<img src="https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/raw/master/docs/logo.png" alt="drawing" width="200"/>

Arch Installer

Just another guided/automated Arch Linux installer with a twist. The installer also doubles as a python library to install Arch Linux and manage services, packages, and other things inside the installed system (Usually from a live medium or from an existing installation).

archinstall discord server
archinstall #archinstall:matrix.org Matrix channel
archinstall #archinstall@irc.libera.chat:6697
archinstall documentation

Installation & Usage

[!TIP] In the ISO you are root by default. Use sudo if running from an existing system.

pacman-key --init
pacman -Sy archinstall
archinstall

Alternative ways to install are git clone the repository (and is better since you get the latest code regardless of build date) or pip install --upgrade archinstall.

Upgrade `archinstall` on live Arch ISO image

Upgrading archinstall on the ISO needs to be done via a full system upgrade using

pacman -Syu

When booting from a live USB, the space on the ramdisk is limited and may not be sufficient to allow running a re-installation or upgrade of the installer. In case one runs into this issue, any of the following can be used

Resize the root partition https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archiso#Adjusting_the_size_of_the_root_file_system
Specify the boot parameter copytoram=y (https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/mkinitcpio/mkinitcpio-archiso/-/blob/master/docs/README.bootparams#L26) which will copy the root filesystem to tmpfs

Running the guided installer

Assuming you are on an Arch Linux live-ISO or installed via pip, archinstall will use the guided script by default

archinstall

similar goes for running the guided installer using `git

git clone https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall
cd archinstall
python -m archinstall $@

To run alternative scripts using the --script parameter

archinstall --script <name>

Advanced

Some additional options that most users do not need are hidden behind the --advanced flag and all options/args can be consulted through -h or --help.

Running from a declarative configuration file or URL

archinstall can be run with a JSON configuration file. There are 2 different configuration files to consider, the user_configuration.json contains all general installation configuration, whereas the user_credentials.json contains the sensitive user configuration such as user password, root password, and encryption password.

An example of the user configuration file can be found here configuration file and an example of the credentials configuration here credentials file.

HINT: The configuration files can be auto-generated by starting archinstall, configuring all desired menu points and then going to Save configuration.

To load the configuration file into archinstall run the following command

archinstall --config <path to user config file or URL> --creds <path to user credentials config file or URL>

Credentials configuration file encryption

By default, all user account credentials are hashed with yescrypt and only the hash is stored in the saved user_credentials.json file. This is not possible for disk encryption password which needs to be stored in plaintext to be able to apply it.

However, when selecting to save configuration files, archinstall will prompt for the option to encrypt the user_credentials.json file content. A prompt will require to enter a encryption password to encrypt the file. When providing an encrypted user_configuration.json as a argument with --creds <user_credentials.json> there are multiple ways to provide the decryption key:

Provide the decryption key via the command line argument --creds-decryption-key <password>
Store the encryption key in the environment variable ARCHINSTALL_CREDS_DECRYPTION_KEY which will be read automatically
If none of the above is provided a prompt will be shown to enter the decryption key manually

Help or Issues

If you come across any issues, kindly submit your issue here on GitHub or post your query in the discord help channel.

When submitting an issue, please:

Provide the stacktrace of the output if applicable
Attach the /var/log/archinstall/install.log to the issue ticket. This helps us help you!
- To extract the log from the ISO image, one way is to use<br>
```
curl -F'file=@/var/log/archinstall/install.log' https://0x0.st
```

Available Languages

Archinstall is available in different languages which have been contributed and are maintained by the community. The language can be switched inside the installer (first menu entry). Bear in mind that not all languages provide full translations as we rely on contributors to do the translations. Each language has an indicator that shows how much has been translated.

Any contributions to the translations are more than welcome, to get started please follow the guide

Fonts

The ISO does not ship with all fonts needed for different languages. Fonts that use a different character set than Latin will not be displayed correctly. If those languages want to be selected then a proper font has to be set manually in the console.

All available console fonts can be found in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts and set with setfont LatGrkCyr-8x16.

Scripting your own installation

Scripting interactive installation

For an example of a fully scripted, interactive installation please refer to the example interactive_installation.py

To create your own ISO with this script in it: Follow ArchISO's guide on creating your own ISO.

Script non-interactive automated installation

For an example of a fully scripted, automated installation please refer to the example full_automated_installation.py

Profiles

archinstall comes with a set of pre-configured profiles available for selection during the installation process.

The profiles' definitions and the packages they will install can be directly viewed in the menu, or default profiles

Testing

Using a Live ISO Image

If you want to test a commit, branch, or bleeding edge release from the repository using the standard Arch Linux Live ISO image, replace the archinstall version with a newer one and execute the subsequent steps defined below.

You need a working network connection
Install the build requirements with pacman -Sy; pacman -S git python-pip gcc pkgconf (note that this may or may not work depending on your RAM and current state of the squashfs maximum filesystem free space)
Uninstall the previous version of archinstall with pip uninstall --break-system-packages archinstall
Now clone the latest repository with git clone https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall
Enter the repository with cd archinstall At this stage, you can choose to check out a feature branch for instance with git checkout v2.3.1-rc1
To run the source code, there are 2 different options:
- Run a specific branch version from source directly using python -m archinstall, in most cases this will work just fine, the rare case it will not work is if the source has introduced any new dependencies that are not installed yet
- Installing the branch version with pip install --break-system-packages . and archinstall

Without a Live ISO Image

To test this without a live ISO, the simplest approach is to use a local image and create a loop device.<br> This can be done by installing pacman -S arch-install-scripts util-linux locally and doing the following:

# truncate -s 20G testimage.img
# losetup --partscan --show ./testimage.img
# pip install --upgrade archinstall
# python -m archinstall --script guided
# qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -machine q35,accel=kvm -device intel-iommu -cpu host -m 4096 -boot order=d -drive file=./testimage.img,format=raw -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF.4m.fd -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF.4m.fd

This will create a 20 GB testimage.img and create a loop device which we can use to format and install to.<br> archinstall is installed and executed in guided mode. Once the installation is complete, ~~you can use qemu/kvm to boot the test media.~~<br> *(You'd actually need to do some EFI magic in order to point the EFI vars

Archinstall

Install / Use

README