Arch Linux Notes

• ArchWiki Installation Guide
• Wai Hon's Installing Arch Linux with Full Disk Encryption Guide
• ArchWiki serial console
• Suckless
• ArchWiki LightDM

• Obtain the latest archlinux iso and verify it downloaded correctly
• Use dd to write the image to the removable drive

dd bs=4M if=path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso of=/dev/<YOUR_USB_DRIVE> conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress

• Set the clock to use ntp timedatectl set-ntp true

• Use pacstrap to download initial packages pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware dhcpcd iwd mg mailutils

• Use genfstab to generate an fstab genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

• Use the arch-chroot command to chroot into the new partition arch-chroot /mnt

• Symlink your timezone to /etc/localtime ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Kentucky/Louisville /etc/localtime

• Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment your locale
• For example mg /etc/locale.gen and uncoment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
• Generate locale locale-gen
• Set the locale localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8
• Create a file /etc/locale.conf and set the contents to LANG=en_US.UTF-8

• Create the hostname file with your hostname /etc/hostname
• Edit the /etc/hosts to like below

127.0.0.1     localhost
::1           localhost

• If you are using full disk encryption you need to update the initramfs
• Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
• Edit the hooks to be like this HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf block keyboard encrypt filesystems fsck)
• Run mkinitcpio -P to generate the image

• Run passwd to set the root password

• Install either pacman -Sy intel-ucode or pacman -Sy amd-ucode if that applies

• Run bootctl install to install the systemd boot manager
• Create a boot loader entry in /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf with the below text
• You can get the partition UUID (not PARTUUID) from blkid and make sure you set the ucode to match your CPU type
• Ensure that it is the partition UUID and not the /dev/mapper/cryptroot one

title   Arch Linux
linux   /vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /intel-ucode.img
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
options cryptdevice=UUID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX:cryptroot root=/dev/mapper/cryptroot rw

• Edit the /boot/loader/loader.conf to use your new config

default      arch.conf
timeout      5
console-mode max
editor       no

• You can see if it worked by running bootctl list

• Enable iwd wifi service systemctl enable iwd
• Enable dhcpcd service systemctl enable dhcpcd

• Exit the chroot environment
• Unmount the /mnt/boot partition and the /mnt partition
• Run reboot and test out the new install
• Ensure that the computer doesn't try to boot the usb stick again

• If you need to join wifi you should be able to use iwctl to communicate with iwd
• From there it should be same as before
• For example, station wlan0 connect <NAME_OF_NETWORK>

• You should create a user outside of the root user on the machine
• Run useradd -m -G wheel,uucp <USER_NAME> to create a new user
• Run passwd <USER_NAME> to set that new user's password
• Install sudo if you haven't already pacman -Sy sudo
• Set the EDITOR environment variable and run visudo export EDITOR=mg && visudo
• From here uncomment the line that mentions the wheel group
• After this you should be able to log in as the newly created user and run sudo commands

• Make the directory for keymaps sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/kbd/keymaps
• Create a file named /usr/local/share/kbd/keymaps/personal.map (you might need to create any missing directories)
• Give it the contents below

keymaps 0-127
keycode 58 = Control

• Edit /etc/vconsole.conf and set its contents to the following KEYMAP=/usr/local/share/kbd/keymaps/personal.map
• After the next reboot the caps lock key should be an extra control inside the console

pacman -Sy emacs man man-pages tmux ncdu fzf mosh rsync pass pass-otp curl wget gnupg git cronie cdparanoia abcde beets python-pip ctags aspell aspell-en htop unzip zip pv nethack sshfs p7zip zbar ledger

• Don't forget to enable cronie systemctl enable cronie.service

• Install picocom sudo pacman -Sy picocom
• Plug in you USB serial device and try it out
• For example, picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB0
• To find the serial device you can run dmesg and grep the output for tty sudo dmesg | grep tty
• I do not recommend running picocom inside eshell, ansi-term is a better choice
• Use C-a C-x to exit picocom when you are done, if inside of emacs you might need to type C-x twice
• If you have issues with permissions ensure your user is in the uucp group with the command groups

