[DRAFT] Install media for archlinux

I am using MacOS to create a install media. In order to write the image to a USB stick we need to unmount all the filesystems that are located on the device.

diskutil unmount /dev/disk2s1

Here is how we can list all the disks attached to the system

diskutil list

Download isofile from https://archlinux.org/releng/releases/

Writing image to the USB device (notice that we do not write to a partition)

sudo dd if=archlinux-2021.01.01-x86_64.iso of=/dev/disk2

then we can flush data by ejecting the drive

diskutil eject /dev/disk2

Now we can plug the usb to a computer we want to install archlinux on. In my case it is Mac mini. Hold alt (option) button and select the install disk to boot up.

Here are commands to check what discs are attached to the system

cat /proc/partitions
ls /dev/[s|x|v]d*
lsblk
fdisk –l
ls /dev | grep ‘^[s|v|x][v|d]’$*

The install disk has free space which we can use (for example to create install scripts in case we use the install disk several times)

cfdisk /dev/sdb

Select thf freespace and hit [New] and Enter => [Write] => enter => yes =>Enter => [Quit]

Now we have unformatted partition. To screate FAT32 execute this commend

mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdb4

Mount it as home folder mount /dev/sdb4 /root # and go to the new home root cd

# this command was given by arch wiki but do not work for me # https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FAT mount -i -t vfat -oumask=0000,iocharset=utf8 /dev/sdb4 /root

Now I realized I can edit system, so the partition that I have just created I can mount on start. There are steps I took.

• On the USB stick there is prtition named Gap1. I remove it becouse it seems to not be needed. I use gparted for that.

• Shrink vfat partition to 8000 MiB and place it at the and.

• Crate partitions to look like this: [1: 628.97MiB] [2: 2.2 GiB] [3: 59 MiB] [4: 4000 MiB] [5: 8000MiB]
  1. ARCH202101: It is the oryginal partition ISO9660 I had after writing image
  2. Freespace that will might be used when I edit the first partition
  3. The UEFI partition where is placed bootloader that starts sysyem that is located on the first partition. This partition comes form the orygunal image.
  4. CHROOT: This parition will contains files of the installer system. They are placed on Ext4 partition, so we can edit files and regenerate ISO file from it.
  5. Home folder for root user, so when we can write scripts, store files so we can use them in other instalation process.

Now we copy read only files from read only system to writable partition

sudo mount -o loop /media/artur/ARCH202101/arch/x86_64/airfs.sfs /mnt 
sudo cp -T /mnt /media/artur/CHROOT