Artix Linux install guide

Introduction

The goal of this guide is to set up a minimal installation of Artix Linux with OpenRC as an init system and full disk encryption on an UEFI or BIOS system. This guide is meant to be read alongside the Artix and Arch wiki respectively. It does not cover implementing Secure Boot

Acquire an installation image

1. Go to the downloads page https://artixlinux.org/download.php
2. Scroll down to the Official ISO images section.
3. Under the base section, download the file starting with artix-base-openrc and ending with .iso

Prepare an installation medium

Windows

Use Rufus

Linux

1. Insert a USB flash drive into your PC with at least 2 GB of space available on it.
2. Find the corresponding block device for the flash drive in /dev folder. Usually it is /dev/sdb1
3. Write the image to the flash drive (assuming your flash drive is /dev/sdb1).

doas dd bs=4M if=~/Downloads/artix-base-openrc-*-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdb1 conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress

Boot the live environment

1. Power off your PC.
2. Insert the flash drive into the computer on which you are installing Artix Linux.
3. Power on your PC and press your boot menu key.
4. Boot the installation medium.

Enter the live environment

Login with the default credentials.

• Username: root
• Password: artix

Connect to the internet

Via Ethernet

Connect the computer via an Ethernet cable

Via WiFi

rfkill unblock wifi
ip link set wlan0 up
connmanctl

agent on
scan wifi
services

connect {your WiFi name}
quit

Verify internet connectivity

ping artixlinux.org

Update the system clock

Activate the NTP daemon to synchronize the computer’s real-time clock

rc-service ntpd start

Partition the disk

Throughout this guide nvme0n1 will be used as the target install drive.

1. Install and run gdisk

pacman -Sy gdisk
gdisk /dev/nvme0n1

2. Delete any existing partitions. Repeat until none are left.

Command (m for help): d

3. Create a boot partition

Command (m for help): n
Partition number (1-128, default 1):
First sector (...):
Last sector (...): +512M
Hex code or GUID (...): ef00

4. Create a root partition

Command (m for help): n
Partition number (2-128, default 1):
First sector (...):
Last sector (...):
Hex code or GUID (...): 8300

5. Write the changes

Command (m for help): w
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y

6. Verify partitioning

lsblk

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE
nvme0n1     259:0    0 465,8G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   512M  0 part
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0 465,3G  0 part

Encrypt root partition

1. Encrypt your root partition

cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/nvme0n1p2
Are you sure (Type `yes` in capital letters): YES

2. Open the encrypted partition

cryptsetup open /dev/nvme0n1p2 root

Create filesystems

1. Create the boot file system

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1

1. Create the root file system

mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/root

Mount file systems

1. Mount the root file system

mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt

2. Mount the boot file system

mount -m /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot

3. Verify mounting

lsblk

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINTS
nvme0n1     259:0    0 465,8G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   512M  0 part  /mnt/boot
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0 465,3G  0 part
  └─root    254:0    0 465,2G  0 crypt /mnt

Install essentials

Install the base system, kernel, init system and other essential packages.

basestrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware openrc elogind-openrc cryptsetup cryptsetup-openrc efibootmgr doas nano

AMD CPU

Install AMD CPU microcode updates

basestrap /mnt amd-ucode

Intel CPU

Install Intel CPU microcode updates

basestrap /mnt intel-ucode

Generate file system table

fstabgen -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Switch to new Installation

artix-chroot /mnt bash

Network stack

pacman -S wpa_supplicant networkmanager networkmanager-openrc iwd iwd-openrc
rc-update add NetworkManager
rc-update add iwd

1
[device]
2
wifi.backend=iwd

MAC randomization

[device-mac-randomization]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=yes

[connection-mac-randomization]
ethernet.cloned-mac-address=random
wifi.cloned-mac-address=random

Localization

Set the locale

1. Uncomment en_DK.UTF-8

150
#en_CA.UTF-8 UTF-8
151
#en_CA ISO-8859-1
152
en_DK.UTF-8 UTF-8
153
#en_DK ISO-8859-1
154
#en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8
155
#en_GB ISO-8859-1

2. Generate locales

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

Set the timezone

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime

Set hardware clock from system clock

hwclock --systohc

Hostname

Set your preferred hostname, I will be using artixmachine throughout this guide.

echo 'artixmachine' > /etc/hostname

1
# Use fallback hostname if /etc/hostname doesn't exist
2
hostname="localhost"
3
hostname="artixmachine"

1
# Static table lookup for hostnames.
2
# See hosts(5) for details.
3

4
127.0.0.1     localhost
5
::1           localhost
6
127.0.1.1     artixmachine.localdomain     artixmachine

Initramfs

In the HOOKS array, add encrypt between block and filesystems

HOOKS=(... block encrypt filesystems ...)

