Beginners' Guide

From ArchWiki Tip: This guide is also available in multiple pages, rather than one large copy. If you would rather follow it that way, please start here. This document will guide you through the process of installing Arch Linux using the Arch Install Scripts (https://github.com /falconindy/arch-install-scripts) . Before installing, you are advised to skim over the FAQ. Summary Provides a highly detailed, explanatory guide to installing, conguring and using a full-featured Arch Linux system.

The community-maintained Arch wiki is an excellent resource and should be consulted for issues rst. The IRC channel (irc://irc.freenode.net/#archlinux), and the forums (https://bbs.archlinux.org/) are also available if the answer Related cannot be found elsewhere. Also, be sure to check out the man pages for any command you are unfamiliar with; this can usually Category:Accessibility be invoked with man command . Installation Guide

Contents
1 Preparation 1.1 Burn or write the latest installation medium 1.1.1 Installing over the network 1.1.2 Installing on a virtual machine 1.2 Boot the installation medium 1.2.1 Testing if you are booted into UEFI mode 1.2.2 Troubleshooting boot problems 2 Installation 2.1 Change the language 2.2 Establish an internet connection 2.2.1 Wired 2.2.2 Wireless 2.2.3 xDSL (PPPoE), analog modem or ISDN 2.2.4 Behind a proxy server 2.3 Prepare the storage drive 2.3.1 Example 2.4 Mount the partitions 2.5 Select a mirror 2.6 Install the base system 2.7 Generate an fstab 2.8 Chroot and congure the base system 2.8.1 Locale 2.8.2 Console font and keymap 2.8.3 Time zone 2.8.4 Hardware clock 2.8.5 Kernel modules 2.8.6 Hostname

Network Installation Guide Install from SSH General Recommendations General Troubleshooting

2.9 Congure the network 2.9.1 Wired 2.9.2 Wireless 2.9.3 xDSL (PPPoE), analog modem or ISDN 2.10 Congure pacman 2.11 Create an initial ramdisk environment 2.12 Set the root password and add a regular user 2.13 Install and congure a bootloader 2.13.1 For BIOS motherboards 2.13.1.1 Syslinux 2.13.1.2 GRUB 2.13.2 For UEFI motherboards 2.13.2.1 EFISTUB 2.13.2.2 GRUB 2.14 Unmount the partitions and reboot 3 Extra 3.1 Package management 3.2 Sound 3.3 Graphical User Interface 3.3.1 Install X 3.3.2 Install a video driver 3.3.3 Install input drivers 3.3.4 Congure X 3.3.5 Test X 3.3.5.1 Troubleshooting 3.3.6 Fonts 3.3.7 Choose and install a graphical interface 4 Appendix

Preparation
Note: If you wish to install from an existing GNU/Linux distribution, please see this article. This can be useful particularly if you plan to install Arch via VNC or SSH remotely.

Burn or write the latest installation medium

This guide pertains to the current release (2012.11.01), which can be obtained from the Download (http://archlinux.org/download/) page. Burn the ISO image on a CD or DVD with your preferred software. Note: The quality of optical drives and the discs themselves varies greatly. Generally, using a slow burn speed is recommended for reliable burns. If you are experiencing unexpected behaviour from the disc, try burning at the lowest speed supported by your burner. Or you can write the ISO image on a USB stick. For detailed instructions, see USB Installation Media.

Installing over the network Instead of writing the boot media to a disc or USB stick, you may alternatively boot the .iso image over the network. This works well when you already have a server set up. Please see this article for more information, and then continue to Boot the installation medium. Installing on a virtual machine Installing on a virtual machine is a good way to become familiar with Arch Linux and its installation procedure without leaving your current operating system and repartitioning the storage drive. It will also let you keep this Beginners' Guide open in your browser throughout the installation. Some users may nd it benecial to have an independent Arch Linux system on a virtual drive, for testing purposes. Examples of virtualization software are VirtualBox, VMware, QEMU, Xen, Varch, Parallels. The exact procedure for preparing a virtual machine depends on the software, but will generally follow these steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. Create the virtual disk image that will host the operating system. Properly congure the virtual machine parameters. Boot the downloaded ISO image with a virtual CD drive. Continue with Boot the installation medium.

The following articles may be helpful: Arch Linux VirtualBox Guest Installing Arch Linux from VirtualBox VirtualBox Arch Linux Guest On Physical Drive Installing Arch Linux in VMware Moving an existing install into (or out of) a virtual machine

Boot the installation medium

First, you may have to change the boot order in your computer's BIOS. To do this, you have to press a key (usually Delete , F1 , F2 , F11 or F12 ) during the POST (Power On Self-Test) phase. Then, select "Boot Arch Linux" from the menu and press Enter in order to begin with the installation. Note: The memory requirement for a basic install is 64 MB of RAM. Note: Users seeking to perform the Arch Linux installation remotely via an SSH connection are encouraged to make a few tweaks at this point to enable SSH connections directly to the live CD environment. If interested, see the Install from SSH article.
Testing if you are booted into UEFI mode

