Install Arch Linux 2016 on VirtualBox

This is my first experience to install Arch Linux on my computer (Via Virtualbox). And this is a quite “Big Project” for me because it took several hours to get my Arch Linux 2016 installed. Installing Arch Linux is not as easy as installing other Linux distribution. It does not shipped with graphical installer, so we need to use Terminal command for every installation steps.

There are many steps to install Arch Linux 2016 on our computer. If you are new to Arch Linux, I recommend you to test it on a Virtualbox or VMware or other virtual machine. By testing this way, our data will be safe if something went wrong.

Note: Like I was mentioned above, this is my first time installing Arch Linux. I will post any errors or misconfigured stuffs here. 

Steps to install Arch Linux 2016

Step 1. Download Arch Linux installation ISO

If you don’t have it already, you can download the Arch Linux ISO from this link. You can burn it to a CD or create Arch Linux Live CD if you are planning to install it on a dedicated PC or Laptop. Read how to create Arch Linux Live USB.

Step 2. Boot the computer with Arch Linux ISO

On the first boot menu, select the first option to start the installation process. Select the second option if you are installing on 32 bit system.

tutorial install arch linux 2016 step 1.png

Step 3. Check the internet connection.

On the Arch Terminal window, check your internet connection using ping command:

ping google.com

check-internet-on-arch

Make sure we get the reply from the ping command. Which means our internet connection is working on Arch.

Step 4. Partition the hard disk

First, check the available hard disk on system. In my case, the hard drive is attached and listed as /dev/sda. To see the hard disk list attached on your system, use the fdisk command as follow.

fdisk -l

check disk on arch linux.gif

Create new partition

fdisk /dev/sda

Change /dev/sda with your own configuration shown on previous command. The picture below show the complete command to create new partitions.

create new partition on arch linux.gif

I created two partitions with 15 GB and 4 GB.

Create file system on each partitions we created with previous command

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

format partition on arch linux.gif

Step 4. Mount partitions

We need to mount the new partitions to /mnt.

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/home

mount partition on arch linux.gif

Step 5. Preparing for Base Installation

At this steps, we already have 2 new partitions and all the new partitions were mounted to /mnt. Now we can start perform the base system installation for Arch.

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel

The system will download some packages from the internet. This step will take long time depends on the internet speed. Be patient.

install base system on arch linux.gif

When it completed, you will see something like this

install completed.png

Generate fstab file

genfstab /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

generate-fstab

Get into the new system

arch-chroot /mnt

Now update password and install grub-bios package

passwd
pacman -S grub-bios

Install GRUB

grub-install /dev/sda

install grub.gif

Update GRUB

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grup.cfg

Change Hostname

echo arch-pc > /etc/hostname

change hostname.gif

Exit from chroot and umount the mounted partitions, and finally reboot

exit
umount /mnt/home
umount /mnt
reboot

boot-arch

Select Arch Linux from the boot menu as shown above. Then login with the root user.  We need to enable the dhcpcd service with this command

systemctl enable dhcpcd

cleanup-arch-install

Reboot the computer and at this point we have Arch Linux with base system installed. On the next tutorial, I will show you how to install Desktop environment on Arch Linux. Cheers.

 arch-linux-2016

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