What is arch command in linux

Arch terminology

This page is intended to be a page to demystify common terms used among the Arch Linux community. Feel free to add or modify any terms, but please use that particular section’s edit option. If you decide to add one, please put it in alphabetical order.

Contents

ABS stands for Arch Build System and can be used for:

• Making new packages for software that has no packages available yet
• Customizing/modifying existing packages to fit your needs:
  • Enabling/disabling build-time options
  • Applying source changes via patches
• Re-building your entire system using your compiler flags, «a la Gentoo»
• Getting kernel modules working with your custom kernel

ABS is not necessary to use Arch Linux, but it is useful.

Arch Linux

Arch should be referred to as:

Archlinux, ArchLinux, archLinux, aRcHlInUx, etc. are all weird, and weirder mutations.

Officially, the ‘Arch’ in «Arch Linux» is pronounced /ˈɑrtʃ/ as in an «archer»/bowman, or «arch-nemesis», and not as in «ark» or «archangel».

Arch Linux Archive

The Arch Linux Archive (a.k.a ALA), formerly known as Arch Linux Rollback Machine (a.k.a ARM), stores official repositories snapshots, ISO images and bootstrap tarballs across time.

The Arch User Repository (AUR) is a community-driven repository for Arch users. It contains package descriptions (PKGBUILDs) that allow you to compile a package from source with makepkg and then install it via pacman. The AUR was created to organize and share new packages from the community and to help expedite popular packages’ inclusion into the community repository.

A good number of new packages that enter the official repositories start in the AUR. In the AUR, users are able to contribute their own package builds (PKGBUILD and related files). The AUR community has the ability to vote for or against packages in the AUR. If a package becomes popular enough — provided it has a compatible license and good packaging technique — it may be entered into the community repository (directly accessible by pacman or abs).

You can access the Arch Linux User Community Repository here.

Bulletin board system, but in Arch’s case, it is just the support forum located here.

community/[community]

The community repository is where pre-built packages are made available by Trusted Users. A majority of the packages in community come from the AUR.

core/[core]

The core repository contains the bare packages needed for an Arch Linux system. core has everything needed to get a working command-line system.

custom/user repository

Anyone can create a repository and put it online for other users. To create a repository, you need a set of packages and a pacman-compatible database file for your packages. Host your files online and everyone will be able to use your repository by adding it as a regular repository.

Developer

Half-gods working to improve Arch for no financial gain. Developers are outranked only by our gods, Judd Vinet and Aaron Griffin, who in turn are outranked by tacos.

extra/[extra]

Arch’s official package set is fairly streamlined, but we supplement this with a larger, more complete extra repository that contains a lot of the stuff that never made it into our core package set. This repository is constantly growing with the help of packages submitted from our strong community. This is where desktop environments, window managers and common programs are found.

initramfs

initrd

Obsolete. Nowadays often used as a synonym for initramfs.

Acronym of Keep It Simple, Stupid. Simplicity is a main principle Arch Linux tries to achieve.

makepkg

makepkg will build packages for you. makepkg will read the metadata required from a PKGBUILD file. All it needs is a build-capable Linux platform, curl , and some build scripts. The advantage to a script-based build is that you only really do the work once. Once you have the build script for a package, you just need to run makepkg and it will do the rest: download and validate source files, check dependencies, configure the build time settings, build the package, install the package into a temporary root, make customizations, generate meta-info, and package the whole thing up for pacman to use.

namcap

namcap is a package analysis utility that looks for problems with Arch Linux packages or their PKGBUILD files. It can apply rules to the file list, the files themselves, or individual PKGBUILD files.

Rules return lists of messages. Each message can be one of three types: error, warning, or information (think of them as notes or comments). Errors (designated by ‘E:’) are things that namcap is very sure are wrong and need to be fixed. Warnings (designated by ‘W:’) are things that namcap thinks should be changed but if you know what you are doing then you can leave them. Information (designated ‘I:’) are only shown when you use the info argument. Information messages give information that might be helpful but is not anything that needs changing.

package

Package maintainer

The role of a package maintainer is to update packages as new versions become available upstream and to field support questions relating to bugs in said packages. The term applies to:

• Developers who maintain packages in the official repositories (core, extra, or testing).
• Trusted Users who maintain packages in the community repository.
• Normal users who maintain packages in the AUR.

The maintainer of a package is the person currently responsible for the package. Previous maintainers should be listed as contributors in the PKGBUILD along with others who have contributed to the package.

pacman

PKGBUILD

PKGBUILDs are small scripts that are used to build Arch Linux packages. See Creating packages for more detail.

repository/repo

The repository has the pre-compiled packages of one or (usually) more PKGBUILDs. Official repositories are split into different parts for easy maintenance. Pacman uses these repositories to search for packages and install them. A repository can be local (i.e. on your own computer) or remote (i.e. the packages are downloaded before they are installed).

