Как подготовить полноценную инсталляцию ArchLinux на USB Flash

В этой заметке рассказано, как, имея работающий ArchLinux, поставить полноценный ArchLinux на USB-Flash. Затем, аналогично, можно поставить ArchLinux на жёсткий диск, загрузившись с USB-носителя. Собственно, для этих целей я и делал такую флешку: чтобы поставить ArchLinux ни netbook и на embedded-систему, где загрузиться можно было только с флешки, а BIOSы обладали странными особенностями.

Внимание! Первая версия этой статьи был написана году в 2010. Потом она долго не правилась и в 2012 в неё были внесены существенные коррективы. С тех пор в Arch Linux произошли большие изменения. Например, переход на systemd . Поэтому текст может содержать противоречия.

А чтобы противоречий стало ещё больше, в конце я дописал дополнение от 2014 года.

Подготовка

Определяемся с именами

Советую создать переменные с ключевыми именами и путями:

Создаём файловую систему на флешке

Можно и ext3/4, но в нашем случае нет надобности в журнале, он даже мешает. Да и старые версии GRUB не очень любили ext4. Зато для старых систем есть драйвера под Windows и прочие приятности.

Для нормальной работы GRUB так же очень важно изменить тип партиции на 0x83.

Устанавливаем систему

Ставим pacman и пакеты

Теперь можно попробовать загрузиться, заодно, посмотреть, что надо подправить в GRUB. Вполне вероятно, что умолчальные настройки не позволят загрузиться сразу.

Настраиваем систему

Узнаём UUID файловой системы

Далее используем его.

Хотя эти фокусы прокатывают далеко не всегда. Возможно, в вашем случае единственный рабочий вариант — /dev/sda1

Для старой версии

Во второй версии всё создастся автоматически, но имеет смысл подправить строчки

В search надо заменить UUID .

/etc/fstab

Можно ещё создать swap-файл, если есть острая необходимость, хотя, надо отдавать себе отчёт в том, что флешка долго такого издевательства не выдержит.

/etc/inittab

Чтобы видеть сообщения системы во время загрузки, полезно внести вот такие изменения:

/etc/sudoers

Создаём пользователя и добавляем его в sudoers (опции по вкусу):

Отключаем флешку

Установка загрузчика (для старого GRUB)

Обратите внимание, что root в конфигурации GRUB не равен root в момент установки. Это связано с переименованием устройств в момент загрузки с флешки. Строго говоря, это дело зависит от вашего BIOS, на на современных системах всё должно работать именно в такой конфигурации.

Полезные ссылки

Подробный рассказ про то, как изменить размер NTFS-раздела без потери данных. Рассказ очень подробный и качественный. И хот он довольно старый, но у меня всё тоже самое сработал на ntfsresize 3.x.

Если кто-то поковырялся и всё сломал

Такое бывает, если вашу флешку берёт какой-нибудь приятель для восстановления древней системы. Он там наваливает доисторических библиотек и вообще всё портит.

Переустановить все пакеты можно так:

Простая установка (2014)

За годы существования этой статьи, Arch Linux сильно изменился, многие действия упростились (появились скрипты, которые их автоматизируют). Поэтому здесь я приведу простую инструкцию, актуальную на 2014 год.

Я не буду вдаваться в детали, многие приёмы, описанные выше, не потеряли своей актуальности. Некоторые действия вы, возможно, не доверите скриптам и захотите выполнить по шагам со своими коррективами. Одним словом, я бы советовал иметь ввиду и старую и новую процедуру установки.

Установка Arch Liunx на USB и начальная настройка

Форматирвоать лучше как-то так:

Загрузитесь с установочного CD (это можно сделать в виртуальной машине). Смонтируйте флешку в /mnt и поставьте необходимые пакеты (важно установить grub , если вы его будете использовать):

Если вы (резонно) планируете на новой системе сразу воспользоваться Wi-Fi, то обязательно поставьте wpa_supplicant именно сейчас. Сам он не встанет, и netctl не сможет поднять Wi-Fi.

Так же, часто бывают полезны пакет ntfs-3g ( ntfsresize именно в нём) и lshw .

