System Installation
The following tutorial is a collection of notes on how to install the Arch Linux distribution. This guide is mainly suited for use with servers and embedded machines. This tutorial originally started as a YouTube video I had made in early 2012 called How to Install Arch Linux. I then remade this video in late 2012, due to major changes in the installation process, renamed as Arch Linux: System Installation. This tutorial is the spiritual successor to those videos and has been created via the recording notes from said videos.
Following the Arch Linux philosophy, these tutorials are geared at being simple and efficient.
Booting the Installation Media
For use in the creation of this tutorial I used the following environment:
 |  VirtualBox 4.3.12 r93733
 archlinux-2014.05.01-dual.iso |
Place the copy of the Arch Linux image you burned to a disc in your machine and reboot. Enter BIOS if necessary to modify the boot device order in order to boot from the media.
You should be looking at the Arch Linux boot menu, pictured on the right. From this menu select the boot option that corresponds to your architecture type, x86_64 for 64-bit and i686 for 32-bit.
Your system will begin the boot up process, when finished you will be at the console. You may also notice you have been automatically logged into the root account.
Keyboard Keymap (Optional)
If you are using a non-US keymap, you will need to specify which keymap to load. Pull up a list of all the keymaps.
ls /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/
Organization is laid out in directories as Machine Type / Keyboard Type, if you take the name of the map.gz file without the path of extension you can then plug that into the command localectl.
Example for the United Kingdom:
localectl set-keymap uk
Hard Drive Setup
Before you can begin the installation you must partition and format the hard drives that will be used in the installation. Pull up a list of all of the disks in your system.
| # root@archiso ~ # fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 32 GiB, 34359738368 bytes, 67108864 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/sdb: 64 GiB, 68719476736 bytes, 134217728 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/arch_root-image: 1.4 GiB, 1519386624 bytes, 2967552 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes root@archiso ~ # |
You can safely ignore the one on the bottom that begins with /dev/mapper as this is mounted off of the live disc image you are using to install from.
Once you have located the drives you are using for Arch, mark down the device nodes the disks use.
Note: For simplicity I highlighted the device nodes I will be using with the pink dotted line.
