How I Install Arch Linux (the hard way).
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 มิ.ย. 2024
- Installing Arch is no easy feat, and adding full disk encryption can be overwhelming for many beginners.
In this video, I walk you through how I install Arch from scratch, with full disk encryption.
Installation Guide:
github.com/dreamsofautonomy/a...
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00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:22 Checking out our hardware
00:01:32 Download the installer
00:02:16 Verify installer Image
00:02:47 Flashing installer to usb
00:03:58 Setting up ssh
00:05:05 Partitioning disks
00:08:13 Adding full disk encryption
00:09:15 Setting up our volumes
00:10:16 Setting up our filesystems
00:10:57 Mounting our disks
00:11:36 Installing Arch!
00:12:45 Decryption on boot
00:13:29 Installing our bootloader
00:15:50 Adding home partition to decryption table
00:16:42 Setting up the clock and NTP
00:17:22 Adding Locale information
00:17:57 Adding a hostname
00:18:10 Setting up users
00:18:53 Sudo access
00:19:19 Installing Network Manager
00:19:35 Adding Gnome Desktop Environment
00:20:13 Installing Microcode
00:20:40 Reboot into our new system
![Installing Arch Linux is EASY [ A Tutorial ] -- Linux for Newbs EP 1](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8YE1LlTxfMQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![Installing Arch Linux is EASY [ A Tutorial ] -- Linux for Newbs EP 1](/img/tr.png)
Just a heads up: I do not encrypt the boot partition in this video, which means your keyfile can be compromised using another live ISO image.
If you want to be extra secure, skip the step for putting the keyfile in the FILES=() line in the mkinitcpio.conf This does mean you'll have to enter your password twice, however.
I have another video in the pipeline where we'll be looking at different options for securing the boot partition in this setup as there are a few options to achieve this each with their own caveats!
Thanks to everyone who pointed this out
Will creating efi partition and lvm partition first and then adding /boot, swap, / (root) in lvm (no need for home for me) work? That way only one password is required right? Or will it not work because some part of luks is in encrypted lvm?
I'm a newbie, trying to make sense how this works. Ty for the video, rest of it is very easy to understand and helpful.
It is not “extra secure”. If keyfile is not encrypted then the system is basically wide open, no point of encryption at all.
Which means there is no point in encrypting anything in the first place
@@ketchup901 exactly.
BTW, the correct way to do this is to put the keys on / partition (encrypted) and point crypttab to them.
Insanely well-made and aesthetic video!
I use Arch btw
Thank you!
Hi. Is the disk encryption really required? I was a windows user and installing Arch Linux now.
@@traderdha It is not! Only if you're extra paranoid, like I am. You can skip it entirely otherwise :)
Another super easy and more powerful USB tool would be Ventoy. You simply install Ventoy on to the USB thumb drive. It sets itself up as bootable. Now you can drag as many Linux .iso as you want or can fit on the drive. Ventoy will automatically add them to it's menu. When you boot from the Ventoy drive a nice looking menu is displayed listing all the different Linux .iso you have available. You can even put other OS on there too. It is the easiest way to make a multi OS bootable drive. Pretty cool option.
I love Ventoy so much, such a great software.
Totally agreed, I use ventoy it's really amazing
I don't know if it is just me but it seems like the entire process of initializing the installation and Live Boot takes a lot longer on Ventoy even if you have a modern USB 3.0 (probably due to all the files being compressed inside the .ISOs) .
This is my only complaint and the reason i still have a separate usb drive exclusive for windows 10/11 installers when people ask me for help formatting their PCs.
Probably user error but I never got Ventoy to boot UEFI/GPT, so I just write the ISO to another USB with the right format :P
I'll probably never need this tutorial but I appreciate your attention of detail. Good job!
why?
Did a new Arch install last week so the release of this was perfect timing. I walked through step-by-step exactly and ran into zero issues. The only "maybe" error I noticed was the annotation for a typo in your original code at 14:12. Annotation "should be /dev/nvme1n0p3" should actually be "/dev/nvme0n1p3"
Excellent video, cleared up some of the problems I'd encountered installing Arch in the past.
the video super enjoying to watch
keep it up bro, looking forward for your next arch video
Glad you enjoyed! Thank you.
