ArchLinux Installation EFI

Installing ArchLinux with UEFI

The official ArchLinux installation page is very good, but obviously cannot cover all installation scenario.

I had to install with EFI and steps are not straight copy/paste of that page.

I will make the log story short but just pasting the commands and indicate what is needed and not in the guide.

ping archlinux.org
timedatectl set-ntp true

Use parted instead of fdisk

parted /dev/sda

Print existing partitions and clear them all:

(parted) print
(parted) rm 1
(parted) rm 2
(parted) rm ...

Create the EFI partition and fill the remaining

(parted) mklabel gpt
(parted) mkpart ESP fat32 1MiB 1GiB
(parted) set 1 boot on
(parted) mkpart primary btrfs 1GiB 100%
(parted) print
(parted) quit

Note that in "parted", "quit" also saves (in "fdisk", "quit" does not)

Format and mount created partitions

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda2
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mkdir -pv /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

Here is just a small improve of the officiel guide: add some usefull packages to installation

pacstrap /mnt linux linux-firmware nano base base-devel dhclient openssh btrfs-progs grub efibootmgr
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt

The following is just copy/paste of https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

ln -sfv /usr/share/zoneinfo/Indian/Antananarivo /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
echo 'en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8' > /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
echo 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' >  /etc/locale.conf
echo 'KEYMAP=fr' > /etc/vconsole.conf
echo 'hv-01' > /etc/hostname
echo '127.0.1.1 hv-01.rktmb.org hv-01' >> /etc/hosts
mkinitcpio -p linux
passwd

The EFI flavour "grub-install" is documented, but here it is:

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=grub
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

You may now just exit the chroot and reboot on your new installation.