Pistonite VM

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Configure the System ​

This is 3.1-3.7 from https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide

Fstab ​

Run

bash
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Data Drive ​

TIP

Skip this part if you don't have additional internal data drives

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fstab for additional information

First, run blkid and note down the UUID of the data drive (not PARTUUID!).

Then edit the fstab

bash
nvim /etc/fstab

It should look something like this

# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/sda3 LABEL=root
UUID=abecc6aa-fd5e-4bb8-babc-a6b23e542369	/         	ext4      	rw,relatime	0 1

# /dev/sda1
UUID=814D-7D51      	/boot     	vfat      	rw,relatime,fmask=0077,dmask=0077,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro	0 2

# /dev/sda2 LABEL=swap
UUID=f74f5afa-b349-477b-a26b-bfe5fdccd48d	none      	swap      	defaults  	0 0

WARNING

The device in the comment might be incorrect, if they are, correct them

Add a new entry for the data drive, replace the UUID below with the UUID you found with blkid

# /dev/nvme0n1p1 LABEL=data
UUID=dd477979-cacd-4809-9cc0-e12fd37fbc01       /media/data     ext4            nodev,nosuid    0 2

TIP

See wiki link above for what the options mean

Finally, create the mount point

bash
mkdir -p /media/data

Chroot to system ​

This will change the root from the live environment to the system we just installed

bash
arch-chroot /mnt

Set time zone ​

Run the following to set the time zone. Replace US/Pacific with your time zone

bash
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

bash
ls /usr/share/zoneinfo

Select the region, the run

bash
ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/<Region>

Then run this to generate /etc/adjtime

bash
hwclock --systohc

Localization ​

Edit /etc/locale.gen

bash
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

bash
locale-gen

Then config the locale with

bash
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)

bash
echo pistonite > /etc/hostname

Then enable network manager with

bash
systemctl enable NetworkManager

Initramfs ​

Usually this should be optional but run this anyway

bash
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.

bash
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.