I use arch, btw
Thanks for sharing 👍
I use Arch, BTW.
PS: let's keep the chain going.
Who asked?
I use arch btw. @@Daoist_Oak
@@Daoist_OakI use arch, btw
Excellent and informative video, I think this may give me the nudge I need to finally take the lunge on arch - have subscribed and look forward to seeing what you upload in the future :)
Great video detailing the process step by step. Most appreciated!
Thanks to you that I know you can use SSH to install from another device. This makes the installation process so much more convenient, I wish the arch wiki included this tip.
This was really informational video. Looking forward to more.
Nice video! I wish I've seen this one while installing arch manually.
you explained all of this so easy, for a moment I thought maybe it's easy :D
Bro we need a video for your terminal setup including tmux and neovim.
Great video btw ❤
Cool! I really liked this video. I have been using Arch for a long time, and I'm used to installing it manually, didn't have a chance to test the new and shiny arch installer. Although my partitioning is very simple, ESP plus root and no encryption. But I do use a very much custom graphical environment, Sway with much of additional cosmetic apps.
Now I am using gentoo and I think the handbook currently is much better than the previous time I tried to do it. I've decided to try out gnome as well, and the installation turned out to be extremely simple because you pretty much just select a profile and tell portage to compile and install everything. I decided to keep using systemd, thankfully the gentoo documentation has improved a lot and supplies much more useful information for systemd profile users. And also I recently transitioned to UKI system, I can boot my linux system even without a bootloader, cool! But I do use rEFInd for dual-boot/triple-boot nicely.
Oh, did I mention I have 2 linux systems in one btrfs partition with roots divided into subvolumes? Yeah, pretty cursed yet cool I think.
GAH you've finally got me. I am ordering a intel NUC to install Arch on right now
What a beautiful guide this was!
I extremely recommend to use ventoy for usb boot up steps. ventoy is a grub distro installed on flashdisk and can boot iso files under root directory of flashdisk partition. That's much easier to use than dd command.
Definitely....
You must use arch btw
@@AnxulJyoti 😄
Thanks a lot man thanks to your tutorial and another website that I used as a complement the Arch installation went smoothly
I'm very glad to hear that!
Thanks for this. That was a journey!
I don't use Arch, but if I ever did go to install it, I would deffo follow this guide, really well made!
Thank you very much for presenting this information to your audience. I have been using Arch-based Garuda Linux for about 1 and a half years. In the past years, I tried to install raw Arch Linux, but I failed. I hope I can install Arch Linux by scratching it thanks to your video. I'm happy with Garuda Linux for now, but this video will help me understand Arch Linux faster. Thank you for sharing your valuable information.
After installing Arch scores of times over the years, I am fully on-board with simply running "arch-install" and being done with it. I use a basic setup with two drives, encryption only on the system/boot drive, so nothing fancy that requires anything the install script cannot accomplish faster. It isn't perfect by any means, but it gets it done, and makes Arch much more accessible to Linux newcomers.
I'd really like to see how to make your own 'Desktop Environment'; like what are the different things that make up a 'desktop environment' and so on. BTW, this video is what I definitely needed, another Arch Install video 😂.
a desktop environment is still just a window manager but it also comes with its own suite of apps, like calculators, text editors, terminals etc..
My first distro was arch and I couldn't get to do some basic things which made me frustrated since I was new and didn't find comprehensive stuff that covers i3wm with automatic disk mounting (NVME) Nvidia drivers ( to prevent screen tearing in the web browser) as so forth.
Would love to see a "setting up arch for development " video.
Switched away from m$ recently, and exploring different distros for my daily work machine
@dreamsofautonomy Your videos are amazing! Please don't stop. Now for absolute happiness we urgently need the i3w video guide. Thank you!
Are you the same person who makes Dream of Code?