This article or section is a candidate for merging with Code of conduct#common-sense-introduction.

«Read The Fine Manual». This simple message is replied to a lot of new Linux/Arch users who ask about the functionality of a program when it is clearly defined in the program’s manual.

It is often used when a user fails to make any attempt to find a solution to the problem themselves. If someone tells you this, they are not trying to offend you; they are just frustrated with your lack of effort.

The best thing to do if you are told to do this is to read the manual page.

• To read the program manual page for a particular program named as PROGRAM-NAME, type this at the command line: man PROGRAM-NAME .

If you do not find the answer to your question in the program manual, there are more ways to find the answer. You can:

testing/[testing]

This is the repository where major packages/updates to packages are kept prior to release into the main repositories, so they can be bug tested and upgrade issues can be found. It is disabled by default but can be enabled in /etc/pacman.conf

The Arch Way

The unofficial term traditionally used to refer to the main Arch Linux principles.

TU, Trusted User

A trusted user is someone who maintains the AUR and the [community] repository. Trusted Users may move a package into the [community] repository if it has been voted as popular. TUs are appointed by a majority vote by the existing TUs.

udev provides a dynamic device directory containing only the files for actually present devices. It creates or removes device node files in the /dev directory, or it renames network interfaces.

Usually udev runs as udevd(8) and receives uevents directly from the kernel if a device is added/removed to/from the system.

If udev receives a device event, it matches its configured rules against the available device attributes provided in sysfs to identify the device. Rules that match may provide additional device information or specify a device node name and multiple symlink names and instruct udev to run additional programs as part of the device event handling.

This! A place to find documentation about Arch Linux. Anyone can add and modify the documentation.

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Installation guide

This document is a guide for installing Arch Linux using the live system booted from an installation medium made from an official installation image. The installation medium provides accessibility features which are described on the page Install Arch Linux with accessibility options. For alternative means of installation, see Category:Installation process.

Before installing, it would be advised to view the FAQ. For conventions used in this document, see Help:Reading. In particular, code examples may contain placeholders (formatted in italics ) that must be replaced manually.

For more detailed instructions, see the respective ArchWiki articles or the various programs’ man pages, both linked from this guide. For interactive help, the IRC channel and the forums are also available.

Arch Linux should run on any x86_64-compatible machine with a minimum of 512 MiB RAM, though more memory is needed to boot the live system for installation.[1] A basic installation should take less than 2 GiB of disk space. As the installation process needs to retrieve packages from a remote repository, this guide assumes a working internet connection is available.

Contents

Pre-installation

Acquire an installation image

Visit the Download page and, depending on how you want to boot, acquire the ISO file or a netboot image, and the respective GnuPG signature.

Verify signature

It is recommended to verify the image signature before use, especially when downloading from an HTTP mirror, where downloads are generally prone to be intercepted to serve malicious images.

On a system with GnuPG installed, do this by downloading the PGP signature (under Checksums in the Download page) to the ISO directory, and verifying it with:

Alternatively, from an existing Arch Linux installation run:

Prepare an installation medium

The installation image can be supplied to the target machine via a USB flash drive, an optical disc or a network with PXE: follow the appropriate article to prepare yourself an installation medium from the chosen image.

Boot the live environment

1. Point the current boot device to the one which has the Arch Linux installation medium. Typically it is achieved by pressing a key during the POST phase, as indicated on the splash screen. Refer to your motherboard’s manual for details.
2. When the installation medium’s boot loader menu appears, select Arch Linux install medium and press Enter to enter the installation environment.

To switch to a different console—for example, to view this guide with Lynx alongside the installation—use the Alt+arrow shortcut. To edit configuration files, mcedit(1) , nano and vim are available. See packages.x86_64 for a list of the packages included in the installation medium.

Set the console keyboard layout

The default console keymap is US. Available layouts can be listed with:

To modify the layout, append a corresponding file name to loadkeys(1) , omitting path and file extension. For example, to set a German keyboard layout:

Console fonts are located in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ and can likewise be set with setfont(8) .

Verify the boot mode

To verify the boot mode, list the efivars directory:

If the command shows the directory without error, then the system is booted in UEFI mode. If the directory does not exist, the system may be booted in BIOS (or CSM) mode. If the system did not boot in the mode you desired, refer to your motherboard’s manual.

Connect to the internet

To set up a network connection in the live environment, go through the following steps:

• Ensure your network interface is listed and enabled, for example with ip-link(8) :
• For wireless and WWAN, make sure the card is not blocked with rfkill.
• Connect to the network:
  • Ethernet—plug in the cable.
  • Wi-Fi—authenticate to the wireless network using iwctl.
  • Mobile broadband modem—connect to the mobile network with the mmcli utility.
• Configure your network connection:
  • DHCP: dynamic IP address and DNS server assignment (provided by systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved) should work out of the box for Ethernet, WLAN and WWAN network interfaces.
  • Static IP address: follow Network configuration#Static IP address.
• The connection may be verified with ping:

Update the system clock

Use timedatectl(1) to ensure the system clock is accurate:

To check the service status, use timedatectl status .

