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Arch Linux Installation Guide
April 15, 2024
Dennis Herbrich <dennis@archlinux.org>
Tobias Powalowski <tpowa@archlinux.org>
Judd Vinet <judd@archlinux.org>
Summary
This is the general user documentation for the Arch Linux distribution.
It covers obtaining the necessary files, installing the distribution and
setting up a basic, bootable system. Additionally a short reference for
the system layout and Arch-specific tools is supplied.
Table Of Contents
1. Introduction
1. What is Arch Linux?
2. License
3. Credits and Feedback
2. Installing Arch Linux
1. Pre-Installation
2. Using CD-ROMs
3. Common Installation Procedure
3. System Configuration
1. Configuration Files
2. Boot Scripts
3. User Management
4. Internet Access
4. Package Management
1. Pacman
2. Accessing Repositories
5. Arch Build System (ABS)
1. Binary vs. Source
2. Synchronizing Your ABS Tree
3. How To Build Packages
4. Package Guidelines
6. Frequently Asked Questions
1. During package installation, pacman fails to resolve
dependencies for package A because package B is not in the
package set
2. How can I install packages from the install CD with pacman
--sync (so it resolves dependencies for me)?
3. How can I create multiple swap partitions during the install?
4. How do I reconfigure LILO from the rescue system?
5. How do i reconfigure GRUB from the rescue system?
6. I can't ssh into my machine!
7. How should I load modules during boot now?
8. Kernel refuses to boot because of "lost interrupt"
9. I get "access denied" errors trying to play sound or read
DVDs
Introduction
What is Arch Linux?
Arch Linux is an i686-optimized Linux distribution that was originally
based on ideas from CRUX, a great distribution developed by Per Lid�n.
Arch is fast, lightweight, flexible and simple. Those aren't very
fancy buzzwords but they're all true. Arch is optimized for the i686
processor, so you get more for your CPU cycle. It's lightweight
compared to RedHat et al., and its simple design makes it easy to
extend and mold into whatever kind of system you're building.
This is backed by an easy-to-use binary package system that allows you
to upgrade your entire system with one command. Arch also uses a
ports-like package build system (the Arch Build System - ABS) to make
it easy to build packages, which can also be synchronized with one
command. Oh yeah, and you can rebuild your entire system with one
command, too. Everything is done quite simply and transparently.
Arch Linux strives to maintain the latest stable version of its
software. We currently support a fairly streamlined core package set
with a growing collection of extra packages maintained by AL
developers, as well as literally thousands of additional packages
submitted by trusted members of the community to our AUR for everyone
to use as they see fit.
In it's goal to be simple and lightweight, the relatively useless
portions of a Linux system have been left out, things like /usr/doc
and the info pages. In my own personal experience these are rarely
used, and equivalent information can be obtained from the net if need
be. Manpages all the way!
Arch Linux also strives to use some of the newer features that are
available to Linux users. All the typical filesystems, raid, lvm, and
encrypted partitions are supported.
License
Arch Linux, pacman, documentation, and scripts are copyright
2024-2007 Judd Vinet
2024-2008 Aaron Griffin
and are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Credits and Feedback
This document is heavily based on the works of Judd Vinet. Minor
corrections and a good bunch of modifications and additions have
been made by Dennis Herbrich and Tobias Powalowski. Corrections and
feedback should be fed into the bug tracker. An uncountable lot of
people have contributed and will contribute to the evolution of the
official Arch Linux Documentation by submitting corrections and
suggesting improvement, it's way too unpractical to list them all.
However, you know who you are, and without your help this would be
near impossible to maintain and improve. Thank you!
Installing Arch Linux
Pre-Installation
Arch Linux is optimized for the i686 processor and therefore will not
run on any lower or incompatible generations of x86 CPUs (i386,i486,i586).
A Pentium II or AMD K6-2 processor or higher is required. x86-64
architectures are also officially supported.
Before installing Arch Linux, you should decide which installation
method and medium you would like to use. You should also read through this
installation guide in its entirety, so you have some idea of what to
expect.
Arch Linux provides bootable ISO and USB disk images. The ISO images will
work on almost any machine with a CD-ROM drive, and the USB images will
work on any system capable of booting from a USB drive.
There are two variants of each installation medium which only differ in
terms of supplied packages. You can instruct the installer to obtain the
packages via FTP using either of these images, and all images can also be
used as fully functioning recovery environments.
* The "core" images contain a snapshot of the core packages. These
images are best suited for people who have an Internet connection
which is slow or difficult to set up.
* The "ftp" images contain no packages at all, and will use the network
to install packages. These images are preferred since you will end
up with an up-to-date system, but they are best suited for people
with fast, cheap connections.
Furthermore you should not worry about using an old ISO for
installation, as upgrading the system to the current branch is a
breeze once you've got your basic system set up. At least if you've
got a broadband connection!
Using a dialup PPP connection to gain access to the Internet during
the install process is supported. ppp utilities, rp-pppoe and the ISDN
userspace utilities are included on the installation media.
The ISOs run like any regular installed Arch system. In fact, they're
exactly the same, just installed to a CD or USB image instead of a hard
disk. They include the entire "base" package set, as well as various
networking utilities and drivers. If there's something else you happen
to need at runtime, just get your Internet connection up and install it
using pacman.
The most common (and recommended) installation procedure is to use the
install media to initially install only the base package set and whatever
utilities and drivers you need to get online. Then once you've successfully
booted the installed system, run a full system upgrade and install any
other packages you want.
Another thing you should know before trying to install Arch Linux is
that during the install you're asked a few questions about which hard
drive to prepare, what modules to load, and what changes to make to
certain system-critical files like lilo.conf and rc.conf. The
installer will not hold your hand here and guide you through any
potential setup known and unknown to mankind, you are expected to know
what to put in and leave out. This is quite a requirement for a
newbie, so if this intimidates you already, make sure you read through
this whole document to get at least a vague idea what is going to be
asked, and check back on IRC, the forums or a Linux guru in your
neighborhood if anything is not clear to you before you totally mess
up your system. You may of course boldly step into the fight and
tinker and try around until it works, but don't tell anyone afterwards
you haven't been warned. That being said, it's not that bad. 