I adored your videos and the approach to teach it is inspiring. Including this one.
Keep it up.
And thank you.
Yes I am! You found me :)
@@dreamsofautonomy Nice 🎉.
Really amazing! Arch has always been a double edged sword for me. On one hand it's incedible for what it offers. On the other hand you have to do everything yourself. And while I'm not confident enought to switch from Debian right now, it certanly helped me understand Arch better. So thank you!
I cannot recommend EndeavourOS enough. It's literally just arch with a nice installer and a decent after-install helper script. You can install whichever DE you're familiar with and other than remembering to use pacman or yay not apt-get you will probably not even notice a difference.
Arch is kind of sweet sport between ready up distros and gentoo
Thank you .Great work
Excellent video, thank you very much.
I wish I had this guide when I started using arch back in 2016
EDIT: a couple of nice additions would be secure boot (maybe even with TPM) and plymouth for graphical password display and splash screen
secure boot would need any kernel module dependent package need to get signed, this gets very stupid at some point, ubuntu does this if you want that but not even fedora sign those packages
@@patrickdee7365 the way I do it is by generating a unified kernel image that bundle everything so you have to sign (pacman hooks actually do this for you) stuff twice (kernel and fallback)
Agreed! I added a pinned note about encrypting / securing boot on this setup! I'll be doing a follow up video on how to do so :)
@@patrickdee7365 you can sign the modules automatically via a script.
@@dreamsofautonomy I'm glad my feedback has been useful
I have an Arch in my flash drive to use on my classes I give, but I used archinstall script to install it.
Now I want to try your tutorial with encryption. Its very clear and easy to understand.
Thank you very much for share this video.
PS.: you should change your video name to "How I Install Arch Linux (not the hard way anymore)." ❤
this stuff is great, wish you had made this a year ago when I installed arch linux the first time! haha
As a mac user this is really convincing, I might start using both
Wow. Beautiful.
Can you also make a video about how you make these videos and animations in Arch? Your workflow basically.
Thanks a lot.
Nice video. And flex that you use Arch, btw
Great stuff! Pls may one ask what screen recorder you're using? Ta much!
Nice video! However the boot partition is still unencrypted and also unsecured. It would be nice to have an upgraded version with UKI and secureboot which gives you even more security. On some systems you can even go without any bootmanager then. Or use systemd-boot or rEFInd
GRUB supports putting the kernel not on the EFI System partition (Or seperate boot partition) and with a patch also supports unlocking luks2 containers.
I would generally say it's unneeded to have a separate boot partition, instead just leave it on your main partition.
On my Laptop, I have a setup with a 2MiB EFI System partition, which only holds GRUB and absolutely nothing more (You could also sign it with secure boot keys optionally) and a Root Partition containing everything which is encrypted using a luks2 container. To start my Laptop, I always need to enter a password in order to decrypt the root partition and boot into the system. systemd-boot doesn't support the kernel and initrd not on the EFI System Partition, so you would need to sign it, to actually secure it.
rEFInd, to my knowledge, doesn't support unlocking luks2 containers, so you would need another solution for that. GRUB might be the best option, if you want to expose the least attack surface, which with just being the bootloader, is pretty minimal.
You''re correct! An encrypted boot partition with TPM is fully secure. I'm going to be adding it to this setup in a coming video.
@WERTBON. Grub does support luks2 yes, with a patch it even supports argon2i but then it is slow as hell while decrypting the partition. If you use UKI that is located on the EFI partition and secured by own secureboot keys then you do not need the boot manager to decrypt the partition. Like i said you do not even need a bootmanager on some mainboards/computers. I use rEFInd because of its nice UI. But systemd-boot would also work without any issues. As for the TPM with additional password it even adds an extra layer of security
rEFInd for life ✌️
the best tutorial video I have ever seen
Thank you!
@@dreamsofautonomy can say the same, seen some Arch installs, so far guess this one was the best one.
Only put the swap size to be bigger than the RAM if you want to be able to suspend to disk.
