Several times I had to install Arch Linux those 8 past years. Not because it’s not stable but because I changed hardware. Any time it was a pain to remind me how to do stuff during the install process. I really love this Linux distribution, but I have to admit the install process is far complex that what we found on other distribution.

I never did a how to and once again I wasted my time on reading the doc etc…but I just wanted to go fast. So I’m pasting here my configuration for people like me who wants to go fast or for me for future installs.

Boot form USB

Take a USB key or external drive, download the ISO image from Arch website and make it bootable (with root user):

dd if=archlinux.img of=/dev/sdX bs=16M && sync

Bios configuration

Ensure you’ve got secure boot disabled and boot on the usb key.

Keyboard setup

I’m french and familiar with french keyboards:

loadkeys fr-latin9

Setup network

Connect to the wifi:

iwctl device list

You should get the name of your network interface like wlan0.

Now, run a scan, look at the wished network name and connect to it:

iwctl station wlan0 scan
iwctl station wlan0 get-networks
iwctl station wlan0 connect <SSID wifi name>

If there is a secret, you should be prompted for it. You can then validate with:

iwctl station wlan0 show

Install menu

At this step, you can choose to run an interractive menu and stop here, or manually perform the installation (continue this post).

If you decide to run the interractive menu, simply run:

archinstall

Configure NTP

Setup time with NTP:

timedatectl set-ntp true

Create partitions

I needed to have:

• /boot: as my EFI boot partition
• LUKS crypted disk:
  • /: arch linux install
  • /home: home directory

I used parted to make partitions on my NVMe drive :

parted /dev/nvme0n1

This to configure this way:

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
 1      1049kB  512MB   511MB   fat32        efi   boot, esp
 2      512MB   1024GB  1024GB               arch

To get this partionning without the parted interractive mode:

disk=/dev/nvme0n1
parted -s -a optimal $disk mklabel gpt
parted -s -a optimal $disk mkpart efi fat32 0% 512Mb
parted -s -a optimal $disk mkpart arch ext4 512Mb 100%
parted -s $disk set 1 boot on
parted $disk print

Note: the used flags, do not forget to add them. Also for optimized partition, use multiples of 2 (logic) and percentages to let parted do the optimization. Finally, I’m not using swap to optimize my laptop performances.

Format partitions

Initialize /boot device:

mkfs.vfat -F32 -n EFI /dev/nvme0n1p1

Now let’s create the crypted partition:

cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/nvme0n1p2
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p2 luks

I wanted to have LVM in order to easily later change the partition configuration if I want:

pvcreate /dev/mapper/luks
vgcreate vg0 /dev/mapper/luks
lvcreate -L 384G vg0 -n root
lvcreate -l +100%FREE vg0 -n home

Then format to ext4:

mkfs.ext4 -L root /dev/mapper/vg0-root
mkfs.ext4 -L home /dev/mapper/vg0-home

Install Arch base

To install Arch, I needed to mount the partitions first:

mount /dev/mapper/vg0-root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot /mnt/home
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot
mount /dev/mapper/vg0-home /mnt/home

Install the packages:

pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware lvm2 intel-ucode
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
echo 'tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0' >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Important: update the fstab file (/mnt/etc/fstab) by changing ‘relatime’ to ‘noatime’ on non-boot partitions (here on /home and /root) in order to preserve NVMe lifetime

Editor install (optional)

You may want to install an editor to update manally next configuration file:

pacman -Sy vim

Basic configuration

Now Arch is installed, I needed to configure the basics:

arch-chroot /mnt
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Paris /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
echo 'en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8' >> /etc/locale.gen
echo 'fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8' >> /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
echo 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' > /etc/locale.conf
echo 'KEYMAP=fr-latin9' > /etc/vconsole.conf

Define your hostname in the first variable and apply then the commands:

myhostname='define here the hostname'
echo "$myhostname" > /etc/hostname
echo '127.0.0.1	localhost' > /etc/hosts
echo '::1	localhost' >> /etc/hosts
echo "127.0.1.1	$myhostname.localdomain	$myhostname" >> /etc/hosts

Initramfs

Edit the /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file and update the HOOKS part accordingly:

HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf block keyboard keymap encrypt lvm2 filesystems fsck)

Note: if the file /etc/mkinitcpio.conf does not exists, run command mkinitcpio -p linux

And update the initramfs then:

mkinitcpio -P

Bootloader

I’m using the simplest bootloader (no need grub):

bootctl --path=/boot install
echo 'default arch' > /boot/loader/loader.conf
echo 'console-mode 1' >> /boot/loader/loader.conf 
echo 'timeout 3' >> /boot/loader/loader.conf

And adding this specific configuration to boot on the crypted device:

UUID=$(blkid | grep crypto_LUKS | sed -r 's/.+UUID="(.+?)".*/\1/')
echo 'title Arch Linux' > /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
echo 'linux /vmlinuz-linux' >> /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
echo 'initrd /intel-ucode.img' >> /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
echo 'initrd /initramfs-linux.img' >> /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
echo "options cryptdevice=UUID=${UUID}:vg0 root=/dev/mapper/vg0-root rw intel_pstate=no_hwpi msr.allow_writes=on" >> /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

Note 1: you can add mitigations=off in the options if you want more performances. But it will allow Spectre and Metldown security issues (https://meltdownattack.com/).

Note 2: if for some reasons, you need to debug later an issue with systemd during boot time, add:

plymouth.enable=0 systemd.confirm_spawn=true systemd.debug-shell=1 systemd.log_level=debug systemd.unit=multi-user.target console=tty1

to the end of the options parameters.

End install

Before ending, install Network Manager or anything you need for the network part:

pacman -Sy networkmanager

To finish, setup a root password:

passwd

And exist properly by unmounting partitions:

exit
umount /mnt/home /mnt/boot
umount /mnt

Reboot and you’re done :)

Restore

If you want to restore from a previous install, here are some advises I can give to you:

1. Get a packages list from your old workstation:

• all packages: pacman -Qqe > pacman_all_packages
• all packages (non AUR): pacman -Qqen > pacman_packages
• all packages (only AUR): pacman -Qqem > pacman_aur_packages

2. On your new workstation, re-inject them (with fish shell):

pacman -S --needed - < pacman_packages
for i in (cat pacman_aur_packages) ; yay -Sy $i ; end

3. Finally move current /etc to /etc.old and restore your /etc backup

Steps order is important because if you restore /etc before the 2nd step, some packages install will fail because of already existing files in /etc.

Hope this will help others to speed up their install like me :)