What You Will Need
* a working knowledge of Linux and your system, especially your
hardware
* Arch Linux installation media
* an i686-based or x86-64 computer (PPro, Pentium 2 or higher,
Athlon/Duron, etc. Note that AMD K6, Transmeta Crusoe, CyrixIII, and
VIA-C3 are NOT supported.)
* some time to kill
Acquiring Arch Linux
* You can download Arch Linux from any of the sources listed on the
download page, http://archlinux.org/download/
* You may also purchase an installation CD from OSDisc and have it
shipped anywhere in the world.
Preparing Installation Media
CD-ROM
1. Download iso/<release>/<your_architecture>/Archlinux-XXX.iso
2. Download iso/<release>/<your_architecture>/md5sum.txt
3. Verify the integrity of the .iso image using md5sum:
md5sum --check md5sum.txt
Archlinux-XXX.iso: OK
4. Burn the ISO image to a CD-R or CD-RW using any software of your
choice.
USB
1. Download iso/<release>/<your_architecture>/Archlinux-XXX.img
2. Download iso/<release>/<your_architecture>/md5sum.txt
3. Verify the integrity of the .img image using md5sum:
md5sum --check md5sum.txt
Archlinux-XXX.img: OK
4. Write the disk image to a USB mass storage device, such as a thumb
drive, using dd or similar raw-write software:
dd if=Archlinux-XXX.img of=/dev/your_usb_device
Booting the Install Media
If you're already familiar with the boot process, you may skip all this
babble as well, and jump to the Common Install Procedure, which outlines
the actual process of installing Arch Linux.
Reboot your computer with the Arch Linux Installation CD in the drive.
Make sure your BIOS is set in a way to allow booting from your CD-ROM or
USB device. Refer to your motherboard manual or your system manufacturer
for details if you have no clue how to do that. Once the CD or USB is
booted from, you will see the Arch Linux logo and a grub menu waiting for
your selection. Most likely you can just hit enter at this point.
If your CD-ROM fails to boot for no obvious reason, and you're using a
rather old CD-ROM drive in conjunction with a copy burned to a CD-RW,
consider using a normal CD-R instead. Some older drives [two of mine,
for example] don't manage to read CD-RWs properly.
At the end of the boot procedure, you should be at a login prompt with some
simple instructions at the top of the screen. You should login as root.
When prompted for a password, just hit enter, as there is none. At this
point you are ready to commence the actual installation, or do any manual
preparation you consider necessary.
Common Installation Procedure
At this point your system should be booted, and the hard drive to
which you'd like to install, as well as your installation source, must
be accessible.
Installation Steps:
1. Loading a non-US Keymap
2. Running Setup
3. Configure Network (FTP Install only)
4. Prepare Hard Drive
1. Auto-Prepare
2. Partition Hard Drives
3. Set Filesystem Mountpoints
5. Select Packages
6. Install Packages
7. Configure System
8. Install Kernel
9. Install Bootloader
10. Exit Install
Using the available shell tools, experienced users are also able to
prepare the hard drive or any devices needed for the installation
before starting the installer. You may simply skip this paragraph if
you don't see any immediate need for further manual interaction. Note
that the Arch Linux installation media also contains a /arch/quickinst
script for experienced users. This script installs the "base" set of
packages to a user-specified destination directory. If you are doing
an exotic install with fun things like RAID and LVM, or don't want to
use the installer at all, you'll probably want to use the quickinst
script. All the cool kids do it, but you'll need to configure the
system afterwards since no form of auto-configuration takes place.
Loading a non-US Keymap
If you need to load a non-US keymap, use the loadkeys utility, the same as
you would on a fully-installed system. Likewise, if you need to use a
different console font, use the setfont utility.
Running Setup
Now you can run /arch/setup to invoke the installer program. After an
informational message you will be prompted for the installation method
of your choice. If you have a fast Internet connection, you might
prefer the FTP installation to ensure you get the latest packages
instead of using the potentially outdated CD contents. Please note
that you will probably run into trouble if you have a complex proxy
setup with authentication when using the FTP installation. If you
can't use a CD-ROM, or any other medium you could mount at this stage,
this is the only viable method of installing Arch Linux.
When navigating the setup script, make sure that you select DONE from
the submenus after performing each step. This saves any settings you
make in preparation for the next step. Further, avoid arbitrary steps
through the installation process as this can also confuse the
installer.
It's actually rather easy to set up your own FTP package mirror or
create your own bootable installation CD with the packages you need,
making the task of installing several instances of Arch Linux across
multiple machines rather simple, while at the same time saving a lot
of mirror bandwidth. Make your life and ours easier, and look into
these alternatives!
When choosing a CD-ROM or OTHER SOURCE install you will only be able
to install packages contained on the CD, which may be quite old, or
packages stored on a medium you were able to mount (DVD, USB stick or
similar) somewhere in the filesystem tree manually. Of course it has
the merit that you won't need an Internet connection, and is therefore
the recommended choice for dialup users or anyone else who does not
feel like downloading about at least 100 MB of packages.
After choosing one of the two alternatives, you will be presented with
the installer menu, listing the necessary steps in the order in which
they should be completed.
At any point in the install process, you can switch to your 5th
virtual console (ALT-F5) to view the output from the commands the
setup is running. Use (ALT-F1) to get back to your first console where
the installer is running, and any F-key in between if you need to open
another console to intervene manually for any reason.
Configure Network (FTP Install only)
Configure Network will allow you to install and configure your network
device.
If you are using a wireless device you will still need to use the usual
utilities to configure it manually, in which case this part of the
installer isn't much use to you.
A list of all currently available network devices is presented to you.
If no ethernet device is available yet, or the one you wish to use is
missing, either hit OK and go on to probe for it, or switch to another
console and load the module manually.
If you still can't configure your network card, make sure it's physically
been properly installed, and that it is supported by the Linux kernel.
When the correct module is loaded, and your desired network card is
listed, you should Select the ethernet device you want to configure
and you will be given the option to configure your network with DHCP.
