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Booting the installation medium

ATTENTION: The Arch Linux installation medium does not support Secure Boot. You will have to disable it to start the installation.

Point your system's current boot device to the USB flash drive plugged into one of the USB ports on your computer. This usually involves pressing a key during POST; F8, F12, TAB, etc. Refer to on screen instructions after turning on your computer or its manual for the exact key to press.

Once the GRUB boot manager comes up select the Arch installer medium option to be presented with the installation environment. You'll be logged in as root at a Zsh prompt.

Setting the correct keyboard layout

The default keyboard layout is US. To list all available keyboard layouts:

NOTE: You can filter the output by "piping" it to grep, i.e. localectl list-keymaps | grep your search string.

localectl list-keymaps

To change the keyboard layout pass its name to loadkeys. For example to set a German keyboard layout:

loadkeys de-latin1

Verify boot mode

To verify the current boot mode, check the bitness of the UEFI in sysfs:

cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size

Ideally, this should return 64, indicating UEFI 64-bit mode. If it returns 32 the system was booted in UEFI 32-bit mode; while this shouldn't be an issue, it limits the choice of compatible boot loaders later on. However, if the file does not exist, this indicates the system was not booted in UEFI mode, but in BIOS or CSM mode (Compatibility Support Module, UEFI emulating an old BIOS).

The preferred mode of operation is 64-bit UEFI. Consult your PC's or mainboard's manual on how to disable CSM if BIOS compatibility is not a requirement.

NOTE: UEFI has seen mainstream adoption since the introduction of Windows 8 in 2012 and is a base requirement for certification from Microsoft, so PCs sold after that date are sure to support 64-bit UEFI.

Establish a network connection

To verify network devices are actually available list them with ip:

It should produce a list of network interfaces with IDs like enp39s0, eth0, wlan0, etc.

Ethernet

To connect to a network simply connect the LAN cable for a wired network connection.

Wi-Fi

NOTE: wlan0 is used as the example device in this section. If your device is named differently, adjust accordingly.

For Wi-Fi connections use iwctl.

Command Description
iwctl device list List available Wi-Fi devices
iwctl station wlan0 scan Use device wlan0 to scan for nearby Wi-Fi networks
iwctl station wlan0 get-networks Use device wlan0 to list available Wi-Fi networks
iwctl station wlan0 connect HomeWiFiNetworkName Use device wlan0 to connect to Wi-Fi network HomeWiFiNetworkName

Mobile broadband

See Arch Wiki for how to set up ModemManager.

Testing connection

To verify you're online ping a server on the internet of your choice, e.g.:

ping archlinux.org

Update the system clock

Enable synchronization with internet time servers and set the appropriate time zone (autocomplete with Tab key):

timedatectl set-ntp true
timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Berlin
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