This document is a guide for installing Arch Linux using the live system booted

from an installation medium made from an official installation image. The

installation medium provides accessibility features which are described on the
page Install Arch Linux with accessibility options. For alternative means of
installation, see Category:Installation process.
Before installing, it would be advised to view the FAQ. For conventions used
in this document, see Help:Reading. In particular, code examples may contain
placeholders (formatted in italics) that must be replaced manually.
This guide is kept concise and you are advised to follow the instructions in the
presented order per section. For more detailed instructions, see the respective
ArchWiki articles or the various programs’ man pages, both linked from this
guide. For interactive help, the IRC channel and the forums are also available.
Arch Linux should run on any x86_64-compatible machine with a minimum
of 512 MiB RAM, though more memory is needed to boot the live system for
installation.[1] A basic installation should take less than 2 GiB of disk space.
As the installation process needs to retrieve packages from a remote repository,
this guide assumes a working internet connection is available.
Pre-installation Acquire an installation image Visit the Download page and,
depending on how you want to boot, acquire the ISO file or a netboot image,
and the respective GnuPG signature.
Verify signature It is recommended to verify the image signature before use, espe-
cially when downloading from an HTTP mirror, where downloads are generally
prone to be intercepted to serve malicious images.
On a system with GnuPG installed, do this by downloading the ISO PGP
signature (under Checksums in the page Download) to the ISO directory, and
verifying it with:
$ gpg --keyserver-options auto-key-retrieve --verify archlinux-version-
x86_64.iso.sig Alternatively, from an existing Arch Linux installation
run:
$ pacman-key -v archlinux-version-x86_64.iso.sig Note: The signature itself
could be manipulated if it is downloaded from a mirror site, instead of from
archlinux.org as above. In this case, ensure that the public key, which is used
to decode the signature, is signed by another, trustworthy key. The gpg com-
mand will output the fingerprint of the public key. Another method to verify
the authenticity of the signature is to ensure that the public key’s fingerprint
is identical to the key fingerprint of the Arch Linux developer who signed the
ISO-file. See Wikipedia:Public-key cryptography for more information on the
public-key process to authenticate keys. Prepare an installation medium The
installation image can be supplied to the target machine via a USB flash drive,
an optical disc or a network with PXE: follow the appropriate article to prepare
yourself an installation medium from the chosen image.

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Boot the live environment Note: Arch Linux installation images do not support
Secure Boot. You will need to disable Secure Boot to boot the installation
medium. If desired, Secure Boot can be set up after completing the installation.
Point the current boot device to the one which has the Arch Linux installation
medium. Typically it is achieved by pressing a key during the POST phase, as
indicated on the splash screen. Refer to your motherboard’s manual for details.
When the installation medium’s boot loader menu appears, select Arch Linux
install medium and press Enter to enter the installation environment. Tip: The
installation image uses GRUB for UEFI and syslinux for BIOS booting. Use
respectively e or Tab to enter the boot parameters. See README.bootparams
for a list. A common example of manually defined boot parameter would be the
font size. For better readability on HiDPI screens—when they are not already
recognized as such—using fbcon=font:TER16x32 can help. See HiDPI#Linux
console (tty) for a detailed explanation. You will be logged in on the first virtual
console as the root user, and presented with a Zsh shell prompt. To switch to
a different console—for example, to view this guide with Lynx alongside the
installation—use the Alt+arrow shortcut. To edit configuration files, mcedit(1),
nano and vim are available. See pkglist.x86_64.txt for a list of the packages
included in the installation medium.
Set the console keyboard layout and font The default console keymap is US.
Available layouts can be listed with:
# ls /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/**/*.map.gz To set the keyboard layout, pass a
corresponding file name to loadkeys(1), omitting path and file extension. For
example, to set a German keyboard layout:
# loadkeys de-latin1 Console fonts are located in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/
and can likewise be set with setfont(8). For example, to use one of the largest
fonts suitable for HiDPI screens, run:
# setfont ter-132b Verify the boot mode To verify the boot mode, list the efivars
directory:
# ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars If the command shows the directory without error,
then the system is booted in UEFI mode. If the directory does not exist, the
system may be booted in BIOS (or CSM) mode. If the system did not boot in
the mode you desired, refer to your motherboard’s manual.
Connect to the internet To set up a network connection in the live environment,
go through the following steps:
Ensure your network interface is listed and enabled, for example with ip-link(8):
# ip link For wireless and WWAN, make sure the card is not blocked with rfkill.
Connect to the network: Ethernet—plug in the cable. Wi-Fi—authenticate
to the wireless network using iwctl. Mobile broadband modem—connect to
the mobile network with the mmcli utility. Configure your network connec-
tion: DHCP: dynamic IP address and DNS server assignment (provided by
systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved) should work out of the box for Ether-