If your network uses DHCP, hit YES and let the installer do the rest.
If you select NO, you will be asked to enter the networking information
manually. Either way, your network should be successfully configured,
and if you're of the skeptical kind, you may check connectivity using
standard tools like ping on another console.
As automatisms are not perfect, you may not be able to successfully
use the installer to set up your network. In these rare cases, don't
bother, and set up you network device manually in one of the consoles.
All the installer needs is a transparent connection to the FTP server
you are going to select later during the installation.
This menu entry is only available when choosing FTP Installation, for
rather obvious reasons.
Prepare Hard Drive
Prepare Hard Drive will lead you into a submenu offering two
alternatives of preparing your target drive for installation.
The first choice is Auto-Prepare, which will automatically partition
your hard drive into a /boot, swap, and root partition, and then
create filesystems on all three. These partitions will also be
automatically mounted in the proper place. To be exact, this option
will create:
* 32 MB ext2 /boot partition
* 256 MB swap partition
* root partition with the remaining space
Actual sizes may vary slightly due to different hard disk geometries.
You can choose this option if you don't know much about hard drive
partitions, but be warned:
AUTO-PREPARE WILL ERASE ALL DATA ON THE CHOSEN HARD DRIVE!
Read the warning presented by the installer very carefully, and make
sure the correct device is about to be partitioned!
A way to verify your choice for a device to partition would be to open
another terminal (ALT-F2, Enter) and enter
# cfdisk -P s <name of device>
there to display the current partition table of the selected device,
which should suffice to identify the hard disk.
If no device name is shown ("[nothing] will be COMPLETELY ERASED!
..."), and the installer produces an "Device not valid" error after
hitting YES, make sure you loaded all needed modules if it's a SCSI,
RAID, etc. device. You can still load any modules now by changing to
another terminal and issuing the commands there, then return to the
installer process on terminal one (ALT-F1).
If you prefer to do the partitioning manually, use the other two
options, Partition Hard Drives and Set Filesystem Mountpoints to
prepare the target media according to your specifications as outlined
below. Then Return to Main Menu after a successful preparation.
Partition Hard Drives
Partition Hard Drives should be skipped if you chose Auto-Prepare
already!
Otherwise you should select the disk(s) you want to partition, and
you'll be dropped into the cfdisk program where you can freely modify
the partitioning information until you [Write] and [Quit].
You will need at least a root partition to continue the installation,
and it's helpful to note somewhere which partition you're going to
mount where, as you'll be asked exactly that in the next step.
Set Filesystem Mountpoints
Set Filesystem Mountpoints should also be skipped if you chose to
Auto-Prepare your hard drive. You should select this choice once the
partition information is edited to your liking with the previous menu
selection, or already existent through whatever other means.
The first question to answer is what partition to use as swap. Select
the previously created swap partition from the list, or NONE, if you
don't want to use a swap partition. Using a swap file is not directly
supported by the installer; Instead choose NONE here, finish the
mountpoint associations, and activate a swap file on your desired,
formatted partition with the swapon command.
After setting up the swap partition, you'll be asked to specify the
partition to be used as the root partition. This is mandatory.
The association process is then repeated until you choose DONE from
the list, ideally after all listed partitions have been associated
with their intended mountpoints. The installer will suggest /boot for
all following mountpoints after choosing swap and root.
Every time you specify a partition to mount, you will be asked if you
want to create a filesystem on the respective partition. If you select
YES, you will be asked what filesystem to create (a matter of taste,
really. Choose ext3 if you have no clue), and the partition will be
formatted with the chosen filesystem, destroying all data in the
process. It should be no problem, however, to say NO at this point to
preserve any existing files on the partition.
If you want to preserve existing data on a partition, you are strongly
advised to create backups instead of hoping that nothing will go wrong
during the install. Don't say I didn't warn you!
You will be asked whether to create a filesystem on your swap
partition, and since this partition uses a specific filesystem of it's
own, you should always answer YES here.
If you want to mount any other partitions, for example a separate
/boot or /home partition, you will be able to do so. Simply
* select a partition to mount
* choose a filesystem (if you want to create one instead of keeping
the data)
* enter a unique mountpoint for the partition
Repeat these steps until you're satisfied, then select DONE to create
any filesystems and mount the partitions in their respective places.
Before the actual formatting is done, the installer will present a list
of all of your choices for review. After formatting and mounting all
partitions, you may return to the Main Menu and proceed with the next step.
Select Packages
Select Packages will let you select the packages you wish to install
from the CD or your FTP mirror.
If you chose CD-ROM installation, you have to tell the installer
whether it should try to mount the CD itself, or whether you already
mounted the source media on the /src directory. Select the option
according to what you need; Normally you will want to choose CD, after
which you will be given the possibility to choose a CD-ROM drive from
the list of all detected devices.
If your CD-ROM drive is not displayed in the list, make sure you
loaded any modules that may be needed, like SCSI or USB storage
support, and load them in another terminal if necessary.
If you chose FTP Installation, you will be asked to choose a mirror
close to you from a list, or select Custom to enter your own fully
qualified domain name (or IP address) to an FTP server containing the
installation source packages, ie. a prepared server in your LAN, or a
mirror that's not listed for whatever reason, and afterwards the full
path to the directory on the server that contains the packages and
specifically the file core.db.tar.gz. The installer will check your
input for validity, and allow you to make corrections until you enter
an address and path that are reachable and allow downloading of the
package list.
Whatever source you chose, after fetching the package list you'll be
dropped into the package category selection screen.
If you are presented an error while fetching the package database, you
should either choose another FTP mirror, make sure your network is
working at all, and you didn't slip any typos into your custom server
address. You might also have goofed mounting of your source media in
the /src directory, if you chose that option. Read the messages
presented to you carefully, in most cases all you need is a little
tweaking of the directory layout on your source media or server,
respectively.
Now, once that is tackled, you have the opportunity to specify whole
package groups from which you'd generally like to install packages,
then fine-tune your coarse selection by (de)selecting individual
packages from the groups you have chosen.
