Hacking:Manual Installation

Manual installation checklist

Some of us found we were mostly using the installer as a checklist, and that those menus weren't really saving us much time. we felt a literal checklist would do less to get in our way following the KISS and hackers's principles ;)

This is that checklist.

• boot livecd as usual, login as root.
• make sure date and time are correct, fixing them if necessary.
• configure the network
• partition your hard drive. fdisk, cfdisk, and parted are provided.
• format partitions. e.g. to format a partition as ext3 do:

 mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdXY

where sdXY is the partition. use mkswap for formatting swap partiitons.

• mount your root partition at /mnt, and mount other partitions at their correct locations under that.
• create some directories needed by pacman:

 mkdir -p /mnt/var/lib/pacman
 mkdir -p /mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg

• install the base system:

 pacman -r /mnt --cachedir /mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg -Sy <packages>

where <packages> is whichever packages you want on your system. this should at least include base unless you're sure you know what you're doing.

Note: If you want to install linux-libre package (dependancy from base package) you must to mount proc, dev and sys previously, to mkinitcpio build the kernel correctly.

• prepare a chroot and enter it:

 mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
 mount --rbind /dev /mnt/dev
 mount --rbind /sys /mnt/sys
 cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/resolv.conf
 chroot /mnt /bin/bash

• edit configuration files:
  • /etc/fstab (add your hard drive partitions. unlike with an aif install, it will not already be filled in.)
  • /etc/rc.conf
  • /etc/hosts - append your hostname to the localhost entry. this is done automatically when you use aif.
  • /etc/locale.gen - uncomment your locales.
    • run locale-gen after saving the file
  • /boot/grub/menu.list (Make sure the partitons are correct (they probably won't be at first) as well as paths, and add an option with the fallback image if you like)
• you may also want to edit:
  • /etc/mkinitcpio.conf (run mkinitcpio afterwards if you do so.)
  • /etc/resolv.conf - if not using dhcp
  • /etc/hosts.deny and /etc/hosts.allow
  • /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
• set root password:

 passwd

• generate /etc/mtab (needed for installing grub):

 cat /proc/mounts|grep -v rootfs > /etc/mtab

• exit the chroot and install grub:

 # exit
 
 #grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdX

where /dev/sdX is the master boot record of the drive you will boot from.

• After that, you must to unmount /dev /sys and /proc before restart the system

 # umount /mnt/dev/shm
 # umount /mnt/dev/pts
 # umount /mnt/dev
 # umount /mnt/sys
 # umount /mnt/proc
 # umount /mnt

You are now ready to reboot.