Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
112 lines (93 loc) · 4.61 KB

ARCH.md

File metadata and controls

112 lines (93 loc) · 4.61 KB

Arch Installation

These are my notes for installing Arch Linux on a Dell XPS 15 7590 Laptop, dual booting with the existing windows installation.

General references:

Prepare Windows

  1. Reduce the windows partitions to the desired size (likely at least 100GB depending on how much data is expected there)
  2. Change the SATA mode from RAID/IDE to AHCI (reference):
    • Run cmd as administrator
    • bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal
    • Reboot into BIOS
    • Change the SATA Operation mode to AHCI
    • Save changes and reboot
    • Run cmd as administrator again
    • bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot

Install Arch

Note that most of this is just a simplification of the contents of the Arch Installation Guide for my specific use case.

  1. Download the Arch ISO image from the Arch Installation Guide, write it to a USB, and boot into it

  2. Connect to internet

    • ip link to make sure the network interface is enabled
    • iwctl to connect to your network
    • Alternatively, just plug in an ethernet cable
    • Verify connection with ping archlinux.org (or any other site)

  3. Sync the system clock with timedatectl set-ntp true

  4. Partition disks as desired using fdisk /dev/nvme0n1, for example:

    Partition Usage Size
    /dev/nvme0n1p1 EFI 190M
    /dev/nvme0n1p2 Used by Windows ???
    /dev/nvme0n1p3 Used by Windows ???
    /dev/nvme0n1p4 /boot 260M
    /dev/nvme0n1p5 <swap> 20G
    /dev/nvme0n1p6 Arch Remaining
    • EFI partition needs the EFI type (1 for GPT, or ef on MBR disks like VirtualBox)
    • The boot partition must be marked as bootable (use the a command in fdisk)
    • Use w to save the partition map

  5. Format the partitions

    • mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p4 (boot)
    • mkfs.fat -F16 /dev/nvme0n1p1 (EFI)
    • mkswap /dev/nvme0n1p5 (swap)
    • mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p6 (arch)

  6. Mount the partitions

    • mount /dev/nvme0n1p6 /mnt
    • mkdir /mnt/boot
    • mount /dev/nvme0n1p4 /mnt/boot
    • mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
    • mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi
    • swapon /dev/nvme0n1p5

  7. Install arch

    pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware dialog wpa_supplicant

  8. Generate an fstab to automate mounting all of your new partitions

    genfstab -U /mnt > /mnt/etc/fstab

    Make sure the file looks good before continuing

  9. arch-chroot /mnt to enter the new installation

  10. Prepare for networking (once the live boot is gone):

    • pacman -Sy dhcpcd iwd
    • systemctl enable dhcpcd iwd

  11. hwclock --systohc to set the hardware clock

  12. passwd to set a root password

  13. Install GRUB bootloader

    • See the relevant section of the virtualbox installation guide

    • pacman -S grub efibootmgr (pacman -S grub on VirtualBox)

    • grub-install /dev/nvme0n1 --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi/ --bootloader-id=GRUB (just grub-install /dev/sda on VirtualBox)

    • Update /etc/default/grub with the following settings:

      GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="mem_sleep_default=deep resume=/dev/nvme0n1p5"

      Making sure that the resume partition is your swap partition.

      The timeout settings prevent the GRUB menu from ever appearing, and just immediately booting into Arch. This may not be what you want.

    • grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg to configure GRUB

  14. Add the resume hook to mkinitcpio

    • Update /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, add resume hook after the filesystems hook
    • mkinitcpio -P to actually add the hook to initramfs

  15. exit to go back to the live ISO

  16. umount -R /mnt to unmount the arch installation

  17. reboot now to reboot, hopefully into your real arch installation

  18. You should be able to unplug the Arch USB now. See the README to fully configure the user space