И уходим в новую систему:

Тут важно уменьшить влияние базовой системы. Не забудьте удалить переменные типа LANG и LC_ALL . env -i может пригодиться.

Там у вас уже есть bash , mc … чувствуйте себя как дома. Обживаемся:

По желанию можно настроить локаль ( /etc/locale.gen , locale-gen , /etc/locale.conf ), консоль ( /etc/vconsole.conf )… мне это всё на флешке не нужно.

Полезно настроить часовой пояс:

И обязательно(!) надо пересобрать init-образ (хук usb больше не нужен):

и установить загрузчик (осторожно!):

(процедура отличается от вышеописанной, так как версия grub изменилась)

На этом этапе можно создать пользователя:

Всё. Можно выходить из chroot и размонтировать флешку:

Настройка после установки

К сожалению, пока вы в chroot, systemctl работать не будет. Поэтому загружаемся с флешки. Это можно сделать в эмуляторе. Например так:

Install Arch Linux on a removable medium

This page explains how to perform a regular Arch installation onto removable media (e.g. a USB flash drive). In contrast to having a LiveUSB as covered in USB flash installation media, the result will be a persistent installation identical to normal installation to HDD.

Contents

Installation

There are various ways of installing Arch on removable media, depending on the operating system you have available:

• If you have another Linux computer available (it need not be Arch), you can follow the instructions at Install from existing Linux.
• An Arch Linux CD/USB can be used to install Arch onto the removable medium, via booting the CD/USB and following the installation guide. If booting from a Live USB, the installation cannot be made to the same removable medium you are booting from.
• If you run Windows or macOS, download VirtualBox, install VirtualBox Extensions, attach your removable medium to a virtual machine running Linux (either already installed or via a live ISO), and point the installation into the now attached drive while using the instructions at the Installation guide.

Installation tweaks

• Before creating the initial RAM disk, in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf move the block and keyboard hooks before the autodetect hook. This is necessary to allow booting on multiple systems each requiring different modules in early userspace.
• If you have chosen to install Arch onto a USB mass storage device and want to be able to continue to use it as a cross-platform removable drive, this can be accomplished by creating a partition housing an appropriate file system (most likely NTFS or exFAT). Note that the data partition may need to be the first partition on the device, as Windows assumes that there can only be one partition on a removable device, and will happily automount an EFI system partition otherwise. Remember to install dosfstools and ntfs-3g . Some tools are available online that may allow you to flip the Removable Medium Bit (RMB) on your USB mass storage device. This would trick operating systems into treating your USB mass storage device as an external hard disk and allow you to use whichever partitioning scheme you choose.
• If your Arch installation is on a removable drive that needs to have microcode for both manufacturer processors, install both amd-ucode and intel-ucode packages. See Microcode#Installation.

Configuration

• Make sure that /etc/fstab includes the correct partition information for / , and for any other partitions on the disk. If the drive is to be booted on several machines, it is quite likely that devices and number of available hard disks vary. So it is advised to use UUID or label.

To get the proper UUIDs for your partitions use lsblk of blkid. See Persistent block device naming#by-uuid for more information.

GRUB legacy

menu.lst , the GRUB legacy configuration file, should be edited to (loosely) match the following.

When using file system labels your menu.lst should look like this:

And for UUID, it should be like this:

Follow the instructions on GRUB#BIOS systems and GRUB#UEFI systems to install GRUB for both BIOS and UEFI booting:

Syslinux

Using your UUID:

Tips and tricks

Using your portable install on multiple machines

Compatibility for BIOS systems

This article or section needs expansion.

Since this setup will be run on multiple machines and there are still plenty of BIOS only systems around, you might want to consider enabling compatibility for both UEFI GPT and BIOS GPT/MBR systems. See Multiboot USB drive#Hybrid UEFI GPT + BIOS GPT/MBR boot

Video drivers

Persistent block device naming

It is recommended to use UUID in both fstab and boot loader configuration. See Persistent block device naming for details.

Alternatively, you may create udev rule to create custom symlink for your disk. Then use this symlink in fstab and boot loader configuration. See udev#Setting static device names for details.