In case you have a UEFI motherboard, the CD/USB will launch UEFI Shell and display a message that startup.nsh script will be launched. Allow the shell to launch it, and exit the shell. Select "UEFI CD: Arch Linux" (or similar) from a list. Then, to check whether

you have booted into UEFI mode, load the efivars kernel module (before chrooting) and then check whether there are les in /sys/firmware/efi/vars/ :
# modprobe efivars # before chrooting # ls -1 /sys/firmware/efi/vars/

Note: The kernel module efivars detects and populates the UEFI Runtime Variables at /sys/firmware/efi/vars . This module is not loaded automatically during the boot process, and until this module is loaded, and the kernel booted in UEFI mode, without noefi parameter, no les will exist in /sys/firmware/efi/vars . These variables are later modied by efibootmgr to add bootloader entry to UEFI boot menu. In BIOS mode, modprobe will not give any error about evars module. The correct way to detect UEFI boot is to check for les in /sys/firmware/efi/vars .
Troubleshooting boot problems

If you're using an Intel video chipset and the screen goes blank during the boot process, the problem is likely an issue with Kernel Mode Setting (KMS). A possible workaround may be achieved by rebooting and pressing Tab over the entry that you're trying to boot (i686 or x86_64). At the end of the string type nomodeset and press Enter . Alternatively, try video=SVIDEO-1:d which, if it works, will not disable kernel mode setting. See the Intel article for more information. If the screen does not go blank and the boot process gets stuck while trying to load the kernel, press Tab while hovering over the menu entry, type acpi=off at the end of the string and press Enter .

Installation
You are now presented with a shell prompt, automatically logged in as root.

Change the language

Tip: These are optional for the majority of users. Useful only if you plan on writing in your own language in any of the conguration les, if you use diacritical marks in the Wi-Fi password, or if you would like to receive system messages (e.g. possible errors) in your own language. By default, the keyboard layout is set to
# loadkeys layout

us .

If you have a non-US keyboard layout, run:

...where layout can be

fr , uk , be-latin1 ,

etc. See here for a comprehensive list.

The font should also be changed, because most languages use more glyphs than the 26 letter English alphabet. Otherwise some foreign characters may show up as white squares or as other symbols. Note that the name is case-sensitive, so please type it exactly as you see it:
# setfont Lat2-Terminus16

By default, the language is set to English (US). If you would like to change the language for the install process (German, in this example), remove the # in front of the locale (http://www.greendesktiny.com/support/knowledgebase_detail.php?ref=EUH-483) you want from /etc/locale.gen , along with English (US). Please choose the UTF-8 entry. Use Ctrl+X to exit, and when prompted to save changes, press same lename.
# nano /etc/locale.gen en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8

and

Enter

to use the

# locale-gen # export LANG=de_DE.UTF-8

Remember,

LAlt+LShift

activates and deactivates the keymap.

Establish an internet connection

The dhcpcd network daemon is started automatically at boot and it will attempt to start a wired connection, if available. Try pinging a website to see if it was successful. And since Google is always on...
# 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

If you get a ping: explained below.

unknown host

error, you will need to set up the network manually, as

Otherwise, move on to Prepare the storage drive. Wired Follow this procedure if you need to set up a wired connection via a static IP address. If your computer is connected to an Ethernet network, in most cases, you will have one interface, called eth0 . If you have additional network cards (apart from the one integrated on the motherboard, for example), their name will follow the sequence eth1 , eth2 , etc. You need to know these settings: Static IP address. Subnet mask. Gateway's IP address. Name servers' (DNS) IP addresses.

Domain name (unless you're on a local LAN, in which case you can make it up). Activate the connected Ethernet interface (e.g.
# ip link set eth0 up

eth0 ):

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, run

man ip .

Add your gateway like this, substituting your own gateway's IP address:
# ip route add default via <ip address>

For example:
# ip route add default via 192.168.1.1

Edit resolv.conf , substituting your name servers' IP addresses and your local domain name:
# nano /etc/resolv.conf nameserver 61.23.173.5 nameserver 61.95.849.8 search example.com

Note: Currently, you may include a maximum of 3

nameserver

lines.

You should now have a working network connection. If you do not, check the detailed Conguring Network page. Wireless Follow this procedure if you need wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi) 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 conguration. 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. Note: The following examples use wlan0 for the interface and Remember to change these values according to your setup. The basic procedure will be: (optional) Identify the wireless interface:
# lspci | grep -i net

linksys

for the ESSID.

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 iwconfig : Note: If you do not see output similar to this, then your wireless driver has not been loaded. If this is the case, you must load the driver yourself. Please see Wireless Setup for more detailed information.
# 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

In this example,

wlan0

is the available wireless interface.

Bring the interface up with:

# ip link set wlan0 up

A small percentage of wireless chipsets also require rmware, in addition to a corresponding driver. If the wireless chipset requires rmware, 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 chipset.

dmesg

to query the kernel log for a rmware request from the wireless

Example output from an Intel chipset which requires and has requested rmware 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 rmware. Warning: Wireless chipset rmware packages (for cards which require them) are pre-installed under /usr/lib/firmware in the live environment (on CD/USB stick) but must be explicitly installed to your actual system to provide wireless functionality after you reboot into it! Package installation is covered later in this guide. Ensure installation of both your wireless module and rmware before rebooting! See Wireless Setup if you are unsure about the requirement of corresponding rmware installation for your particular chipset. Next, use network:
netcfg (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=netcfg)

's

wifi-menu

to connect to a

# wifi-menu wlan0

You should now have a working network connection. If you do not, check the detailed Wireless Setup page. xDSL (PPPoE), analog modem or ISDN If you have a router in bridge mode, run:
# pppoe-setup

Type in the username that the ISP provided you with. Press Enter for "eth0". Press Enter for "no", so that it stays up continuously. Type server (since this is usually the case). Press 1 for a rewall. Type in the password that the ISP provided you with. Press Y at the end. To use these settings and connect to your ISP , run:
# pppoe-start

You may also need to adjust your

resolv.conf

# echo nameserver 8.8.8.8 > /etc/resolv.conf

If you have a dial-up or ISDN connection, see Direct Modem Connection. Behind a 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.