In addition, i highly recommend considering going without swap if you have 32GB or more of RAM. This info is based on HDDs not SSDs, and was from ten years ago, but it likely still applies. Especially with an HDD swap on high memory systems you can get thrashing so bad your system is unusable for hours at a time. Due to the way the kernel scans for pages that can be swapped out to provide more file system cache, with 4k pages it can easily take extra processing to find pages to swap out that are not gotten back by having a slightly bigger cache. The desired behavior when a system is running out of memory is very likely to kill the offending process while maintaining interactivity, which swap causes the opposite behavior.
Totally agree. I still use it for an old budget laptop that I repurposed into a dedicated Plex/mpd server, but for my primary machine that has 32 GB, I never bother using swap, it is simply a waste of memory. There is also zram which can be setup for "just in case" situations if one is not comfortable completely foregoing any memory caching for whatever reason..
I always heard the recommendation was to have swap, even if you have 32+ GB of memory and even if the swap space is only 512 MB in size. Due to some programs that expect swap to exist or something... They are both arguments for and against swap, so I wonder which is really better. Or if it's a case of no swap being "non-standard"
Sudoers tip: you can also use the oneliner `EDITOR=nvim visudo`
Not only was this thorough, but the editing was great! What video editing software do you use?
Thank you! I use Davinci Resolve, as it's the only one I've found that works well on Linux.
I tried moving to adobe suite but found it to be not as good as DR. I still need to learn how to get faster with editing though 😅
@@dreamsofautonomy Never heard of it, might check it out. In any case, hoping for more videos like this!
@@dreamsofautonomy oh DR.. the best at editing and grading...
great video
Helpful, thx!
I totally understand. Recently I needed a new hammer. I devoted a couple of months to gathering the ore, learning how to refine it, and then casting the perfect hammer head. Next is carving a perfect handle for it - once I've constructed my own chisels, from scratch. Gathering all the necessary info with my Linux Mint desktop.
🤣🤣🤣
😂
That was a gold. Tbh, the installation wasn't much different from any other distro except for those steps he deliberately added to it, like extra security, micro configurations and dev tools + some self- torturing moments with dd command 🤣
Ngl, I was left a bit tempted to give Arch a try🌚🔫
@@mona.supremacy Yep, I was being a bit facetious. But on the other hand, that's what the friends and colleagues to whom I talk up Linux expect - major ordeal, having to use the terminal, etc. I'm talking several with PhD's! I have to stress that there are versions (Distros) like Mint, where you install it, take 10 minutes to figure out, and you're good to go.
It is good video, useful! Thx
respect for the font size in the terminal
Excellent video! I don’t run Arch, BTW. I used to, and I’m going to install it to a VM so I can try to get back into it again. I need something I can use for k8s development, so I need to figure out how to get all the tools I need installed.
Brilliant!
I'm using Windows since 98, mostly for gaming. Even today i use 11 for gaming because i don't find ways to configure the gaming hardware within linux. On my old Laptop i use Linux Mint a few years now to learn and understand better how linux works. Arch Linux, as the video shows, is very hard for beginners if you don't know all the commands and what you have to do to install everything you need. Especially if you don't know what packages you need or how they are called etc. This guide helps a lot to learn what you have to do and what happens on the machine. But to understand everything i stil have a long way to go. Or just stay in the middle between windows and arch -> Mint (or Debian/Ubuntu based Distros) 🙈
you can learn windows or arch, but arch is soo much better.
I haven't ever used the disk encryption when installing arch, since I don't have a laptop so I don't leave my PC in public, buf I had no idea it's possible out of the box
Great video! I'll defo show it to friends who are afraid of installing arch, bc you explain everything in a very simple manner
Nerd
@@hanhthien2948 I mean if u ended up on this vid u're pretty much a nerd too
I use NixOS btw ❄️
amazing bro... its 2024, and i am literally stuck installing another linux os on my very temperamental 💩 minipc ... at least now I understand how it all works on a high level under the hood.. btw i tried arch but was overwhelmed and gave up too easily.. now i will arch on..