Generate initramfs images

mkinitcpio -P

Add a user

1. Set the root password.

passwd

2. Create a user and set his password.

useradd -m artixuser
passwd artixuser

Configure doas

1. Create the config file and set the appropriate permissions

touch /etc/doas.conf
chown -c root:root /etc/doas.conf
chmod -c 0400 /etc/doas.conf

2. Add the following

1
permit artixuser as root
2
permit nopass artixuser as root cmd pacman

Boot loader

Check for UEFI support

ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

EFISTUB

1. Get the UUID of your root partition

blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/nvme0n1p2

2. Create a boot entry

efibootmgr -c -d /dev/nvme0n1 -p 1 -l /vmlinuz-linux -L "Artix" -u "cryptdevice=UUID=xxxx:root root=/dev/mapper/root rw initrd=\intel-ucode.img initrd=\initramfs-linux.img loglevel=3 quiet"

GRUB

1. Install grub on your boot partition

pacman -S grub
grub-install /dev/nvme0n1

2. Get the UUID of your root partition

blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/nvme0n1p2

3. Edit the GRUB config file

1
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="cryptdevice=UUID=550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000:root root=/dev/mapper/root"
2
GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="cryptdevice=UUID=xxxx:root root=/dev/mapper/root"
#GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y

4. Generate the config file

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

Reboot

1. You can now reboot and enter into your new installation

exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot now

Post install

You will now be greeted with a similar screen as when you first booted from the flash drive. Login using the credentials that you set, if you followed the example your username would be artixuser.

Add arch repositories and sort for fastest mirrors

Add arch extra repository

1. Install packages and fetch mirrorlist

doas pacman -Syu artix-archlinux-support curl
doas pacman-key --populate archlinux
doas sh -c "curl https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/all -o /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-arch"

2. Activate Arch mirrors

1
#Server = https://geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com/$repo/os/$arch
2
#Server = https://ftpmirror.infania.net/mirror/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
3
#Server = http://mirror.rackspace.com/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
4
#Server = https://mirror.rackspace.com/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

3. Edit the pacman config file

1
##Arch
2
[extra]
3
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-arch
4

5
##[multilib]
6
##Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-arch

Sort for fastest mirrors

doas pacman -Syu reflector pacman-contrib
doas reflector --verbose -p https -l 30 -f 5 --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-arch
doas sh -c "curl https://gitea.artixlinux.org/packages/artix-mirrorlist/raw/branch/master/mirrorlist -o /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.bak"
doas sh -c "rankmirrors -v -n 5 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.bak > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist"

AUR

Add Chaotic-AUR

doas pacman-key --recv-key 3056513887B78AEB --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com
doas pacman-key --lsign-key 3056513887B78AEB
doas pacman -U 'https://cdn-mirror.chaotic.cx/chaotic-aur/chaotic-keyring.pkg.tar.zst'
doas pacman -U 'https://cdn-mirror.chaotic.cx/chaotic-aur/chaotic-mirrorlist.pkg.tar.zst'

[chaotic-aur]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/chaotic-mirrorlist

Install paru

doas pacman -Syu
doas pacman -S paru

Replace sudo with doas

doas pacman -Rdd sudo
doas ln -s /usr/bin/doas /usr/bin/sudo

Laptop power profiles

Install and enable the powerprofiles daemon

doas pacman -S power-profiles-daemon power-profiles-daemon-openrc
doas rc-update add power-profiles-daemon
doas rc-service power-profiles-daemon start

Add swap

doas fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
doas chmod 600 /swapfile
doas mkswap /swapfile
doas swapon /swapfile
doas cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | doas tee -a /etc/fstab

Auto-mount an external LUKS encrypted drive

doas pacman -S cryptsetup-openrc fdisk
doas fdisk /dev/sdb
>g, n, w

doas cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdb1
doas cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdb1 hdd1
doas mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/hdd1
doas mkdir /mnt/hdd1
doas mount /dev/mapper/hdd1 /mnt/hdd1
doas chown artixuser:artixuser /mnt/hdd1
doas dd if=/dev/urandom of=/root/keyfile_hdd1 bs=512 count=4
doas chmod 0400 /root/keyfile_hdd1
doas cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sdb1 /root/keyfile_hdd1
UUID=$(doas blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/sdb1)

target=hdd1
source=UUID='$UUID'
key=/root/keyfile_hdd1
wait=2

doas rc-update add dmcrypt boot
doas reboot