Any packages in the BASE category should stay selected under all
circumstances, and you should select any other group which contains a
package you might need. Please note that the upcoming individual
package selection screen will only offer packages which are in the
categories you select here, so if you only select BASE, you won't be
able to add any other packages than those in the BASE category.
If you want to only select the bare minimum for installation, but be
able to browse through all available packages nevertheless to see if
anything interesting is there to add, you should select all package
categories, but choose to NOT select all packages by default.
The "Select all packages by default?" question can be easily
misunderstood; Basically you are asked whether you want all the
packages in the categories you just chose to be selected or not.
If you select YES, the whole list of packages contained in the chosen
categories will be displayed and selected, and your job will be to
deselect what you do not want.
If you select NO, the same list of packages will displayed, but only
packages of the BASE category will be selected, and you'll have to
explicitly select any other packages you want to install.
Choosing NO helps to install a lean system!
It is recommended that you install all the BASE packages, but not
anything else at this point. Don't worry about getting all the
packages you want - you can easily install more of them once the basic
system boots by itself. The only exception to this rule is installing
any packages you need for setting up Internet connectivity. These
packages usually are:
dhcpcd (base)
Add if your machine is a DHCP client.
isdn4k-utils (support)
Add if you use ISDN for dialup.
ppp (support)
Add if you use an analog modem for dialup.
rp-pppoe (support)
Add if you use DSL for pseudo-dialup.
Other packages from support category.
Once you're done selecting the packages you need, leave the selection
screen and continue to the next step, Install Packages.
Install Packages
Install Packages will now install pacman and any other packages you
selected with resolved dependencies onto your hard disk. Don't be
surprised if more packages are installed than you selected! Those
packages are dependencies for your selection, and the installer will
not explicitly ask for permission to install these extra packages, as
it assumes you know what you're doing.
After the package selection, the installer will not check for free
space on the target! This seemingly trivial task would eat up
considerable time, and therefore the installer simply assumes to have
enough free space on the target partition(s). In case it doesn't, the
installation will fail in various funny ways. A df -h in another
terminal might show that one or more of the targets mounted below
/mnt have been filled up, causing mischief. Consider repartitioning
or selecting a smaller set of packages.
Error messages and debugging output is echoed as usual to terminal
five (ALT-F5). During normal, successful operation, you shouldn't find
much to read there, though. After the packages have been installed,
proceed to the next step, Configure System.
Please note that this release of Arch Linux only offers one kernel to
install, as flexibility has now been put into the initramfs created by
the mkinitcpio tool.
The CD-ROM includes the latest kernel at the time the image was made.
If you are using the FTP Installation method, the kernel about to be
installed will be the current version waiting on your FTP source,
and might therefore introduce changes and/or incompatibilities unknown
at the present time. This is unlikely, but keep this in mind.
Configure System
Configure System allows you to edit the configuration files crucial
for your newly installed system. Initially you will be asked whether
to allow the hwdetect script to try and detect your hardware, and
produce some (even more) sensible defaults for your configuration
files. Unless you're having problems/crashes, you should let it have
it's way, and work from what it generates.
Answer the following questions about RAID, LVM and encrypted volumes
with Yes, if your root partition resides on a RAID, LVM or encrypted
volume, respectively, to automatically add the necessary HOOKS to the
mkinitcpio.conf. Otherwise you will get a kernel panic during boot, as
your root partition will not be accessible at the time of boot. Most
people will answer these questions with No, though, and not waste a
second thought about it.
After this automatic preconfiguration you'll be asked for your
favorite editor to use for manually fine-tuning the generated
configuration files, either VIM or nano. When in doubt, choose nano.
If you're in a real hurry, you may skip the following step of
reviewing the configuration entirely and hope the defaults will work
for you, but it's strongly recommended to iterate through the list of
configuration files presented here and review the settings carefully.
Please refer to the System Configuration section for detailed
descriptions of the various files.
Install Bootloader
Install Bootloader will install a bootloader on your hard drive,
either GRUB (recommended) or LILO, depending on your personal
preference.
Before installing the bootloader, the setup script will want you to
examine the appropriate configuration file to confirm the proper
settings. Make sure you know what your root (and /boot, if you have
it) partitions are.
If you choose to install LILO, the bootloader will be automatically
installed according to your settings in the configuration file, whilst
GRUB demands the selection of a partition to install the bootloader
to. Here you should choose what you would enter as the boot option of
LILO, which is usually the entry named /dev/sda, as it refers the
master boot record of the first hard disk. Detailed error messages can
be found as usual on VC5 (virtual console 5), if anything goes wrong.
If you plan on setting up a multiboot system, it might be a better
option to install the bootloader in your root or /boot partition, and
refer to that boot sector from whatever other boot loader you want to
reside in the master boot record.
Installing a boot loader in the MBR will relentlessly overwrite any
existing bootloader! Make sure you understand the implications of that
if you're running a multiboot system, or want to preserve an installed
bootloader from another OS!
Exit Install
Exit Install now, remove the CD from the drive, type reboot at the
command line and cross your fingers!
If your system boots up, you can log in as root without any password,
so your first things to do are setting a password for root with the
passwd command once you're logged in, add a user as outlined in the
User Management section, and set up your Internet Connection.
Congratulations! Now you can proceed to getting into the nitty-gritty of
configuring the interesting parts of your system, and adapt it to your
needs!
System Configuration
These are the core configuration files for Arch Linux. You should be
comfortable hand-editing these files with a text-editor, because there
aren't any GUI apps to help you out. Only the most basic configuration
files are listed here. If you need help configuring a specific
service, please read the appropriate manpage or refer to any online
documentation you need. In many cases, the Archlinux Wiki and forums
are a rich source for help as well.
Arch Linux does not use any abstraction layers to administrate your
system. As a result, you can usually stick to any instructions
published by the author of a software, or whatever you find in a
search engine of your choice, and it'll work out without confusing
your system, because your system just does not care.
Configuration Files
Before attempting to boot your newly installed system, you should at
least glance over these files and make sure they are not too far off
the mark.
