Preparations
INFO: This is a shortened version of the Arch Wiki installation guide.
Download an ISO from the Arch Linux download page, either via Torrent or HTTP from a mirror nearest to you.
Preparing install media
After you downloaded the image you need to flash it to physical media to boot your machine from it, i.e. a USB flash drive.
WARNING: All data on the USB flash drive will be lost!
Windows
On Windows you can use Balena etcher to flash ISOs to USB. Connect your USB to your computer, load the ISO you just downloaded in etcher, select the USB as target and start the flashing process. A pop-up might appear asking you to confirm to overwrite the USB flash drive.
macOS
Connect your USB flash drive to your Mac. Launch Terminal.app
and determine the path of the USB flash drive:
diskutil list
This will list all drives connected to your Mac:
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0
1: EFI EFI 314.6 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk1 1.0 TB disk0s2
/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +1.0 TB disk1
Physical Store disk0s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Daten 697.5 GB disk1s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 1.8 GB disk1s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 1.1 GB disk1s3
4: APFS Volume VM 5.4 GB disk1s4
5: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 8.8 GB disk1s5
6: APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 8.8 GB disk1s5s1
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *15.4 GB disk2
1: 0xEF 10.4 MB disk2s2
Look for the device with the line external
. In this example it's /dev/disk2 (external, physical)
with a capacity of ~16 GB.
macOS might auto-mount the drive when you connect it. Make sure to unmount it before flashing:
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Use dd
to flash the ISO image directly to your USB flash drive (adjust according to the output of diskutil list
):
HINT: Note the 'r' before 'disk', which uses the raw device, which makes the transfer much faster.
ATTENTION: This command will run silently.
WARNING: This will delete all data on the device. Make sure to supply the correct target or severe data loss may occur!
sudo dd if=path/to/archlinux.iso of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m
After flashing is done, macOS might complain it can't read the drive. This is expected, the drive will still be bootable.
Linux
Connect your USB flash drive to your computer.
GNOME Disk Utility
If you're on GNOME you can open the ISO image by right-clicking it and opening it with GNOME Disk Utility. Then select the inserted USB flash drive as target and click Restore.
Command line
Determine your USB flash drive's device path with lsblk
:
NAME FSTYPE LABEL UUID MOUNTPOINT
sda
├─sda1 vfat C4DA-2C4D /boot
├─sda2 swap 5b1564b2-2e2c-452c-bcfa-d1f572ae99f2 [SWAP]
└─sda3 ext4 56adc99b-a61e-46af-aab7-a6d07e504652 /
sdb
└─sdb1 vfat USB 2C4D-C4DA /run/user/1000/usb
Flash the ISO image to the USB flash drive with dd
:
sudo dd if=path/to/archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress
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 keyboard layout
The default keyboard layout is US. To list all available keyboard layouts:
ls /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/**/*.map.gz
To change the keyboard layout pass the filename to loadkeys without the path and file extension, e.g. German:
loadkeys de-latin1
Verify boot mode
To verify the current boot mode list the efivars of the system:
ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
If there is output the system is running in UEFI mode. If it is empty the system is running in BIOS/CSM mode. Modern systems from the last 10 years should be able to boot in UEFI mode and should be preferred.
Establish a network connection
To verify network devices are actually available list them with ip:
ip link
To connect to a network simply connect the LAN cable for a wired network connection.
For WiFi connections use iwctl. To list available WiFi devices:
iwctl device list
To scan for available networks:
# $DEV : the identifier of the device to use
iwctl station $DEV scan
This will not output a list of networks found. To list networks:
# $DEV : the identifier of the device to use
iwctl station $DEV get-networks
To connecto to a network:
# $DEV : the identifier of the device to use
# $SSID : the name of the network to connect to
iwctl station $DEV connect $SSID
If the network requires a passphrase you will be prompted to enter it.
Installing via SSH
If you want to install Arch Linux via SSH set a password for the root user of the installation environment with passwd. This doesn't have to be a sophisticated password, as it will only be valid for the runtime of the installation environment and won't carry over to the installed system.
After you've set a password connect to the installation environment:
ssh -o PreferredAuthentications=password root@archiso
Testing connection
To verify you're online ping a server on the internet of your choice, e.g.:
ping archlinux.org
Update the system time
Enable synchronization with internet time servers:
timedatectl set-ntp true