Configure the System
This is 3.1-3.7 from https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide
Fstab
Run
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
Chroot to system
This will change the root from the live environment to the system we just installed
arch-chroot /mnt
Set time zone
Run the following to set the time zone. Replace US/Pacific
with your time zone
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Pacific /etc/localtime
TIP
If you don't know what time zones are available, run this to list all time zone regions
ls /usr/share/zoneinfo
Select the region, the run
ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/<Region>
Then run this to generate /etc/adjtime
hwclock --systohc
Localization
Edit /etc/locale.gen
nvim /etc/locale.gen
Uncomment the line with en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
.
TIP
Uncomment other locales if you need
Run this to generate the locales
locale-gen
Then config the locale with
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf
TIP
If you changed keyboard layout, edit /etc/vconsole.conf
with nvim /etc/vconsole.conf
and add this line (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide#Localization)
KEYMAP=<Layout>
Network
Create the host name file with the following, replace pistonite
with the host name you want (i.e. name for your VM)
echo pistonite > /etc/hostname
Then enable network manager with
systemctl enable NetworkManager
Initramfs
Usually this should be optional but run this anyway
mkinitcpio -P
See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide#Initramfs for more details
Root password
Set the root password now. This is the actual root password.
passwd
Next we will set up the boot loader, which is technically the last setup in the OS installation. We will set up user login after that so we can stop using root login.