List of Configuration Files
1. /etc/rc.conf
2. /etc/fstab
3. /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
4. /etc/modprobe.conf
5. /etc/resolv.conf
6. /etc/hosts
7. /etc/hosts.deny
8. /etc/hosts.allow
9. /etc/locale.gen
10. /boot/grub/menu.lst
11. /etc/lilo.conf
12. Additional configuration files:
13. /etc/conf.d/*
14. /etc/profile
/etc/rc.conf
This is the main configuration file for Arch Linux. It allows you to
set your keyboard, timezone, hostname, network, daemons to run and
modules to load at bootup, profiles, and more. You should read through
all the settings in this file and make sure you understand them, and
change them where appropriate:
LOCALE
This sets your system language, which will be used by all
i18n-friendly applications and utilities. See locale.gen below
for available options. This setting's default is fine for US
English users.
HARDWARECLOCK
Either UTC if your BIOS clock is set to UTC, or localtime if
your BIOS clock is set to your local time. If you have an OS
installed which cannot handle UTC BIOS times correctly, like
Windows, choose localtime here, otherwise you should prefer
UTC, which makes daylight savings time a non-issue and has a
few other positive aspects.
TIMEZONE
Specifies your time zone. Possible time zones are the relative
path to a zoneinfo file starting from the directory
/usr/share/zoneinfo. For example, a German timezone would be
Europe/Berlin, which refers to the file
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin. If you don't know the exact
name of your timezone file, worry about it later.
KEYMAP
Defines the keymap to load with the loadkeys program on bootup.
Possible keymaps are found in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps. Please
note that this setting is only valid for your TTYs, not any
graphical window managers or X! Again, the default is fine for
US users.
CONSOLEFONT
Defines the console font to load with the setfont program on
bootup. Possible fonts are found in
/usr/share/kbd/consolefonts.
CONSOLEMAP
Defines the console map to load with the setfont program on
bootup. Possible maps are found in /usr/share/kbd/consoletrans.
You will want to set this to a map suitable for your locale
(8859-1 for Latin1, for example) if you're using an utf8 locale
above, and use programs that generate 8-bit output. If you're
using X11 for everyday work, don't bother, as it only affects
the output of Linux console applications.
USECOLOR
Enable (or disable) colorized status messages during boot-up.
MOD_AUTOLOAD
If set to "yes", udev will be allowed to load modules as necessary
upon bootup. If set to "no", it will not.
MODULES
In this array you can list the names of modules you want to
load during bootup without the need to bind them to a hardware
device as in the modprobe.conf. Simply add the name of the
module here, and put any options into modprobe.conf if need
be.
Prepending a module with a bang ('!') will blacklist the module,
and not allow it to be loaded. For example, if you don't want that
annoying PC speaker, you could blacklist the pcspkr module.
USELVM
Set to "YES" to run a vgchange during sysinit, thus activating
any LVM groups. If you have no idea what this means, don't
bother.
HOSTNAME
Set this to the hostname of the machine, without the domain
part. This is totally your choice, as long as you stick to
letters, digits and a few common special characters like the
dash. Don't be too creative here, though, and when in doubt,
use the default.
INTERFACES
Here you define the settings for your networking interfaces.
The default lines and the included comments explain the setup
well enough. If you do not use DHCP to configure a device, just
keep in mind that the value of the variable (whose name must be
equal to the name of the device which is supposed to be
configured) equals the line which would be appended to the
ifconfig command if you were to configure the device manually
in the shell.
ROUTES
You can define your own static network routes with arbitrary
names here. Look at the example for a default gateway to get
the idea. Basically the quoted part is identical to what you'd
pass to a manual route add command, therefore reading man route
is recommended if you don't know what to write here, or simply
leave this alone.
NETWORKS
Enables certain network profiles at bootup. Network profiles
provide a convenient way of managing multiple network
configurations, and are intended to replace the standard
INTERFACES/ROUTES setup that is still recommended for systems
with only one network configuration. If your computer will be
participating in various networks at various times (eg, a
laptop) then you should take a look at the
/etc/network-profiles/ directory to set up some profiles. There
is a template file included there that can be used to create
new profiles.
DAEMONS
This array simply lists the names of those scripts contained in
/etc/rc.d/ which are supposed to be started during the boot
process. If a script name is prefixed with a bang (!), it is
not executed. If a script is prefixed with an "at" symbol (@),
then it will be executed in the background, ie. the startup
sequence will not wait for successful completion before
continuing. Usually you do not need to change the defaults to
get a running system, but you are going to edit this array
whenever you install system services like sshd, and want to
start these automatically during bootup. This is basically
Arch's way of handling what others handle with various symlinks
to an init.d directory.
/etc/fstab
Your filesystem settings and mountpoints are configured here. The
installer should have created the necessary entries for you, but you
should look over it and make sure it's right. If you are using an
encrypted root device, LVM or RAID, you will likely need to change
them to device names, rather than the UUIDs the installer will have
inserted for you.
With the current kernel, an important change has been introduced
pertaining to the ATA/IDE subsystem. The new pata (Parallel ATA)
drivers replace the legacy IDE subsystem, and one important change is
that the naming scheme for IDE disks has changed from the old hda,
hdb, etc. to also use device names of the type sda, sdb, etc, just
like SCSI and SATA devices do. Because of this, the installer will have
used UUID entries by default, since they offer a consistent way to refer
to partitions regardless of the underlying driver.
If for some reason you are unable to use UUIDs, make sure you are
using the right device names, or you will end up with an unbootable
system in no time. Here's the rundown: if you're using the 'ide' hook
in your initcpio.conf, you should be using the hd? device names, and if
you're using the 'pata' hook, you should be using the sd? names.
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
This file allows you to fine-tune the initial ramdisk for your system.
The ramdisk is a gzipped image that is read by the kernel during bootup.