Prepare the storage drive

Warning: Partitioning can destroy data. You are strongly cautioned and advised to backup any critical data before proceeding. Absolute beginners are encouraged to use a graphical partitioning tool. GParted (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php) is a good example, run from a "live" Linux distribution such as Parted Magic, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc. A drive should rst be partitioned and the partitions should be formatted with a le system before rebooting. It's possible to set up a swap le at any point after installation, so there is no need to decide on swap size now. See Swap for details if you wish to set up a swap partition now (but note that it's much easier to resize a le than a partition). If you have already done so, proceed to Mount the partitions. Otherwise, see the following example. Example The Arch Linux install media includes the following partitioning tools: gdisk supports only GPT partition tables. cfdisk supports only MBR partition tables. parted supports both. This example uses cfdisk, but it can easily be followed using gdisk, which will allow for GPT instead of MBR partitioning. Notes regarding UEFI boot: If you have a UEFI motherboard, you will need to create an extra UEFI System partition. It is recommended to always use GPT for UEFI boot, as some UEFI rmwares do not allow UEFI-MBR boot. Notes regarding GPT partitioning: If you are not dual booting with Windows, then it is advisable to use GPT instead of MBR. Read GPT for a list of advantages. If you have a BIOS motherboard (or plan on booting in BIOS compatibility mode) and you want to setup GRUB on a GPT-partitioned drive, you will need to create a 2 MiB "BIOS Boot Partition". Syslinux doesn't need one. Some BIOS systems may have issues with GPT. See http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org /8035.html and http://rodsbooks.com/gdisk/bios.html for more info and possible workarounds. Note: If you are installing to a USB ash key, see Installing Arch Linux on a USB key.

# cfdisk /dev/sda

The example system will contain a 15 GB root partition, and a home partition for the remaining space. It should be emphasized that partitioning is a personal choice and that this example is only for illustrative purposes. See Partitioning. Root: Choose New (or press Enter for Bootable. Home: Press the down arrow to move to the free space area. Choose New (or press N ) Enter for Primary Enter to use the rest of the drive (or you could type in the desired size). Here's how it should look like:
Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB) ----------------------------------------------------------------------sda1 Boot Primary Linux 15360 sda2 Primary Linux 133000*

N)

Enter

for Primary type in "15360"

Enter

for Beginning

Double check and make sure that 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 (or press saving changes and then restart cfdisk.
Q)

to exit without

If you are satised, choose Write (or press Shift+W ) to nalize and to write the partition table to the drive. Type "yes" and choose Quit (or press Q ) to exit cfdisk without making any more changes. Simply partitioning is not enough; the partitions also need a lesystem. To format the partitions with an ext4 lesystem: Warning: Double check and triple check that it's actually you want to format.
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 # mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

/dev/sda1

and

/dev/sda2

that

Mount the partitions

Each partition is identied with a number sux. For example, sda1 species the rst partition of the rst drive, while sda designates the entire drive. To display the current partition layout:
# lsblk /dev/sda

Pay attention, because the mounting order is important. First, mount the root partition on dierent), it would be:
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

/mnt .

Following the example above (yours may be

Then mount the have any:

/home

partition and any other separate partition ( /boot ,

/var ,

etc), if you

# mkdir /mnt/home # mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/home

In case you have a UEFI motherboard, mount the UEFI partition:

# mkdir /mnt/boot/efi # mount /dev/sdaX /mnt/boot/efi

Select a mirror
Before installing, you may want to edit the mirrorlist le and place your preferred mirror rst. A copy of this le will be installed on your new system by pacstrap as well, so it's worth getting it right.
# nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist ## ## Arch Linux repository mirrorlist ## Sorted by mirror score from mirror status page ## Generated on 2012-MM-DD ## Server = http://mirror.example.xyz/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch ...