• Install xorg with sudo pacman -Sy xorg-server xorg-apps xorg-xinit
• Install the right graphics driver sudo pacman -Sy xf86-video-{amdgpu, ati, intel, nouveau}
• Proprietary nvidia drivers are installed with sudo pacman -Sy nvidia
• Based on you graphics driver you might also need to install mesa sudo pacman -Sy mesa
• Install git sudo pacman -Sy git
• Clone dwm mkdir ~/src && cd ~/src && git clone https://git.suckless.org/dwm
• Build and install dwm cd ~/src/dwm && sudo make install
• Clone dmenu cd ~/src && git clone https://git.suckless.org/dmenu
• Build and install dmenu cd ~/src/dmenu && sudo make install
• Clone slstatus cd ~/src && git clone https://git.suckless.org/slstatus
• Build and install slstatus cd ~/src/slstatus && sudo make install
• Create an .xinitrc in your homedir and set dwm and start dwm in it
• Test out x by running startx from the terminal
• Install lightdm and the gtk greeter sudo pacman -Sy lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter
• Edit the /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and uncomment greeter-session and set it to lightdm-gtk-greeter
• Enable lightdm sudo systemctl enable lightdm
• Create /usr/share/xsessions/dwm.desktop and use the below code

[Desktop Entry]
Name=dwm
Comment=Login using dwm
Exec=/usr/local/bin/dwm
TryExec=/usr/local/bin/dwm
Type=Application

• Install pipewire pipewire-docs pipewire-pulse
• You might need to restart for the the service to be started properly

• Install dunst for desktop notifications sudo pacman -Sy libnotify dunst
• There are various util commands that make it easy to bind to keys in dwm in the utils.org

• Sometimes package signatures are out of date
• To update them run sudo pacman-key --populate and sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys

• ArchWiki
• Install cups
• Enable cups sudo systemctl enable --now cups
• For network printing install nss-mdns and avahi and enabled avahi sudo systemct enable --now avahi-daemon
• Add mdns_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] to the file /etc/nsswitch.conf after the mymachines and before resolve and dns
• Use lpinfo -v to see a list of printer URIs
• Use lpadmin to add a printer queue, for example lpadmin -p <PRINTER_QUEUE_NAME> -E -v "ipp://URL" -m everywhere
• Use lpoptions -d <PRINTER_QUEUE_NAME> to make the printer default
• Enable the printer with cupsenable <PRINT_QUEUE_NAME>
• Set the printer to accept jobs cupsaccept <PRINT_QUEUE_NAME>
• To print a test page use lpr /usr/share/cups/data/testprint
• To print a file use lpr <SOME_FILE> or lpr -# <NUMBER_OF_COPIES> <SOME_FILE>
• cups has a web UI acceptable here http://localhost:631/

• Install OpenTTD packages: openttd, openttd-opensfx, openttd-opengfx
• In order to hear music you need to download some music from the online updater in the game
• Install the soundfont-fluid in order to hear the music from the game

• clone emacs from savannah git clone -b master git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git
• Releases are usually in a branch with the version number, for example emacs-28
• Run the ./autogen.sh to build the configure script
• Use this command to configure with native compilation ./configure --with-native-compilation
• On Arch Linux you might need to grab libgccjit from AUR mkdir ~/aur && git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/libgccjit.git && cd ~/aur/libgccjit && makepkg -si
• This will warn you about any missing dependencies, from there you should obtain them for your OS
• Build emacs with make -j <NUMBER_OF_CPU_CORES+1>
• Run make install with appropriate permissions to install the new version on the system
• Use M-x emacs-version RET to see the current version info, including the build date

• ArchWiki: XFCE4
• Install xfce4 and xfce4-goodies