Its purpose is to bootstrap the system to the point where it can access
the root filesystem. This means it has to load any modules that are
required to "see" things like IDE, SCSI, or SATA drives (or USB/FW, if
you are booting off a USB/FW drive). Once the ramdisk loads the proper
modules, either manually or through udev, it passes control to the
Arch system and your bootup continues. For this reason, the ramdisk
only needs to contain the modules necessary to access the root
filesystem. It does not need to contain every module you would ever
want to use. The majority of your everyday modules will be loaded
later on by udev, during the init process.
By default, mkinitcpio.conf is configured to autodetect all needed modules
for IDE, SCSI, or SATA systems through so-called HOOKS. This means the
default initrd should work for almost everybody.You can edit
mkinitcpio.conf and remove the subsystem HOOKS (ie, IDE, SCSI, RAID,
USB, etc) that you don't need.
You can customize even further by specifying the exact modules you
need in the MODULES array and remove even more of the hooks, but take
heed to the comments in the file, as this is a touchy place to go
crazy with removing entries!
If you're using RAID or encryption on your root filesystem, then
you'll have to tweak the RAID/CRYPT settings near the bottom. See the
wiki pages for RAID/LVM, filesystem encryption, and mkinitcpio for
more info.
When you're finished tweaking mkinitcpio.conf, you must run mkinitcpio
-p kernel26 as root to regenerate the images, unless you're still
installing the system; In that case this step will be done
automatically.
WARNING: If you fail to set up your mkinitcpio.conf correctly, your
system will not boot! For this reason, you should be especially
careful when tweaking this file.
If you do manage to render your system unbootable, you can try using
the fallback image that is installed alongside the stock kernel. A
boot option for this is included in the default GRUB and LILO
configuration.
Read the warning about the pata transition problems elaborated in the
fstab section carefully!
/etc/modprobe.conf
This tells the kernel which modules it needs to load for system
devices, and what options to set. For example, to have the kernel load
your Realtek 8139 ethernet module when it starts the network (ie.
tries to setup eth0), use this line:
alias eth0 8139too
The syntax of this file is nearly identical to the old modules.conf
scheme, unless you use some of the more exotic options like
post-install. Then you should invest a little time into reading man
modprobe.conf.
Most people will not need to edit this file.
/etc/resolv.conf
Use this file to manually setup your nameserver(s) that you want to
use. It should basically look like this:
search domain.tld
nameserver 192.168.0.1
nameserver 192.168.0.2
Replace domain.tld and the ip addresses with your settings. The
so-called search domain specifies the default domain that is appended
to unqualified hostnames automatically. By setting this, a ping myhost
will effectively become a ping myhost.domain.tld with the above
values. These settings usually aren't mighty important, though, and
most people should leave them alone for now. If you use DHCP, this
file will be replaced with the correct values automatically when
networking is started, meaning you can and should happily ignore this
file.
/etc/hosts
This is where you stick hostname/ip associations of computers on your
network. If a hostname isn't known to your DNS, you can add it here to
allow proper resolving, or override DNS replies. You usually don't
need to change anything here, but you might want to add the hostname
and hostname + domain of the local machine to this file, resolving to
the IP of your network interface. Some services, postfix for example,
will bomb otherwise. If you don't know what you're doing, leave this
file alone until you read man hosts.
/etc/hosts.deny
This file denies network services access. By default all network services
are denied.
ALL: ALL: DENY
/etc/hosts.allow
This file allows network services access. Enter the services you want to
allow here.
eg. to allow all machines to connect via ssh:
sshd: ALL: ALLOW
/etc/locale.gen
This file contains a list of all supported locales and charsets
available to you. When choosing a LOCALE in your /etc/rc.conf or when
starting a program, it is required to uncomment the respective locale
in this file, to make a "compiled" version available to the system,
and run the locale-gen command as root to generate all uncommented
locales and put them in their place afterwards. You should uncomment
all locales you intend to use.
During the installation process, you do not need to run locale-gen
manually, this will be taken care of automatically after saving your
changes to this file.
By default, all locales are enabled that would make sense by rc.conf's
LOCALE= setting. To make your system work smoothly, you should
check/edit/correct this file and uncomment at least the one locale
you're using in your rc.conf.
_________________________________________________________________
/boot/grub/menu.lst
GRUB is the default bootloader for Arch Linux. You should check and
modify this file to accommodate your boot setup if you want to use
GRUB, otherwise read on about the LILO configuration.
Make sure you read the warning regarding the pata transition
elaborated on in the fstab section! Again, the installer will have
pre-populated using UUID entries to get around this, which you may have
to change in the same cases you'd need to change them in your fstab.
Configuring GRUB is quite easy, the biggest hurdle is that it uses yet
another device naming scheme different from /dev; Your hard disks as a
whole are referred to as (hd0), (hd1), etc., sequentially numbered in
order of appearance on the IDE/SCSI bus, just like the sda, sdb, etc.
names in Linux. The partitions of a disk are referred to with (hd0,0),
(hd0,1) and so on, with 0 meaning the first partition. A few
conversion examples are included in the default menu.lst to aid your
understanding.
Once you grasped the concept of device naming, all you need to do is
to choose a nice title for your boot section(s), supply the correct
root partition device as a parameter to the root option to have it
mounted as / on bootup, and create a kernel line that includes the
partition and path where the kernel is located as well as any boot
parameters. If using the stock kernel, you'll also need an
initrd line that points to the kernel26.img file in your /boot
directory. The path you put on your initrd line should be the same as
the path to vmlinuz26 that you provide on the kernel line. You should
be fine with the defaults, just check whether the partition
information is correct in the root and kernel lines, especially in
regard to the pata issue!
To create a boot option that loads the boot sector of a different OS,
the following example might be helpful. You will probably succeed in
starting any Microsoft-based operating system with it, just add this
block to the file after any other sections, and modify the partition
device accordingly to refer to the partition containing the boot sector
of the OS you are intending to boot.
# (1) Other OS
title My Other OS
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
For advanced configuration of other OSes, please refer to the online
GRUB manual.
After checking your bootloader configuration for correctness, you'll
be prompted for a partition to install the loader to. Unless you're
using yet another boot loader, you should install GRUB to the MBR of
the installation disk, which is usually represented by the appropriate
device name without a number suffix.