to copy a Server line. key to scroll up. Ctrl+U to paste it at the top of the list. Ctrl+X to exit, and when prompted to save changes, press same lename.
Alt+6 PageUp

and

Enter

to use the

If you want, you can make it the only mirror available by getting rid of everything else (using Ctrl+K ), but it's usually a good idea to have a few more, in case the rst one goes oine. Tip: Use the Mirrorlist Generator (http://www.archlinux.org/mirrorlist/) to get an updated list for your country. HTTP mirrors are faster than FTP , because of something called keepalive. With FTP , pacman has to send out a signal each time it downloads a package, resulting in a brief pause. For other ways to generate a mirror list, see Sorting mirrors and Reector. Arch Linux MirrorStatus (https://archlinux.org/mirrors/status/) reports various aspects about the mirrors such as network problems with mirrors, data collection

problems, the last time mirrors have been synced, etc. Note: Whenever in the future you change your list of mirrors, always remember to force pacman to refresh all package lists with pacman -Syy . This is considered to be good practice and will avoid possible headaches. See Mirrors for more information. If you're using an older installation medium, your mirrorlist might be outdated, which might lead to problems when updating Arch Linux (see FS#22510 (https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/22510) ). Therefore it is advised to obtain the latest mirror information as described above. Some issues have been reported in the Arch Linux forums (https://bbs.archlinux.org/) regarding network problems that prevent pacman from updating/synchronizing repositories (see [1] (https://bbs.archlinux.org /viewtopic.php?id=68944) and [2] (https://bbs.archlinux.org /viewtopic.php?id=65728) ). When installing Arch Linux natively, these issues have been resolved by replacing the default pacman le downloader with an alternative (see Improve Pacman Performance for more details). When installing Arch Linux as a guest OS in VirtualBox, this issue has also been addressed by using "Host interface" instead of "NAT" in the machine properties.

Install the base system

The base system is installed using the pacstrap (https://github.com/falconindy/archinstall-scripts/blob/master/pacstrap.in) script. The -i switch can be omitted if you wish to install every package from the base and base-devel groups without prompting.
# pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel

Note: If pacman fails to verify your packages, check the system time with cal . If the system date is invalid (e.g. it shows year 2010), signing keys will be considered expired (or invalid), signature checks on packages will fail and installation will be interrupted. Make sure to correct the system time, either by doing so manually or with the ntp (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=ntp) client, and retry running the pacstrap command. Refer to Time page for more information on correcting system time.
base (https://www.archlinux.org/groups/i686/base/)

: Software packages from the [core] repo to provide the minimal base environment.

base-devel (https://www.archlinux.org/groups/i686/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 the 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 an fstab

Generate an fstab le with the following command. UUIDs will be used because they have certain advantages (see fstab#Identifying lesystems). If you would prefer to use labels instead, replace the -U option with -L . Note: If you encounter errors running genfstab or later in the install process, do not run genfstab again; just edit the fstab le.
# genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab # nano /mnt/etc/fstab

A few considerations: Replace "codepage=cp437" with "codepage=437" or else when you next reboot, any mounts with this option will fail and systemd will halt and drop into recovery mode. Please take the time to align the columns properly, using spaces and the Tab key, like in the examples from the fstab page. This way it's easier to read and also easier to spot a problem. Only the root ( / ) partition needs 1 for the last eld. Everything else should have either 2 or 0 (see fstab#Field denitions). The data=ordered option can be removed, because it will be used automatically whether you specify it or not. No point in cluttering up your fstab. For machines with less than 384 MB RAM, the tmpfs entry should also be removed, because by default it uses half the available RAM.

Chroot and congure the base system

Next, we chroot into our newly installed system:
# arch-chroot /mnt

At this stage of the installation, you will congure the primary conguration les of your Arch Linux base system. These can either be created if they do not exist, or edited if you wish to change the defaults. Closely following and understanding these steps is of key importance to ensure a properly congured system. Locale Locales are used by glibc and other locale-aware programs or libraries for rendering text, correctly displaying regional monetary values, time and date formats, alphabetic idiosyncrasies, and other locale-specic standards. There are two les that need editing:
locale.gen

and

locale.conf

The locale.gen le is empty by default (everything is commented out) and you need to remove the # in front of the line(s) you want. You may uncomment more lines than just English (US), as long as you choose their UTF-8 encoding:
# nano /etc/locale.gen en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8

# locale-gen

This will run on every glibc upgrade, generating all the locales specied in /etc/locale.gen . The locale.conf le doesn't exist by default. Setting only will act as the default value for all other variables.
# echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf # export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

LANG

should be enough. It

Note: If you set some other language than English at the beginning of the install, the above commands would be something like:
# echo LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf # export LANG=de_DE.UTF-8

To use other LC_* variables, rst run example can be found here. Warning: Using the everything.
LC_ALL

locale

to see the available options. An advanced

variable is strongly discouraged because it overrides

Console font and keymap If you set a keymap at the beginning of the install process, load it now, as well, because the environment has changed. For example:
# loadkeys de-latin1 # setfont Lat2-Terminus16

To make them available after reboot, edit

# nano /etc/vconsole.conf KEYMAP=de-latin1 FONT=Lat2-Terminus16 FONT_MAP=

vconsole.conf

KEYMAP Please note that this setting is only valid for your TTYs, not any graphical window managers or Xorg.

Available alternate console fonts reside in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ . The default (blank) is safe, but some foreign characters may show up as white squares or as other symbols. It's recommended that you change it to Lat2-Terminus16 , because according to /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/README.Lat2-Terminus16 , it claims to support "about 110 language sets".
FONT FONT_MAP

Denes the console map to load at boot. Read

man setfont

. The default

(blank) is safe. See Console fonts and Time zone Available time zones and subzones can be found in the directories. To view the available <Zone>, check the directory
# ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/

man vconsole.conf

for more information.