Kernel parameters

You may want to disable KMS for various reasons, such as getting a blank screen or a «no signal» error from the display, when using some Intel video cards, etc. To disable KMS, add nomodeset as a kernel parameter. See Kernel parameters for more info.

Compatibility

The fallback image should be used for maximum compatibility.

Minimizing disk access

When installing to a device that offers a limited number of writes before it wears out, such as a USB drive, SD card, or similar, reduce the number of writes to increase the device lifetime. This also reduces the performance impact of slow writes.

USB flash installation medium

This page discusses various multi-platform methods on how to create an Arch Linux Installer USB drive (also referred to as «flash drive», «USB stick», «USB key», etc) for booting in BIOS and UEFI systems. The result will be a LiveUSB (LiveCD-like) system that can be used for installing Arch Linux, system maintenance or for recovery purposes, and that, because of the nature of SquashFS, will discard all changes once the computer shuts down.

If you would like to run a full install of Arch Linux from a USB drive (i.e. with persistent settings), see Installing Arch Linux on a USB key. If you would like to use your bootable Arch Linux USB stick as a rescue USB, see Change root.

Contents

Using the ISO as is (BIOS and UEFI)

In GNU/Linux

Using basic command line utilities

This method is recommended due to its simplicity and universal availability, since these tools are part of coreutils (pulled in by the base meta-package).

Run the following command, replacing /dev/sdx with your drive, e.g. /dev/sdb . (Do not append a partition number, so do not use something like /dev/sdb1 ):

• using cat :
• using cp :
• using dd :
• using tee :

See [1] and [2] for a comparison and perspective on the use of those tools and why dd may be the least adapted one.

Using GNOME Disk Utility

Linux distributions running GNOME can easily make a live CD through nautilus and gnome-disk-utility . Simply right-click on the .iso file, and select Open With Disk Image Writer. When GNOME Disk Utility opens, specify the flash drive from the Destination drop-down menu and click Start Restoring.

Using MultiWriter

gnome-multi-writer is a simple GTK3 based graphical tool to write an ISO file to one or multiple USB devices at once.

Using Kindd

Kindd is a Qt based graphical frontend for dd. It is available as kindd AUR .

Using xorriso-dd-target

xorriso-dd-target (from libisoburn ) is a shell script which attempts to reduce the risk of overwriting the wrong storage device. Its safest mode is named -plug_test . For example, to use it as a regular user who can elevate to root using sudo:

In Windows

Using win32diskimager

win32diskimager is another graphical USB iso writing tool for Windows. Simply select your iso image and the target USB drive letter (you may have to format it first to assign it a drive letter), and click Write.

Using USBwriter

This method does not require any workaround and is as straightforward as dd under Linux. Just download the Arch Linux ISO, and with local administrator rights use the USBwriter utility to write to your USB flash memory.

Using Rufus

Rufus is a multi-purpose USB ISO writer. It provides a graphical user interface and does not care if the drive is properly formatted or not.

Simply select the Arch Linux ISO, the USB drive you want to create the bootable Arch Linux onto and click START.

Using Cygwin

Make sure your Cygwin installation contains the dd package.

Place your image file in your home directory:

Run cygwin as administrator (required for cygwin to access hardware). To write to your USB drive use the following command:

where archlinux-version-x86_64.iso is the path to the iso image file within the cygwin directory and \\.\x: is your USB flash drive where x is the windows designated letter, e.g. \\.\d: .

On Cygwin 6.0, find out the correct partition with:

and write the ISO image with the information from the output. Example:

dd for Windows

A GPL licensed dd version for Windows is available at http://www.chrysocome.net/dd. The advantage of this over Cygwin is a smaller download. Use it as shown in instructions for Cygwin above.

To begin, download the latest version of dd for Windows. Once downloaded, extract the archive’s contents into Downloads or elsewhere.

Now, launch your command prompt as an administrator. Next, change directory ( cd ) into the Downloads directory.

If your Arch Linux ISO is elsewhere you may need to state the full path, for convenience you may wish to put the Arch Linux ISO into the same folder as the dd executable. The basic format of the command will look like this.

Simply replace the various null spots (indicated by an «x») with the correct date and correct drive letter. Here is a complete example.