/etc/lilo.conf
This is the configuration file for the LILO bootloader. Make sure you
check this one and get it right if you want to use LILO to boot your
system. See LILO documentation for help on this.
Things you should check are the root= lines in the image sections and
the boot= line right at the beginning of the file. The root lines
specify the device which shall be mounted as the root filesystem on
bootup. If you don't know what is supposed to be entered here, change
to another terminal and type mount to see a list of all currently
mounted drives, and look for the line which displays a device name
mounted on /tmp/install type [...]. The device path at the beginning of this
very line should be entered in the root lines of your lilo.conf.
Change if necessary, and keep the pata issue in mind! Again, UUIDs will
have been entered by default, and may need to be changed to device names
under the same circumstances as fstab entries need to be changed.
The boot line should be okay by default in most cases. Unless you have
a weird boot manager setup in mind with multiple OSes, the device
referenced here should be having the same prefix your root lines have,
but not end with a number. For example, a root of /dev/sda3 means you
probably want to install LILO into the Master Boot Record of the hard
disk, so you would set boot to /dev/sda, which references the disk as
a whole. During installation, the boot device must be the current name
of the device where you want to write the boot sector to; This may
differ from the name of the device after the first boot, thanks to the
pata transition! Check carefully what device to write to during the
installation stage, for example with the mount command.
To prevent some serious grief, you should make sure you know how to
restore the boot sector of your other OSes, for example with Windows's
FIXBOOT/FIXMBR tools.
To be on the safe side, you should keep the option lba32 listed. This
will prevent some geometry issues from happening.
In some cases, depending on your BIOS, LILO will not run on bootup and
spill out an error code infinitely. In most cases you either removed
the lba32 option, or your hardware setup is a little special, meaning
that maybe your CD-ROM drive is primary master and the hard disk you
installed secondary slave. This can very well confuse your BIOS, and
thus stop the boot process. To prevent that you can try and make the
install drive the primary master on your IDE bus. If you've got a
mixed IDE and SCSI system and the problem persists, you'll probably
need some experimentation with the disk and bios options of LILO to
provide a working mapping; The disk drives in your system are numbered
sequentially by your BIOS, starting with 0x80. If you're lucky your
SCSI controller tells you which drive has which BIOS ID, but usually
you're not. How the drives are effectively numbered is depending on
your BIOS, so in the worst case you can only guess until it works. A
typical disk line would look like this:
boot=/dev/hda
disk=/dev/hda bios=0x80
The disk option maps a BIOS ID to the disk device known to Linux. Note
that there is still no guarantee that things will work as other things
can be wrong, so do not despair if all your tries fail, but rather try
rearranging your hardware in a way that's not totally odd. In this
area too much can go wrong and needs special handling to be explained
here. In most cases the lba32 option will suffice anyway. Old hard
drives will usually need a little more special care until they do as
told.
Don't become fidgety when reading this section, I (Dennis) just
happened to stumble over this problem when experimenting with a rather
odd system, and figured it'd be a good idea to mention this show
stopper and workarounds here. You probably won't ever experience this,
as you should be using GRUB anyway.
How to recreate a LILO boot sector with only a rescue disk is
explained later in this document.
/etc/conf.d/*
During setup, this is totally unimportant. Consider this as reference
for the interested.
Some daemon scripts will have a matching configuration file in this
directory that contains some more-or-less useful default values. When
a daemon is started, it will first source the settings from it's
config file within this directory, and then source the /etc/rc.conf.
This means you can easily centralize all your daemon configuration
options in your /etc/rc.conf simply by setting an appropriate variable
value, or split up your configuration over multiple files if you
prefer a decentralized approach to this issue. Isn't life great if
it's all just simple scripting?
/etc/profile
This script is run on each user login to initialize the system. It is
kept quite simple under Arch Linux, as most things are. You may wish
to edit or customize it to suit your needs.
Boot Scripts
Arch Linux uses a fairly simple bootup sequence quite similar to
*BSDs. The first boot script to run is /etc/rc.sysinit. When it's
done, /etc/rc.multi will be called (in a normal bootup). The last
script to run will be /etc/rc.local. When started in runlevel 1, the
single user mode, the script /etc/rc.single is run instead of
/etc/rc.multi. You will not find an endless symlink collection in the
/etc/rc?.d/ directories to define the bootup sequence for all possible
runleves. In fact, due to this approach Arch only really has three
runlevels, if you take starting up X in runlevel 5 into account. The
boot scripts are using the variables and definitions found in the
/etc/rc.conf file and also a set of general functions defined in the
/etc/rc.d/functions script. If you plan to write your own daemon
files, you should consider having a look at this file and existing
daemon scripts.
Boot Script Overview
1. /etc/rc.sysinit
2. /etc/rc.single
3. /etc/rc.multi
4. /etc/rc.local
5. /etc/rc.shutdown
6. /etc/rc.local.shutdown
7. /etc/rc.d/*
/etc/rc.sysinit
The main system boot script. It does boot-critical things like
mounting filesystems, running udev, activating swap, loading modules,
setting localization parameters, etc. You will most likely never need
to edit this file!
/etc/rc.single
Single-user startup. Not used in a normal boot-up. If the system is
started in single-user mode, for example with the kernel parameter 1
before booting or during normal multi-user operation with the command
init 1, this script makes sure no daemons are running except for the
bare minimum; syslog-ng and udev. The single-user mode is useful if
you need to make any changes to the system while making sure that no
remote user can do anything that might cause data loss or damage.
For desktop users, this mode usually is useless as crud. You should
have no need to edit this script, either.
/etc/rc.multi
Multi-user startup script. It starts all daemons you configured in the
DAEMONS array (set in /etc/rc.conf) after which it calls
/etc/rc.local. You shouldn't feel a pressing need to edit this file.
/etc/rc.local
Local multi-user startup script. It is a good place to put any
last-minute commands you want the system to run at the very end of the
bootup process. This is finally the one and only script you should
modify if needed, and you have total freedom on what to add to this
script.