Lol, you kind of propagandized my mind Dreams, evident by the fact you read my mind by making a video I will always probably need in the future
I'd say I use Arch BTW too, but I mainly use Kali Linux alongside Arch so...
No joke to be made here🤷
Nice video! Personally, I mostly just use Archfi for the installation. I did a few installations from terminal completely, but it takes too long & I was in a bit of a hurry.
Have a Beelink Ser6 Pro with the 6800h and 64gb running ProxMox and Virtualized TrueNas Scale. 32tb on 4 spinning HDDs. so much power in such small and power efficient packages its incredible.
Did you upgrade the RAM yourself? I'm still in the market for upgrading it.
yup dropped in a 64gb kit of Silicon power ddr5 4800, not the fastest i could get but the price was right. and ddr5 being what it is its still VERY fast @@dreamsofautonomy
Excellent
I'm already comfortable installing Arch manually, but this was a great guide on encryption and security, great video!
Same, gentoo is the way. I have two profiles gnome and hyprland. Two days to compile using j4. Arch is a walk in the park
What's the resource consumption of the final installation? Great video btw.
Would love to see a video on remote VNC setup (tigerVNC perhaps?), thank you!
This is a great idea! Thank you.
I think I'm gonna start using Arch btw
Quick question: you said you used a self-hosted password manager. Which one?
Thanks!
Back up the header (or something like that) of LUKS partition. Last time I used it, that thing had only a single copy of the header at the beginning of the partition, and when with some mechanical error that part was corrupted, not a single file could be retrieved even though I knew the password and I used full-disk scanning of disk recovery tools. I think I heard that newer versions of LUKS has two headers so that it could still work if one header gets corrupted, but just to be sure.
As someone who has heard the legends of Arch Linux install being "very manual" & difficult, and has already played a bit with an Arch based distro (though one with a Calamares installer) - this video made me my brain go *"wait... i thought this would look harder."*
Hello, thanks for this tutorial. It's really helpful. I have a suggestion btw: the order in the arguments seems incorrect(GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
): cryptdevice=UUID=:luks_lvm root=/dev/mapper/arch-root resume=/dev/mapper/arch-swap. What do you think?
i just wanted to ask: how secure is to make a luks container, paste .qcow2 vm here and then mount it using external key to /var/lib/libvirt/images/exp.sr1.qcow2 . Is there by any chance to crack it? If key was made by : "dd if=/dev/random of=/root/lukskeys/luks-username.1.key bs=1 count=64" and if smb has got physical access to server?
Have you ever tried out ventoy? It's pretty damn cool.
You have to install it once, and never format it again.
Just copy all the isos to the pendrive, and never reformat.
You can also store additional stuff, and because you don't need to reformat, you don't have to move it to a different drive every time you want to install an OS.
insanely awesome work dude , your terminal looks beautiful can you make a video on how to acheive such a terminal , i am using ubuntu btw
I absolutely can and will!
The overwrite, does it make any sense on an SSD? AFAIK it makes sense on magnetic drives, but the SSD is a completely different system with a grid of NAND gates. Plus it's got a limited amount of writes.
Yes, it does make sense.
Using GNOME on Arch because it's easier is like eating a cake but drinking diet coke because it has fewer calories
Great video btw, I'm installing Arch at this very moment
The easiest way to connect to wifi while installation is to use usb tethering.
You have to configure wifi after installation anyway and it is easier to do it after installing desktop environment.
Excellent Video, as per always! I wanted to save you keystrokes by suggesting 'Ctrl-L' in lieu of 'clear'... FWIW - muscle memory dies hard, I know.
Which are the specs of your monitor to get integer scaling? It looks so sharp 😊😊😊😊
i am extremely impressed
you can also set up secure boot or maybe even dual boot if you're feeling fancy just to make the entire process even more complicated and mind boggling with a side of an acute headache. (idk why GRUB and secure boot likes to give me the most trouble lol)
I use arch on USB btw! :)
For basic no-fuss booting when nothing fancy is required, I am fully on team systemd-boot nowadays.