/usr/share/zoneinfo/<Zone>/<SubZone>

/usr/share/zoneinfo/

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

# ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe

Create a symbolic link using this command:

/etc/localtime

to your zone le

/usr/share/zoneinfo/<Zone>/<SubZone>

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

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

Hardware clock Set the hardware clock mode uniformly between your operating systems. Otherwise, they may overwrite the hardware clock and cause time shifts. You can generate
/etc/adjtime

automatically by using one of the following commands:

UTC (recommended) Note: Using UTC for the hardware clock does not mean that software will display time in UTC.
# hwclock --systohc --utc

localtime (discouraged; used by default in Windows) Warning: Using localtime may lead to several known and unxable bugs. However, there are no plans to drop support for localtime.
# hwclock --systohc --localtime

If you have (or planning on having) a dual boot setup with Windows:

Recommended: Set both Arch Linux and Windows to use UTC. A quick registry x is needed. Also, be sure to prevent Windows from synchronizing the time on-line, because the hardware clock will default back to localtime. 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 disable any time-related services, like ntpd.service . This will let Windows take care of hardware clock corrections and you will need to remember to boot into Windows at least two times a year (in Spring and Autumn) when DST kicks in. So please don't ask on the forums why the clock is one hour behind or ahead if you usually go for days or weeks without booting into Windows. Kernel modules Tip: This is just an example, you do not need to set it. All needed modules are automatically loaded by udev, so you will rarely need to add something here. Only add modules that you know are missing. For kernel modules to load during boot, place a name based on the program that uses them.
# nano /etc/modules-load.d/virtio-net.conf # Load 'virtio-net.ko' at boot. virtio-net

*.conf

le in

/etc/modules-load.d/

, with a

If there are more modules to load per *.conf , the module names can be separated by newlines. A good example are the VirtualBox Guest Additions. Empty lines and lines starting with Hostname Set the hostname to your liking (e.g. arch):
# echo myhostname > /etc/hostname

or

are ignored.

Note: You no longer need to edit /etc/hosts . The nss-myhostname (https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=nss-myhostname) package will provide host name resolution, and is installed on all systems by default.

Congure the network

You need to congure 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. Note: For more in-depth information on network congration, visit Conguring Network and Wireless Setup.

Wired Dynamic IP If you only use a single xed wired network connection, you do not need a network management service and can simply enable the dhcpcd service:
# systemctl enable dhcpcd@eth0.service

Alternatively, you can use netcfg (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=netcfg) 's net-auto-wired , which gracefully handles dynamic connections to new networks:
# # # # pacman -S ifplugd cd /etc/network.d ln -s examples/ethernet-dhcp . systemctl enable net-auto-wired.service

Static IP Install
ifplugd (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=ifplugd)

, which is required for

net-auto-wired

# pacman -S ifplugd

Copy a sample prole from

# cd /etc/network.d # cp examples/ethernet-static .

/etc/network.d/examples

to

/etc/network.d

Edit the prole as needed:

# nano ethernet-static

Enable the

net-auto-wired

service:

# systemctl enable net-auto-wired.service

Wireless You will need to install additional programs to be able to congure and manage wireless network proles for netcfg. NetworkManager and Wicd are other popular alternatives. Install the required packages:
# pacman -S wireless_tools wpa_supplicant wpa_actiond dialog

If your wireless adapter requires a rmware (as described in the above Establish an internet connection section and also here), install the package containing your rmware. For example:

# pacman -S zd1211-firmware

Connect to the network with wifi-menu (optionally checking the interface name with ip link , but usually it's wlan0 ), which will generate a prole le in /etc/network.d named after the SSID. There are also templates available in /etc/network.d/examples/ for manual conguration.
# wifi-menu

Enable the net-auto-wireless service, which will connect to known networks and gracefully handle roaming and disconnects:
# systemctl enable net-auto-wireless.service

Note: Netcfg also provides net-auto-wireless .

net-auto-wired

, which can be used in conjunction with

Make sure that the correct wireless interface (usually /etc/conf.d/netcfg :

# nano /etc/conf.d/netcfg WIRELESS_INTERFACE="wlan0"

wlan0 )

is set in

It is also possible to dene a list of network proles that should be automatically connected, using the AUTO_PROFILES variable in /etc/conf.d/netcfg . If AUTO_PROFILES is not set, all known wireless networks will be tried. xDSL (PPPoE), analog modem or ISDN For xDSL, dial-up and ISDN connections, see Direct Modem Connection.

Congure pacman
Pacman is the Arch Linux package manager. It is highly recommended to study and learn how to use it. Read man pacman , have a look at the pacman article, or check out the Pacman Rosetta article for a comparison to other popular package managers. For repository selections and pacman options, edit
pacman.conf

Note: When choosing repos, be sure to uncomment both the [repo_name] header lines, as well as the Include lines. Failure to do so will result in the selected repository being omitted! This is a very common error.
# nano /etc/pacman.conf

Most people will want to use

[core] , [extra]

and

[community]

.
[multilib]

If you installed Arch Linux x86_64, it's recommended that you enable the repository, as well (to be able to run both 32 bit and 64 bit applications):

[multilib] Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

See Ocial Repositories for more information, including details about the purpose of each repository. For software unavailable directly through pacman, see Arch User Repository.