Using flashnul

flashnul [dead link 2021-03-13 ⓘ] is an utility to verify the functionality and maintenance of Flash-Memory (USB-Flash, IDE-Flash, SecureDigital, MMC, MemoryStick, SmartMedia, XD, CompactFlash etc).

From a command prompt, invoke flashnul with -p , and determine which device index is your USB drive, e.g.:

When you have determined which device is the correct one, you can write the image to your drive, by invoking flashnul with the device index, -L , and the path to your image, e.g:

As long as you are really sure you want to write the data, type yes, then wait a bit for it to write. If you get an access denied error, close any Explorer windows you have open.

If under Vista or Win7, you should open the console as administrator, or else flashnul will fail to open the stick as a block device and will only be able to write via the drive handle windows provides

In macOS

First, you need to identify the USB device. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and list all storage devices with the command:

Your USB device will appear as something like /dev/disk2 (external, physical) . Verify that this is the device you want to erase by checking its name and size and then use its identifier for the commands below instead of /dev/diskX.

A USB device is normally auto-mounted in macOS, and you have to unmount (not eject) it before block-writing to it with dd . In Terminal, do:

Now copy the ISO image file to the device. The dd command is similar to its Linux counterpart, but notice the ‘r’ before ‘disk’ for raw mode which makes the transfer much faster:

The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.

On newer dd you should use «bs=1M», e.g.

This command will run silently. To view progress, send SIGINFO by pressing Ctrl+t . Note diskX here should not include the s1 suffix, or else the USB device will only be bootable in UEFI mode and not legacy. After completion, macOS may complain that «The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer». Select ‘Ignore’. The USB device will be bootable.

In Android

EtchDroid

EtchDroid is a OS image flasher for Android. It works without root permissions on Android 5 to Android 8. According to bug reports it does not always work on Android 9 and Android 4.4.

To create an Arch Linux installer, download the ISO image file on your Android device. Plug the USB drive to your device, using a USB-OTG adapter if needed. Open EtchDroid, select «Flash raw image», select your Arch ISO, then select your USB drive. Grant the USB API permission and confirm.

Keep your phone on a table while it is writing the image: a lot of USB-OTG adapters are a bit wobbly and you might unplug it by mistake.

Using manual formatting

BIOS and UEFI

In GNU/Linux

This method is more complicated than writing the image directly with dd , but it does keep the flash drive usable for data storage (that is, the ISO is installed in a specific partition within the already partitioned device without altering other partitions).

• If not done yet, create a partition table on /dev/sdX .
• If not done yet, create a partition on the device. The partition /dev/sdXn must be formatted to FAT32.
• Mount the FAT32 file system located in the USB flash device and extract the contents of the ISO image to it. For example:

Booting requires specifying the volume on which the files reside. By default the label ARCH_YYYYMM (with the appropriate release year and month) is used. Thus, the file system’s label has to be set accordingly. Alternatively, you can change this behaviour by altering the lines ending by archisolabel=ARCH_YYYYMM in the files: /mnt/syslinux/archiso_sys-linux.cfg for BIOS boot, and in /mnt/loader/entries/archiso-x86_64-linux.conf and /mnt/loader/entries/archiso-x86_64-speech-linux.conf for UEFI boot. For example, to use an UUID instead, replace those portions of lines with archisodevice=/dev/disk/by-uuid/YOUR-UUID .

Syslinux files for BIOS systems are already copied to /mnt/syslinux . Unmount the FAT file system, install the syslinux package and run the following commands to make the partition bootable:

In Windows

• Partition and format the USB drive using Rufus USB partitioner. Select partition scheme option as MBR for BIOS and UEFI and File system as FAT32. Uncheck «Create a bootable disk using ISO image» and «Create extended label and icon files» options.
• Change the Volume Label of the USB flash drive X: to match the LABEL mentioned in the archisolabel= part in \loader\entries\archiso-x86_64.conf . This step is required for Official ISO (Archiso). This step can be also performed using Rufus, during the prior «partition and format» step.
• Extract the ISO (similar to extracting ZIP archive) to the USB flash drive using 7-Zip.
• Download official Syslinux 6.xx binaries (zip file) from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/ and extract it. The version of Syslinux should be the same version used in the ISO image.