This is a good one
I use Arch, btw
great arch video, how to make use of btrfs system snapshots/rollbacks/etc.
also I needed to run `pacman-key --init` and `pacman-key --populate archlinux` or pacstrap will return errors
Can you record a video about your terminal how did you set it up it is so cool
I finally know what that first and last sector means 😂 (i m new to Linux and started with Arch Hyprland)
Hi, I have a question, why you make a boot partition to mount a EFI partition? Don't is more easy make a EFI and mount directly?
Nice I liked the way you installed arch.
Would it be possible to make a video on a dual boot with windows + secure boot?
Why would you defile a beautiful Arch installation with Windoze?!
What are the recommended RAM you are considering for upgrade for this mini PC by the way? Thanks!
That's a great Q. I'm still doing some research on it, but will make sure to do an update when I find one that works!
Hello, what keyboard are you using?
It would be nice to be able to enter the password remotely on boot, for example via ssh. This is convenient for the case of remotely turning on a computer, for example via Wake on Lan.
Love to see a video on Hyprland ❤
This is a great idea!
Which software are u using to record your screen ?.
Good video.
Thanks!
I use ffmpeg lol. I just bought the elgato 4k capture device in order to record wayland as well!
@@dreamsofautonomy thanks for the response.
is this the second channel of dreams of code? anyway, great vid
it is! You found me
5 TBs only?? I think you should add more 😁
Just kidding, I'm thinking about using Arch, but I'm still not sure
If I recall correctly SSD controller can't distinguish between random and legit data, so by filling it with random you are hurting its ability to do trim properly. Not sure how it works in nvme.
20:03 you switched from Mac to linux 😱 and yet you're still so skilled at Linux! How did you acquire such knowledge?
Haha I use both. Linux is my daily driver, but macOS is for video editing and filming typically. I've been using linux far longer than mac however!
I am look to have a pocket pc os I can bring to work, college or home or wherever. At the moment, my plan is using a vm with virtual box with the vbox installs for host os and os iso and vm on the USB key.
It wasn't the fastest though on the work laptop.
I don't like lugging heavy laptops around. And I prefer to use a different pc/laptop for work, college or home. But its nice to carry my pc work environment in my pocket. Its my property.
can you make a video on hyprland setup or any tiling window manager, as a followup to this video, gnome seems to be boring and not much customizable imo as I use it currently I am tired of it and it seems unappealing as hell after using it for sometime. And I think btrfs configuration is incomplete I'd love to see a video on btrfs as a whole from you because as I did use it in my last setup you didnt create any of the subvolumes and setup defrag timer and many other things that comes with using btrfs.
I am getting a error when i try to install grub by typing grub-install --efi-directory=/boot/efi (it says install isent specified) so i tried to run grub-install --efi-directory=/boot/efi sda2(my boot partition) and then it said cant find a grub drive for sda2. check your device.map can somebody help
I think you might be slowing down your drives by writing to every single block the first thing you do. The drives have no way of knowing which blocks contain actual data and are forced to retain everything and the wear leveling algorithms get slower. This might improve over time if you have trim enabled since the os tells the drive which blocks it is discarding when deleting a file.
amazing video. i would be very interested in learning about your self hosted password manager with a backup. unless its already posted on your channel.
This is a great idea! I will plan a video for it.
You know, I think no beginner will ever follow this video, so installing Gnome as something a beginner would enjoy was a little funny :D Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent tutorial, one I'll follow when I eventually switch to bare Arch, but you're going way to fast with everything. Maybe it's just an issue with synchronizing the VO with the footage, but sometimes you describe one command while the terminal is already one step ahead, which is completely confusing when each command throws a few lines text afterward.
Btw. did I get that right that you're using the original 1TB ssd just for the os? Wouldn't it be better to switch it to a smaller one and add that 1TB on top of the 4TB you added at the beginning?
The earlier steps where you over wrote the disk could work if I did directly from the machine I wanted to run the installation from?
Turns out, yes