Create an initial ramdisk environment

Tip: Most users can skip this step and use the defaults provided in mkinitcpio.conf . The initramfs image (from the /boot folder) has already been generated based on this le when the linux (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=linux) package (the Linux kernel) was installed earlier with pacstrap . Here you need to set the right hooks if the root is on a USB drive, if you use RAID, LVM, or if /usr is on a separate partition. Edit
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf

as needed and re-generate the initramfs image with:

# mkinitcpio -p linux

Set the root password and add a regular user

Set the root password with:
# passwd

Warning: Linux is a multi-user operating system. You should not perform everyday tasks using the root account. It is considered a very poor practice and could be extremely dangerous. The root account should only be used for administrative tasks. Then add a normal user account. For a more interactive way, you can use adduser . However, below is the non-interactive way. The user archie is just an example.
# useradd -m -g users -s /bin/bash archie # passwd archie

If you wish to start over, use userdel . The -r option will remove the user's home directory and its content, along with the user's settings (the so-called "dot" les).
# userdel -r archie

For more information, read Users and Groups.

Install and congure a bootloader

For BIOS motherboards For BIOS systems, there are three bootloaders - Syslinux, GRUB, and LILO. Choose the

bootloader as per your convenience. Below only Syslinux and GRUB are explained. Syslinux is (currently) limited to loading only les from the partition where it was installed. Its conguration le is considered to be easier to understand. An example conguration can be found here (https://bbs.archlinux.org /viewtopic.php?pid=1109328#p1109328) . GRUB is more feature-rich and supports more complex scenarios. Its conguration le(s) is more similar to a scripting language, which may be dicult for beginners to manually write. It is recommended that they automatically generate one. Note: Some BIOS systems may have issues with GPT. See http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org /8035.html and http://rodsbooks.com/gdisk/bios.html for more info and possible workarounds.
Syslinux

Install the syslinux (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=syslinux) package and then use the syslinux-install_update script to automatically install the les ( -i ), mark the partition active by setting the boot ag ( -a ), and install the MBR boot code ( -m ): Note: If you have partitioned the drive as GPT, install gptfdisk (https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=gptfdisk) package, as well ( pacman -S gptfdisk ), because it contains sgdisk , which will be used to set the GPT-specic boot ag.
# pacman -S syslinux # syslinux-install_update -iam

Congure 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. Change /dev/sda3 to reect your root partition (if you partitioned your drive as in the example, your root partition is sda1). Do the same for the fallback entry.
# nano /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg ... LABEL arch ... APPEND root=/dev/sda3 ro ...

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

GRUB

Install the

grub-bios (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=grub-bios)

package and then run

grub-install :

Note: Change /dev/sda to reect the drive you installed Arch on. Do not append a partition number (do not use sdaX ). Note: For GPT-partitioned drives on BIOS motherboards, GRUB needs a 2 MiB "BIOS

Boot Partition".
# pacman -S grub-bios # grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/sda # cp /usr/share/locale/en\@quot/LC_MESSAGES/grub.mo /boot/grub/locale/en.mo

While using a manually created grub.cfg is absolutely ne, it's recommended that beginners automatically generate one: Tip: To automatically search for other operating systems on your computer, install os-prober (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=os-prober) ( pacman -S os-prober ) before running the next command.
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

For more information on conguring and using GRUB, see GRUB. For UEFI motherboards For UEFI boot, the drive needs to be GPT-partitioned, and a UEFI System Partition (512 MiB or higher, FAT32, type EF00 ) must be present and mounted on /boot/efi . If you have followed this guide from the beginning, you've already done all of these. While there are other UEFI bootloaders available, using EFISTUB is recommended. Below are instructions for setting up EFISTUB and GRUB. Note: Syslinux does not yet support UEFI.
EFISTUB

The Linux kernel can act as its own bootloader using EFISTUB. This is the UEFI boot method recommended by developers and simpler compared to grub-efi-x86_64 . The below steps set up rEFInd (a fork of rEFIt) to provide a menu for EFISTUB kernels, as well as for booting other UEFI bootloaders. You can also use gummiboot instead of rEFInd. Both rEFInd and gummiboot can detect Windows UEFI bootloader in case of dual-boot. 1. Boot in UEFI mode and load
# modprobe efivars

efivars

kernel module before chrooting:

# before chrooting

2. Mount the UEFISYS partition at initramfs les to /boot/efi .

/mnt/boot/efi

, chroot and copy the kernel and

3. Every time the kernel and initramfs les are updated in /boot , they need to be updated in /boot/efi/EFI/arch . This can be automated either using systemd or using incron (for non-systemd setups). 4. At this point, you can jump to UEFI Bootloaders#Booting EFISTUB to choose a method of installing the boot loader. The following instructions will get you set up using a boot GUI called rEFInd. Install the following packages:

# pacman -S refind-efi efibootmgr

5. Install rEFInd to the UEFISYS partition (summarized from UEFI Bootloaders#Using rEFInd):
# # # # mkdir -p /boot/efi/EFI/refind cp /usr/lib/refind/refindx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refindx64.efi cp /usr/lib/refind/config/refind.conf /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf cp -r /usr/share/refind/icons /boot/efi/EFI/refind/icons

6. Create a

refind_linux.conf

le with the kernel parameters to be used by rEFInd:

