some past discussions about this issue.
Due to the wide variety of available boot loaders, the installation guide refers to Arch boot process#Boot loader instead of making a specific recommendation for the installed system. See [6], [7], [8], [9], [10] for some past discussions on this topic.
While Category:Installation process lists additional installation methods (e.g. archinstall or systemd-firstboot), the installation guide does not reference them due to their specific nature. Install Arch Linux with accessibility options is an exception. See [11] for a past discussion on this topic.

-- The ArchWiki Administrators 22:17, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Suggest a repo sync before pacstrap?

Latest comment: 2 August6 comments4 people in discussion

Recently I've seen several people have pacstrap fail during installation due to a failure to retrieve files. I have also ran into this issue myself several times in the past. Running pacman -Syy to sync the repos usually fixes this. Should we include an optional step to sync the repos before running pacstrap? Or at least mention that if you get the error failed to retrieve some files to try syncing the repos first? Caviarcbr (talk) 11:04, 20 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

pacstrap already does this: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/arch-install-scripts/-/blob/v31/pacstrap.in?ref_type=tags#L19

Your mirror was probably out of sync.

— andreymal (talk) 11:47, 20 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Chapter "2.1 Select the mirrors" - because: "On the live system, all HTTPS mirrors are enabled" Ua4000 (talk) 11:53, 20 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Maybe it's worth mentioning in this chapter that not updating the mirrorlist can cause errors when running pacstrap. As it's worded now, it makes it seem like it's only to increase download speed. I know it's not listed as an optional step, so people should be doing it anyway, but it seems the importance of this step isn't properly conveyed, and it's causing issues for people. Caviarcbr (talk) 12:00, 20 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Not updating the mirrorlist will land people on the fastly mirror, I don't see how people would encounter the same error you had in that case. A search on our forums or the web gave no relevant results for Failed retrieving file associated with "fastly.mirror.pkgbuild.com": do you have examples of people having issues during installation?

Edit: Nothing on my IRC logs either.

-- Erus Iluvatar (talk) 07:06, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Four weeks went by, no answer: closing. --Erus Iluvatar (talk) 06:45, 2 August 2026 (UTC)Reply