Partition the disks

When recognized by the live system, disks are assigned to a block device such as /dev/sda , /dev/nvme0n1 or /dev/mmcblk0 . To identify these devices, use lsblk or fdisk.

Results ending in rom , loop or airoot may be ignored.

The following partitions are required for a chosen device:

If you want to create any stacked block devices for LVM, system encryption or RAID, do it now.

Use fdisk or parted to modify partition tables. For example:

Example layouts

BIOS with MBR

Mount point	Partition	Partition type	Suggested size
[SWAP]	/dev/swap_partition	Linux swap	More than 512 MiB
/mnt	/dev/root_partition	Linux	Remainder of the device

UEFI with GPT

Mount point	Partition	Partition type	Suggested size
/mnt/boot or /mnt/efi 1	/dev/efi_system_partition	EFI system partition	At least 260 MiB
[SWAP]	/dev/swap_partition	Linux swap	More than 512 MiB
/mnt	/dev/root_partition	Linux x86-64 root (/)	Remainder of the device

1. /mnt/efi should only be considered if the used boot loader is capable of loading the kernel and initramfs images from the root volume. See the warning in Arch boot process#Boot loader.

Format the partitions

Once the partitions have been created, each newly created partition must be formatted with an appropriate file system. For example, to create an Ext4 file system on /dev/root_partition , run:

If you created a partition for swap, initialize it with mkswap(8) :

Mount the file systems

Mount the root volume to /mnt . For example, if the root volume is /dev/root_partition :

Create any remaining mount points (such as /mnt/efi ) using mkdir(1) and mount their corresponding volumes.

If you created a swap volume, enable it with swapon(8) :

genfstab(8) will later detect mounted file systems and swap space.

Installation

Select the mirrors

Packages to be installed must be downloaded from mirror servers, which are defined in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist . On the live system, after connecting to the internet, reflector updates the mirror list by choosing 20 most recently synchronized HTTPS mirrors and sorting them by download rate.[2]

The higher a mirror is placed in the list, the more priority it is given when downloading a package. You may want to inspect the file to see if it is satisfactory. If it is not, edit the file accordingly, and move the geographically closest mirrors to the top of the list, although other criteria should be taken into account.

This file will later be copied to the new system by pacstrap, so it is worth getting right.

Install essential packages

Use the pacstrap(8) script to install the base package, Linux kernel and firmware for common hardware:

The base package does not include all tools from the live installation, so installing other packages may be necessary for a fully functional base system. In particular, consider installing:

• userspace utilities for the management of file systems that will be used on the system,
• utilities for accessing RAID or LVM partitions,
• specific firmware for other devices not included in linux-firmware (e.g. sof-firmware for sound cards),
• software necessary for networking,
• a text editor,
• packages for accessing documentation in man and info pages: man-db , man-pages and texinfo .

To install other packages or package groups, append the names to the pacstrap command above (space separated) or use pacman while chrooted into the new system. For comparison, packages available in the live system can be found in packages.x86_64.

Configure the system

Fstab

Generate an fstab file (use -U or -L to define by UUID or labels, respectively):

Check the resulting /mnt/etc/fstab file, and edit it in case of errors.

Chroot

Change root into the new system:

Time zone

Run hwclock(8) to generate /etc/adjtime :

This command assumes the hardware clock is set to UTC. See System time#Time standard for details.

Localization

Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and other needed locales. Generate the locales by running:

Network configuration

Add matching entries to hosts(5) :

If the system has a permanent IP address or a fully qualified domain name, see the example in Network configuration#Local hostname resolution.

Complete the network configuration for the newly installed environment, that may include installing suitable network management software.

Initramfs

Creating a new initramfs is usually not required, because mkinitcpio was run on installation of the kernel package with pacstrap.

For LVM, system encryption or RAID, modify mkinitcpio.conf(5) and recreate the initramfs image:

Root password

Boot loader

Choose and install a Linux-capable boot loader. If you have an Intel or AMD CPU, enable microcode updates in addition.

Reboot

Exit the chroot environment by typing exit or pressing Ctrl+d .

Optionally manually unmount all the partitions with umount -R /mnt : this allows noticing any «busy» partitions, and finding the cause with fuser(1) .

Finally, restart the machine by typing reboot : any partitions still mounted will be automatically unmounted by systemd. Remember to remove the installation medium and then login into the new system with the root account.

Post-installation

See General recommendations for system management directions and post-installation tutorials (like creating unprivileged user accounts, setting up a graphical user interface, sound or a touchpad).

For a list of applications that may be of interest, see List of applications.

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