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net, WLAN, and WWAN network interfaces. Static IP address: follow Network
configuration#Static IP address. The connection may be verified with ping: #
ping archlinux.org Note: In the installation image, systemd-networkd, systemd-
resolved, iwd and ModemManager are preconfigured and enabled by default.
That will not be the case for the installed system. Update the system clock In
the live environment systemd-timesyncd is enabled by default and time will be
synced automatically once a connection to the internet is established.
Use timedatectl(1) to ensure the system clock is accurate:
# timedatectl Partition the disks When recognized by the live system, disks are
assigned to a block device such as /dev/sda, /dev/nvme0n1 or /dev/mmcblk0.
To identify these devices, use lsblk or fdisk.
# fdisk -l Results ending in rom, loop or airoot may be ignored.
Tip: Check that your NVMe drives and Advanced Format hard disk drives are
using the optimal logical sector size before partitioning. The following partitions
are required for a chosen device:
One partition for the root directory /. For booting in UEFI mode: an EFI
system partition. If you want to create any stacked block devices for LVM,
system encryption or RAID, do it now.
Use fdisk or parted to modify partition tables. For example:
# fdisk /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned Note: If the disk does not show up,
make sure the disk controller is not in RAID mode. If the disk from which you
want to boot already has an EFI system partition, do not create another one, but
use the existing partition instead. Swap space can be set on a swap file for file
systems supporting it. Example layouts UEFI with GPT Mount point Partition
Partition type Suggested size /mnt/boot1 /dev/efi_system_partition EFI sys-
tem partition At least 300 MiB. If multiple kernels will be installed, then no less
than 1 GiB. [SWAP] /dev/swap_partition Linux swap More than 512 MiB /mnt
/dev/root_partition Linux x86-64 root (/) Remainder of the device Other mount
points, such as /mnt/efi, are possible, provided that the used boot loader is ca-
pable of loading the kernel and initramfs images from the root volume. See the
warning in Arch boot process#Boot loader. BIOS with MBR Mount point Par-
tition Partition type Suggested size [SWAP] /dev/swap_partition Linux swap
More than 512 MiB /mnt /dev/root_partition Linux Remainder of the device
See also Partitioning#Example layouts.
Format the partitions Once the partitions have been created, each newly cre-
ated partition must be formatted with an appropriate file system. See File
systems#Create a file system for details.
For example, to create an Ext4 file system on /dev/root_partition, run:
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/root_partition If you created a partition for swap, initialize
it with mkswap(8):

