Installation of ArchLinux

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This post aims to record the installation procedure of ArchLinux on my notebook, Thinkpad X1 Carbon (x1c) 2018, i.e., 6th generation.

Preparition

Download the installation image from the nearest mirror.

Burn the image into a USB stick.

 dd if=/path/to/image/ of=/dev/sdb status=progress bs=10M

The notebook has Windows 10 installed with 快速启动 enabled. Therefore, it needs to be disabled before the installation. Uncheck the option of 控制面板 -> 硬件和声音 -> 电源选项 -> 选择电源按钮的功能 -> 更改当前不可用的设置 -> 启用快速启动（推荐）.

Installation

Boot

Power on the notebook.
Press Enter and F1 to enter the BIOS configuration.
Disable the Security -> Secure Boot.
Enable Config -> Thunderbolt BIOS Assist Mode. This will significantly reduce the power consumption of CPU wakeups¹.
Insert the prepared USB and press F10 to save the change and reboot the notebook.
Press Enter and F12 to temporarily boot from the prepared USB stick.

Partition

For UEFI booting, a dedicated EFI system partition (ESP) is mandatory. EFI bootloaders, applications and drivers can be stored in an ESP and lauched by the UEFI firmware at the boot stage. In other words, it is completely independent of OS. Considering the potential support of dual-boot in the futher, I prepare a 1 GB partition for ESP. Accordingly, I created a primary partition (/dev/nvme0n1p1) of partion type EFI System. Taking fdisk for instance, the type can be selected by alias uefi.

In addition, I created two ext4 partitions for / and /home respectively.

Format the partitions

 mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
 mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p2
 mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p3

Mount the partitions

 mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
 mount --mkdir /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot
 mount --mkdir /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt/home

Connect to the Internet

 iwctl --passphrase PASSWORD station wlan0 connect-hidden SSID

Select the nearest mirror

Edit /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist as below.

 Server = http://mirrors.aliyun.com/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

Install the base system

 pacstrap /mnt base

Generate file system table

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

The resultant /etc/fstab looks

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

 # <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
 # /dev/nvme0n1p2 LABEL=OS
 UUID=a2d1afa4-4a38-4849-a4e7-ab5a5c4dba8d	/ 	ext4 	rw,relatime	0 1

 # /dev/nvme0n1p1 LABEL=ESP
 UUID=019D-1686 	/boot 	vfat 	rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro	0 2

 # /dev/nvme0n1p3 LABEL=DATA
 UUID=386c4fbc-f1fd-4147-98bb-547867e762f5	/home 	ext4 	rw,relatime	0 2

Chroot into the newly installed system

 arch-chroot -S /mnt

Host name

Create file /etc/hostname.

 notebook

Time zone

 ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Shanghai /etc/localtime
 hwclock --systohc
 systemctl enable systemd-timesyncd.service

Locale

Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment the following lines.

...
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
...
zh_CN.UTF-8 UTF-8
...

Generate and set locales.

locale-gen
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf

Kernel and microcode

 pacman -S linux linux-firmware intel-ucode

Initramfs

 mkinitcpio -P

CPU frequency scaling

 pacman -S cpupower
 systemctl enable cpupower.service

Network

 pacman -S networkmanager
 systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

Bootloader

I adopt systemd-boot as the UEFI boot manager, shipped with systemd.

Installation

 bootctl install

Configuration

/boot/loader/loader.conf
```
 default arch.conf
 timeout 3
```

/boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

 title	Arch Linux
 linux	/vmlinuz-linux
 initrd	/intel-ucode.img
 initrd	/initramfs-linux.img
 options	root=UUID=a2d1afa4-4a38-4849-a4e7-ab5a5c4dba8d rw

/boot/loader/entries/arch-fallback.conf

 title	Arch Linux (fallback)
 linux	/vmlinuz-linux
 initrd	/intel-ucode.img
 initrd	/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
 options	root=UUID=a2d1afa4-4a38-4849-a4e7-ab5a5c4dba8d rw

Password for root

 passwd

Unmount and reboot

 exit
 umount -R /mnt
 reboot

Arch on Shaka

Installation of ArchLinux

Preparition

Installation

Boot

Partition

Format the partitions

Mount the partitions

Connect to the Internet

Select the nearest mirror

Install the base system

Generate file system table

Chroot into the newly installed system

Host name

Time zone

Locale

Kernel and microcode

Initramfs

CPU frequency scaling

Network

Bootloader

Installation

Configuration

Password for root

Unmount and reboot