Installing Arch Linux with LVM

Recently I decided to give Arch Linux a try. This is a quick overview of the steps I followed to get up and running on an old Thinkpad T400.

This is mostly a reference for myself, but hopefully it will be somewhat useful for someone out there as well. It is mainly based on the excellent ArchWiki with additional stuff from here and there.

Getting Arch

This guide assumes you already have a bootable Arch installation media. See here on how to get it.

Installation

Start with booting into the Arch live CD/USB.

Connecting to Wi-Fi

Internet connection will be required during install, so let’s do that as the first step (for wired connection see e.g. here).

wifi-menu

Select wireless network, type in the password and if everything went well you should now be connected to the Internet.

Update the system clock

timedatectl set-ntp true

Set up LVM

To view details about the available storage devices:

lsblk

Determine the drive(s)/partition(s) you want to use. In this example I am creating a single LVM physical volume using a full drive.

First, create a Linux LVM partition spanning the whole disk:

fdisk /dev/sdX
n (to add a new partition)
p (for primary partition)
1 (default partition number)
(accept default start)
(accept default end)
t (to change partition type)
8e (for LVM partition when using MBR)
i (to verify)
w (save and quit)

Create an LVM physical volume on the new partition:

pvcreate /dev/sdX1

Create a volume group:

vgcreate vg1 /dev/sdX1

Create logical volumes for boot, root, swap and home.

lvcreate -L 200M -n boot vg1
lvcreate -L 20G -n root vg1
lvcreate -L 4G -n swap vg1
lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n home vg1

Note: instead of -l 100%FREE you may want to leave some unused space for snapshots.

Format the logical volumes:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg1/boot
mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg1/root
mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg1/home
mkswap /dev/vg1/swap
swapon /dev/vg1/swap

Then finally mount them under the live system’s /mnt:

mount /dev/vg1/root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/vg1/boot /mnt/boot
mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/vg1/home /mnt/home

Install base packages

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel

Generate fstab

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

Change root to new system

arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Set up locale

In /etc/locale.gen uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 or whatever else locale you need then generate the new locale(s):

locale-gen

Create /etc/locale.conf:

# /etc/locale.conf
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Setup time

Set time zone:

tzselect
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Zone/SubZone /etc/localtime

Adjust the time skew, and set the time standard to UTC:

hwclock --systohc --utc

Update initramfs

Add LVM2 hook to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:

# /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
HOOKS="...lvm2 filesystems..."

Re-generate the initramfs image:

mkinitcpio -p linux

Bootloader

In this example we are using MBR with grub. Install grub:

pacman -S grub

Install the bootloader to the drive Arch was installed to:

grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sdX

Generate configuration file:

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

Configure network

Set hostname:

# /etc/hostname
myhostname

Install packages for wireless support:

pacman -S iw wpa_supplicant dialog

Set root password

passwd

Reboot to new system

Exit the chroot environment, unmount partitions, remove live media and reboot:

exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot

Setup automatic Wi-Fi connection

wifi-menu -o
netctl start profileName
netctl enable profileName

Install desktop environment

For desktop environment let’s install Cinnamon. First, X:

pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-utils xorg-server-utils mesa xorg-twm xterm

Touchpad support:

pacman -S xf86-input-synaptics

Detemine the video card:

lspci | grep VGA

Search for video driver packages:

pacman –Ss | grep xf86-video

In this machine I have an Intel integrated video card, so installing driver for that:

pacman -S xf86-video-intel

Install Cinnamon:

pacman -S cinnamon nemo-fileroller

Install and start display manager:

pacman –S gdm
systemctl enable gdm
systemctl start gdm

Note: On password entry click the gear icon and select Cinnamon.

And done, a barebones Arch Linux installation with a desktop environment is now complete.

Resources

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_guide

http://blog.ataboydesign.com/2012/08/29/installing-arch-linux-on-lvm

https://www.linuxserver.io/index.php/2014/01/18/installing-arch-linux-with-root-on-an-lvm

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LVM

http://www.tecmint.com/install-cinnamon-desktop-in-arch-linux

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/netctl#Automatic_operation