• Run the following command (in Windows cmd prompt, as admin):

• Install Syslinux to the USB by running (use win64\syslinux64.exe for x64 Windows):

BIOS only

In GNU/Linux

Making a USB-ZIP drive

For some old BIOS systems, only booting from USB-ZIP drives is supported. This method allows you to still boot from a USB-HDD drive.

• Download syslinux and mtools from the official repositories.
• Find your usb drive with lsblk .
• Type mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdx 0 64 32 (replace x with the letter of your drive). This will take a while.

From here continue with the manual formatting method. The partition will be /dev/sdx4 due to the way ZIP drives work.

UEFI only

For UEFI-only booting, it is enough to copy the files from the ISO and either change the FAT volume’s label or edit boot loader configuration files to set archisolabel / archisodevice accordingly.

In GNU/Linux

This method involves simply copies files from the ISO image to a USB flash drive and either adjusts the systemd-boot configuration or the file system’s label.

1. If not done yet, create a partition table on /dev/sdX and a partition ( /dev/sdXn ) on the device.
2. If not done yet, format the partition to FAT32:
3. Mount the FAT32 file system:
4. Extract the ISO image to the mounted file system:
5. Either:
   • edit /mnt/loader/entries/archiso-x86_64-linux.conf and /mnt/loader/entries/archiso-x86_64-speech-linux.conf and change archisolabel=ARCH_YYYYMM to match your device, e.g. by replacing it with archisodevice=/dev/disk/by-uuid/YOUR-UUID ,
   • or unmount the file system and change its LABEL to match ARCH_YYYYMM :
6. Unmount the FAT32 file system.

In Windows

1. Partition the USB flash drive and format it to FAT32.
2. Right click on archlinux-version-x86_64.iso and select Mount.
3. Navigate to the newly created DVD drive and copy all files and folders except for syslinux to the USB flash drive.
4. When done copying, right click on the DVD drive and select Eject.
5. Either:
   • edit X:\loader\entries\archiso-x86_64-linux.conf and X:\loader\entries\archiso-x86_64-speech-linux.conf with a text editor and change archisolabel=ARCH_YYYYMM to match your device, e.g. by replacing it with archisolabel=YOUR-LABEL ,
   • or change the FAT32 volume label to match ARCH_YYYYMM .
6. Eject the USB flash drive.

Using a multiboot USB drive

This allows booting multiple ISOs from a single USB device, including the archiso. Updating an existing USB drive to a more recent ISO is simpler than for most other methods. See Multiboot USB drive.

Using ventoy

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files. With ventoy, you do not need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly. You can copy many files at a time and ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them. It is available in the AUR as ventoy-bin AUR .

In Windows

Loading the installation medium from RAM

This article or section is a candidate for merging with Multiboot USB drive#Using Syslinux and memdisk.

This method uses Syslinux and a Ramdisk (MEMDISK) to load the entire Arch Linux ISO image into RAM. Since this will be running entirely from system memory, you will need to make sure the system you will be installing this on has an adequate amount. A minimum amount of RAM between 500 MB and 1 GB should suffice for a MEMDISK based, Arch Linux install.

For more information on Arch Linux system requirements as well as those for MEMDISK see the Installation guide and here. For reference, here is the preceding forum thread.

Preparing the USB flash drive

Begin by formatting the USB flash drive as FAT32. Then create the following folders on the newly formatted drive.

Copy the needed files to the USB flash drive

Next copy the ISO that you would like to boot to the Boot/ISOs folder. After that, extract from the following files from the latest release of syslinux from here and copy them into the following folders.

• ./win32/syslinux.exe to the Desktop or Downloads folder on your system.
• ./memdisk/memdisk to the Settings folder on your USB flash drive.

Create the configuration file

After copying the needed files, navigate to the USB flash drive, /boot/Settings and create a syslinux.cfg file.

For more information see the Syslinux article.

Final steps

Finally, create a *.bat file where syslinux.exe is located and run it («Run as administrator» if you are on Vista or Windows 7):

Inadvisable methods

Using etcher

etcher contains analytics and first-party advertising. See [3], [4] and [5].