# nano /boot/efi/EFI/arch/refind_linux.conf "Boot to X" "Boot to console" "root=/dev/sdaX ro rootfstype=ext4 systemd.unit=graphical.target" "root=/dev/sdaX ro rootfstype=ext4 systemd.unit=multi-user.target"

Note: refind_linux.conf should be in the same directory as the kernel and initramfs les, not the directory refindx64.efi resides. 7. Add rEFInd to UEFI boot menu using ebootmgr. Warning: Using efibootmgr on Apple Macs may brick the rmware and may need reash of the motherboard ROM. For Macs, use mactel-boot (https://aur.archlinux.org /packages/mactel-boot/) , or "bless" from within Mac OS X.
# efibootmgr -c -g -d /dev/sdX -p Y -w -L "rEFInd" -l '\EFI\refind\refindx64.efi'

Note: In the above command, X and Y denote the drive and partition of the UEFISYS partition. For example, in /dev/sdc5 , X is "c" and Y is "5". 8. (Optional) As a fallback, in case efibootmgr created boot entry does not work, copy refindx64.efi to /boot/efi/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi as follows:
# cp -r /boot/efi/EFI/refind/* /boot/efi/EFI/boot/ # mv /boot/efi/EFI/boot/refindx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi

GRUB

Note: In case you have a system with 32-bit EFI, like pre-2008 Macs, install grub-efi-i386 instead, and use --target=i386-efi .
# pacman -S grub-efi-x86_64 efibootmgr # grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck # cp /usr/share/locale/en\@quot/LC_MESSAGES/grub.mo /boot/grub/locale/en.mo

The next command creates a menu entry for GRUB in the UEFI boot menu. However, as of grub-efi-x86_64 (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=grub-efi-x86_64) version 2.00, grub-install tries to create a menu entry, so running efibootmgr may not be necessary. See UEFI#ebootmgr for more info.

# efibootmgr -c -g -d /dev/sdX -p Y -w -L "Arch Linux (GRUB)" -l '\EFI\arch_grub\grubx64.efi'

Next, while using a manually created grub.cfg is absolutely ne, it's recommended that beginners automatically generate one: Tip: To automatically search for other operating systems on your computer, install os-prober (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=os-prober) ( pacman -S os-prober ) before running the next command.
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

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

Unmount the partitions and reboot

Exit from the chroot environment:
# exit

Since the partitions are mounted under them:

# umount /mnt/{boot,home,}

/mnt ,

we use the following command to unmount

Reboot the computer:

# reboot

Tip: Be sure to remove the installation media, otherwise you will boot back into it.

Extra
Congratulations, and welcome to your new Arch Linux system! Your new Arch Linux base system is now a functional GNU/Linux environment ready for customization. From here, you may build this elegant set of tools into whatever you wish or require for your purposes. Most people are interested in a desktop system, complete with sound and graphics: this part of the guide provides a brief overview of the procedures to acquire these extras. Go ahead and login with your user account.

Package management
Sudo can noticeably simplify administering your system. See pacman and FAQ#Package Management for answers regarding installing, updating, and managing packages.

Sound

(https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=alsa-utils)

ALSA usually works out-of-the-box. It just needs to be unmuted. Install alsa-utils (which contains alsamixer ) and follow these instructions. ALSA is included with the kernel and it is recommended to try it rst. However, if it does not work, or if you are not satised with the quality, OSS is a viable alternative. If you have advanced audio requirements, take a look at Sound for an overview of various articles.

Graphical User Interface

Install X The X Window System (commonly X11, or X) is a networking and display protocol which provides windowing on bitmap displays. It provides the standard toolkit and protocol to build graphical user interfaces (GUIs). To install the base Xorg packages:
# pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-server-utils

Install mesa for 3D support:

# pacman -S mesa

Install a video driver Note: If you installed Arch as a VirtualBox guest, you don't need to install a video driver. See Arch Linux guests for installing and setting up Guest Additions, and jump to the conguration part below. If you don't know which video chipset is available on your machine, run:
$ lspci | grep VGA

For a complete list of open-source video drivers, search the package database:
$ pacman -Ss xf86-video | less

The vesa driver is a generic mode-setting driver that will work with almost every GPU, but will not provide any 2D or 3D acceleration. If a better driver cannot be found or fails to load, Xorg will fall back to vesa. To install it:
# pacman -S xf86-video-vesa

In order for video acceleration to work, and often to expose all the modes that the GPU can set, a proper video driver is required: Brand Type Driver Multilib Package (for 32 bit Documentation

applications on Arch x86_64)

xf86-video-ati lib32-ati-dri /packages/?name=lib32ati-dri) lib32-catalyst-utils /packages/?name=lib32catalyst-utils) lib32-intel-dri /packages/?name=lib32intel-dri)

Open source AMD/ATI Proprietary

(https://www.archlinux.org (https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=xf86video-ati) catalyst-dkms /packages /?name=catalyst-dkms) xf86-video-intel /packages/?name=xf86-

ATI

(https://www.archlinux.org (https://www.archlinux.org

AMD Catalyst

(https://www.archlinux.org (https://www.archlinux.org

Intel

Intel

Open source

video-intel) xf86-video-i740 (https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=xf86video-i740) xf86-video-nouveau (https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=xf86video-nouveau)

(legacy driver)

lib32-nouveau-dri (https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=lib32nouveau-dri)