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# mkswap /dev/swap_partition Note: For stacked block devices replace
/dev/*_partition with the appropriate block device path. If you created an
EFI system partition, format it to FAT32 using mkfs.fat(8).
Warning: Only format the EFI system partition if you created it during the par-
titioning step. If there already was an EFI system partition on disk beforehand,
reformatting it can destroy the boot loaders of other installed operating systems.
# mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/efi_system_partition Mount the file systems Mount the
root volume to /mnt. For example, if the root volume is /dev/root_partition:
# mount /dev/root_partition /mnt Create any remaining mount points (such
as /mnt/boot) and mount the volumes in their corresponding hierarchical order.
Tip: Run mount(8) with the --mkdir option to create the specified mount point.
Alternatively, create it using mkdir(1) beforehand. For UEFI systems, mount
the EFI system partition:
# mount --mkdir /dev/efi_system_partition /mnt/boot If you created a swap
volume, enable it with swapon(8):
# swapon /dev/swap_partition genfstab(8) will later detect mounted file sys-
tems and swap space.
Installation Select the mirrors Packages to be installed must be downloaded
from mirror servers, which are defined in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. On the live
system, after connecting to the internet, reflector updates the mirror list by
choosing 20 most recently synchronized HTTPS mirrors and sorting them by
download rate.
The higher a mirror is placed in the list, the more priority it is given when down-
loading a package. You may want to inspect the file to see if it is satisfactory.
If it is not, edit the file accordingly, and move the geographically closest mirrors
to the top of the list, although other criteria should be taken into account.
This file will later be copied to the new system by pacstrap, so it is worth getting
right.
Install essential packages Note: No software or configuration (except for
/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist) get carried over from the live environment to the
installed system. Use the pacstrap(8) script to install the base package, Linux
kernel and firmware for common hardware:
# pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware Tip: You can substitute linux
for a kernel package of your choice, or you could omit it entirely when installing
in a container. You could omit the installation of the firmware package when
installing in a virtual machine or container. The base package does not include
all tools from the live installation, so installing more packages may be necessary
for a fully functional base system. To install other packages or package groups,
append the names to the pacstrap command above (space separated) or use
pacman to install them while chrooted into the new system. In particular,
consider installing:

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userspace utilities for file systems that will be used on the system—for the pur-
poses of e.g. file system creation and fsck, utilities for accessing and managing
RAID or LVM if they will be used on the system, specific firmware for other
devices not included in linux-firmware (e.g. sof-firmware for onboard audio),
software necessary for networking (e.g. a network manager or a standalone
DHCP client, authentication software for Wi-Fi, ModemManager for mobile
broadband connections), a text editor, packages for accessing documentation in
man and info pages: man-db, man-pages and texinfo. For comparison, packages
available in the live system can be found in pkglist.x86_64.txt.
Configure the system Fstab Generate an fstab file (use -U or -L to define by
UUID or labels, respectively):
# genfstab -U /mnt » /mnt/etc/fstab Check the resulting /mnt/etc/fstab file,
and edit it in case of errors.
Chroot Change root into the new system:
# arch-chroot /mnt Time zone Set the time zone:
# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime Run hwclock(8) to gen-
erate /etc/adjtime:
# hwclock --systohc This command assumes the hardware clock is set to UTC.
See System time#Time standard for details.
Localization Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and
other needed locales. Generate the locales by running:
# locale-gen Create the locale.conf(5) file, and set the LANG variable accord-
ingly:
/etc/locale.conf LANG=en_US.UTF-8 If you set the console keyboard layout,
make the changes persistent in vconsole.conf(5):
/etc/vconsole.conf KEYMAP=de-latin1 Network configuration Create the host-
name file:
/etc/hostname myhostname Complete the network configuration for the newly
installed environment. That may include installing suitable network manage-
ment software.
Initramfs Creating a new initramfs is usually not required, because mkinitcpio
was run on installation of the kernel package with pacstrap.
For LVM, system encryption or RAID, modify mkinitcpio.conf(5) and recreate
the initramfs image:
# mkinitcpio -P Root password Set the root password:
# passwd Boot loader Choose and install a Linux-capable boot loader. If you
have an Intel or AMD CPU, enable microcode updates in addition.
Reboot Exit the chroot environment by typing exit or pressing Ctrl+d.

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Optionally manually unmount all the partitions with umount -R /mnt: this
allows noticing any ”busy” partitions, and finding the cause with fuser(1).
Finally, restart the machine by typing reboot: any partitions still mounted will
be automatically unmounted by systemd. Remember to remove the installation
medium and then login into the new system with the root account.
Post-installation See General recommendations for system management direc-
tions and post-installation tutorials (like creating unprivileged user accounts,
setting up a graphical user interface, sound or a touchpad).
For a list of applications that may be of interest, see List of applications.