Automatic Arch Linux Installation

This is a bash script used for automating Arch Linux installation process. At the time, this script is just used for Arch Linux in VirtualBox.

What can this script do?

• Disk partion (in both UEFI and BIOS).
• Make file system.
• Mount install disk.
• Install base and base devel.
• Generate file system table
• arch-chroot and execute configuration script which can do the following:
  • Set up time zone (Australia/Adelaide)
  • Set up language (en_US.UTF-8)
  • Set up host name.
  • Install networkmanager and enable NetworkManager.service.
  • Set root password.
  • Create users.
  • Install boot loader.
  • Install vim, zsh, git, X server, ssh, virtualbox guest utilities.
  • Install yaourt.

Prerequisites

1. A virtual environment (VirtualBox, VmWare, etc.). I am testing this script using VirtualBox.
2. Download Arch OS ISO here
3. Create a virtual machine. System recommended:

• At least 10GB for virtual hard disk.
• At least 512MB RAM.
• If you want to use UEFI, under Settings > System > Motherboard, tick Enable EFI (special OSes only).. Otherwise, the system will use BIOS.

4. Boot into live CD of Arch (with UEFI, be patient, it could take a while with a black screen).

Installing

Download arch_install.sh to the live Arch Linux environment:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ngharry/arch-installation/master/arch_install.sh

Set execute permission for arch_install.sh:

chmod +x arch_install.sh

Run arch_install.sh:

./arch_install.sh

When you are asked for swap disk size, enter swap size in MB. Example below illustrates creating 2GB swap:

How much disk space do you want for swap? 2000

For BIOS system, you will be asked for specifying /home size. Example:

How much disk space do you want for /home? 5000

You will be asked for entering host name, root password, creating users. For example:

Host name

Enter host name: arch-os

Setting root password

Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

If you enter 2 unmatched passwords, you will be asked for entering again.

Create users

You will be asked if you want to create user or remain root privilege:

Do you want to create user? (Y/N) Y

Type Y or N (in UPPERCASE) depends on what you want.

If you choose to create user, you will need to enter username and password.

Username: harry
Changing password for harry.
(currrent) UNIX password:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Do you want to create more user? (Y/N): N

If any errors occur during creating user, you will be asked for re-enter username and password. When you are asked if you want to create more user, type Y or N (in UPPER CASE).

If no error occurs, after finishing installation process, you can reboot your system.

UEFI Only

[IMPORTANT] After rebooting and playing around with your new system, shutdown and REMEMBER to remove disk from Virtual Drive under Settings > Storage > Attributes, click the disk icon next to Optical Drive: and choose Remove Disk from Virtual Drive. If you do not do this, next time the system will boot to live CD again.

TODO

• Install yaourt.
• Allow both BIOS and UEFI to run this script.
• Ask if user want to create user or not.
• Install X Server.
• Install Sublime Text.
• Install necessary packages (web browser, git, etc.).
• Install fonts (Adobe Source Code, Hack).
• Configure full screen tty console in Arch.
• Figure out why Arch does not work after installing KDE/SDDM and Deepin/lightdm.
• Copy, paste, share clipboard from guest to host.
• At the end of installation process, obviously, rm configure.sh is not working. Figure it out some time. (Silly mistake: the directory which the script is working on is /, the remove command should be rm /configure.sh instead of rm configure.sh.)

Bug Reporting

• During installation process in VirtualBox, pressing PrtScr would lead to an error. [Add picture here.]

• Error: invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature) when installing some packages.

  Solved

  Install archlinux-keyring and update your system.

  sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring
  sudo pacman -Syu
  

  and install your desire packages again.

• Arch does not work after installing KDE/SDDM or Deepin/lightdm.

  Description:

  With deepin and lightdm: the login screen stays white, after I managed to login, a white blank screen shows up and I could not click anything.

  [Add picture here.]

  With KDE and SDDM: the mouse and touchpad(right-click) are stucked at 1 point.

  Solved

  Installing plasma-meta and kde-applications-meta will solve this problem.

  When I installed KDE, I just install plasma in the form of a group, which did not have enough dependencies for installing KDE.

• Can not launch application without Desktop Environment (DE) when setting full-screen TTY.

  Description:

  I managed to set TTY to full screen by modify /etc/default/grub and change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet video=1920x1080" and then grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg. However, when I try to launch application without DE, it seems to have some problems with X server. Eg: firefox can not start in full-screen even though I use exec firefox 1920x1080+0+0 in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.

  When I delete video=1920x1080, then grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg, things works well again.

References

Arch Linux Wiki

See also: My Arch Linux Configuration