(+

nouveau-dri

Nouveau

Open source Nvidia

(https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=nouveau-dri)

for

3D support)
xf86-video-nv (https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=xf86video-nv) nvidia lib32-nvidia-utils (https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=lib32nvidia-utils)

(legacy driver)

Proprietary

(https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=nvidia) xf86-video-sis (https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=xf86video-sis) xf86-video-sisimedia

NVIDIA

SiS

Open source

(https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=xf86video-sisimedia) xf86-video-sisusb (https://www.archlinux.org /packages/?name=xf86video-sisusb)

SiS

Install input drivers

Udev should be capable of detecting your hardware without problems. The evdev driver (xf86-input-evdev (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=xf86-input-evdev) ) is the modern hot-plugging input driver for almost all devices, so in most cases, installing input drivers is not needed. At this point, evdev has already been installed as a dependency of the xorg-server (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=xorg-server) package. Laptop users (or users with a tactile screen) will need the xf86-input-synaptics (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=xf86-input-synaptics) package for the touchpad/touchscreen to work:
# pacman -S xf86-input-synaptics

For instructions on ne tuning or troubleshooting touchpad issues, see the Touchpad Synaptics article. Congure X Warning: Proprietary drivers usually require a reboot after installation. See NVIDIA or AMD Catalyst for details. Xorg features auto-detection and therefore can function without an xorg.conf . If you still wish to manually congure X Server, please see the Xorg wiki page. Here you may set a keyboard layout if you do not use a standard US keyboard. Note: The XkbLayout key may dier from the keymap code you used with the loadkeys command. A list of many keyboard layouts and variants can be found in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst (after the line beginning with ! layout ). For instance, the layout gb corresponds to "English (UK)", whereas for the console it was loadkeys uk . Test X Tip: These steps are optional. Test only if you're installing Arch Linux for the rst time, or if you're installing on new and unfamiliar hardware. Note: If your input devices are not working during this test, install the needed driver from the xorg-drivers (https://www.archlinux.org/groups/i686/xorg-drivers/) group, and try again. For a complete list of available input drivers, invoke a pacman search (press Q to exit):
$ pacman -Ss xf86-input | less

You only need xf86-input-keyboard (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=xf86-input-keyboard) or xf86-input-mouse (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=xf86-input-mouse) if you plan on disabling hot-plugging, otherwise, evdev will act as the input driver (recommended). Install the default environment:
# pacman -S xorg-twm xorg-xclock xterm

If Xorg was installed before creating the non-root user, there will be a template .xinitrc le in your home directory that needs to be either deleted or commented out. Simply deleting it will cause X to run with the default environment installed above.
$ rm ~/.xinitrc

Note: X must always be run on the same tty where the login occurred, to preserve the logind session. This is handled by the default /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc . To start the (test) Xorg session, run:
$ startx

A few movable windows should show up, and your mouse should work. Once you are satised that X installation was a success, you may exit out of X by issuing the exit command into the prompts until you return to the console.
$ exit

If the screen goes black, you may still attempt to switch to a dierent virtual console (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+F2 ), and blindly log in as root. You can do this by typing "root" (press Enter after typing it) and entering the root password (again, press Enter after typing it). You may also attempt to kill the X server with:
# pkill X

If this does not work, reboot blindly with:

# reboot

Troubleshooting

If a problem occurs, look for errors in Xorg.0.log . Be on the lookout for any lines beginning with (EE) which represent errors, and also (WW) which are warnings that could indicate other issues.
$ grep EE /var/log/Xorg.0.log

If you are still having trouble after consulting the Xorg article and need assistance via the Arch Linux forums or the IRC channel, be sure to install and use wgetpaste (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=wgetpaste) by providing the links from:
# $ $ $ pacman -S wgetpaste wgetpaste wgetpaste wgetpaste ~/.xinitrc /etc/X11/xorg.conf /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Note: Please provide all pertinent information (hardware, driver information, etc)

when asking for assistance. Fonts At this point, you may wish to install a set of TrueType fonts, as only unscalable bitmap fonts are included by default. DejaVu is a set of high quality, general-purpose fonts with good Unicode coverage:
# pacman -S ttf-dejavu

Refer to Font Conguration for how to congure font rendering and Fonts for font suggestions and installation instructions. Choose and install a graphical interface The X Window System provides the basic framework for building a graphical user interface (GUI). Note: Choosing your DE or WM is a very subjective and personal decision. Choose the best environment for your needs. You can also build your own DE with just a WM and the applications of your choice. Window Managers (WM) control the placement and appearance of application windows in conjunction with the X Window System. Desktop Environments (DE) work atop and in conjunction with X, to provide a completely functional and dynamic GUI. A DE typically provides a window manager, icons, applets, windows, toolbars, folders, wallpapers, a suite of applications and abilities like drag and drop. Instead of starting X manually with xorg-xinit , see Display Manager for instructions on using a display manager, or see Start X at Login for using an existing virtual terminal as an equivalent to a display manager.

Appendix
For a list of applications that may be of interest, see List of Applications. See General Recommendations for post-installation tutorials like setting up a touchpad or font rendering.

Retrieved from "https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Beginners%27_Guide& oldid=234501" Categories: About Arch Getting and installing Arch This page was last modied on 9 November 2012, at 03:40. Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or later.