Most common system configuration tasks, like loading modules, changing
the console font or setting up devices, usually have a dedicated place
where they belong. To avoid confusion, you should make sure that
whatever you intend to add to your rc.local isn't feeling just as home
in /etc/profile.d/ or any other already existent config location
instead.
/etc/rc.shutdown
System shutdown script. It stops daemons, unmounts filesystems,
deactivates the swap, etc. Just don't touch.
/etc/rc.local.shutdown
Analogous to the /etc/rc.local file, this file may contain any
commands you want to run right before the common rc.shutdown is
executed. Please note that this file does not exist by default, and
for it to work properly, it must be set as executable.
/etc/rc.d/*
This directory contains the daemon scripts referred to from the
rc.conf's DAEMONS array. In addition to being called on bootup, you
can use these scripts when the system is running to manage the
services of your system. For example the command
# /etc/rc.d/postfix stop
will stop the postfix daemon. Of course a script only exists when the
appropriate package has been installed (in this case postfix). With a
basic system install, you don't have many scripts in here, but rest
assured that all relevant daemon scripts end up here. This directory
is pretty much the equivalent to the /etc/rc3.d/ or /etc/init.d/
directories of other distributions, without all the symlink spaghetti.
User Management
Users and groups can be added and deleted with the standard commands
provided in the util-linux package: useradd, userdel, groupadd,
groupdel, passwd, and gpasswd. The typical way of adding a user is
similar to this procedure:
# useradd -m -s /bin/bash johndoe
# passwd johndoe
The first command will add the user named johndoe to the system,
create a home directory for him at /home/johndoe, and place some
default login files in his home directory. It will also set his login
shell to be /bin/bash. The second command will ask you for a password
for the johndoe user. A password is required to activate the account.
As an alternative to the useradd command, the adduser script is also
available to interactively create new users on your system simply by
answering questions.
See the manpages for more information on the remaining commands. It is
a good idea to create one or multiple normal users for your day-to-day
work to fully use the available security features and minimize
potential damage that may be the result of using the root user for
anything but system administration tasks.
Internet Access
Due to a lack of developers using dialup, connecting Arch to the Internet
with a dialup line requires a lot of manual setup. If at all possible,
set up a dedicated router which you can then use as a default gateway on
the Arch box.
There are quite a few dialup related documents in the Arch Linux Wiki
Analog Modem
To be able to use a Hayes-compatible, external, analog modem, you need
to at least have the ppp package installed. Modify the file
/etc/ppp/options to suit your needs and according to man pppd. You
will need to define a chat script to supply your username and password
to the ISP after the initial connection has been established. The
manpages for pppd and chat have examples in them that should suffice
to get a connection up and running if you're either experienced or
stubborn enough. With udev, your serial ports are usually /dev/tts/0
and /dev/tts/1.
Instead of fighting a glorious battle with the plain pppd, you may opt
to install wvdial or a similar tool to ease the setup process
considerably.
In case you're using a so called WinModem, which is basically a PCI
plugin card working as an internal analog modem, you should indulge in
the vast information found on the LinModem homepage.
ISDN
Setting up ISDN is done in three steps:
1. Install and configure hardware
2. Install and configure the ISDN utilities
3. Add settings for your ISP
The current Arch stock kernels include the necessary ISDN modules,
meaning that you won't need to recompile your kernel unless you're
about to use rather odd or old ISDN hardware. After physically
installing your ISDN card in your machine or plugging in your USB
ISDN-Box, you can try loading the modules with modprobe. Nearly all
passive ISDN PCI cards are handled by the hisax module which needs two
parameters; type and protocol. You must set protocol to '1' if your
country uses the 1TR6 standard, '2' if it uses EuroISDN (EDSS1), '3'
if you're hooked to a so called leased-line without D-channel, and '4'
for US NI1.
Details on all those settings and how to set them is included in the
kernel documentation, more specifically in the isdn subdirectory,
available online. The type parameter depends on your card; A list of
all possible types is to be found in the README.HiSax kernel
documentation. Choose your card and load the module with the
appropriate options like this:
# modprobe hisax type=18 protocol=2
This will load the hisax module for my (Dennis) ELSA Quickstep
1000PCI, being used in Germany with the EDSS1 protocol. You should
find helpful debugging output in your /var/log/everything.log file in
which you should see your card being prepared for action. Please note
that you will probably need to load some usb modules before you can
work with an external USB ISDN Adapter.
Once you confirmed that your card works with certain settings, you can
add the module options to your /etc/modprobe.conf:
alias ippp0 hisax
options hisax type=18 protocol=2
Alternatively you can only add the options line here, and add hisax to
your MODULES array in the rc.conf. Your choice, really, but this
example has the advantage that the module will not be loaded until
it's really needed.
That being done you should have working, supported hardware. Now you
need the basic utilities to actually use it!
Install the isdn4k-utils package, and read the manpage to isdnctrl,
it'll get you started. Further down in the manpage you will find
explanations on how to create a configuration file that can be parsed
by isdnctrl, as well as some helpful setup examples.
Please note that you have to add your SPID to your MSN setting
separated by a colon if you use US NI1.
After you configured your ISDN card with the isdnctrl utility, you
should be able to dial into the machine you specified with the
PHONE_OUT parameter, but fail the username and password
authentication. To make this work add your username and password to
/etc/ppp/pap-secrets or /etc/ppp/chap-secrets as if you were
configuring a normal analogous PPP link, depending on which protocol
your ISP uses for authentication. If in doubt, put your data into both
files.
If you set up everything correctly, you should now be able to
establish a dialup connection with isdnctrl dial ippp0 as root. If you
have any problems, remember to check the logfiles!
|
read more at the above link.........
_________________
Veronica - Arch Linux 64-bit -- Kernel 2.6.33.4-1
Archie/Jughead - Arch Linux 32-bit -- Kernel 2.6.33.4-1
Betty/Reggie - Arch Linux (VBox) 32-bit -- Kernel 2.6.33.4-1
BumbleBee - OpenSolaris-SunOS 5.11
Last edited by crouse on Wed May 28, 2024 12:45 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
must be that Alzheimers thing again ......... 
Any further advice?
