Installing Arch Linux Arm on the Raspberry Pi

I have not added anything to this series in well over a year, and the Debian based operating system that I had previously installed on the Raspberry Pi would be quite out of date, requiring a reinstall. Rather than install an up-to-date Debian based operating system, I have decided to install Arch Linux Arm. It is a rolling release distribution, meaning that I will not have to take the time to reinstall it again if it becomes out-of-date.

This article will show how to install Arch Linux Arm on the Raspberry Pi. I will be using a laptop with Arch Linux on it to install Arch Linux Arm on the Raspberry Pi's SD card, but the steps would generally be the same even if I had a distribution other than Arch Linux on my laptop.

Install Arch Linux on the SD Card

First, I plugged the SD card into my laptop and used fdisk to find the SD card's identifier, which was sdb in this case.

$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 149.05 GiB, 160041885696 bytes, 312581808 sectors
Disk model: Hitachi HTS72321
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 2048 309247 307200 150M 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 309248 12892159 12582912 6G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 12892160 86292479 73400320 35G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 86292480 159692799 73400320 35G 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 7.25 GiB, 7780433920 bytes, 15196160 sectors
Disk model: Multi-Card
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xc30ac758

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 8192 532479 524288 256M c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdb2 532480 15196159 14663680 7G 83 Linux

I then partitioned the drive using fdisk.

$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.37.2).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

Command (m for help): o
Created a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x67a9e83d.

Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sdb: 7.25 GiB, 7780433920 bytes, 15196160 sectors
Disk model: Multi-Card
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x67a9e83d

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
p primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
e extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-15196159, default 2048): RETERN
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-15196159, default 15196159): +100M

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 100 MiB.

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code or alias (type L to list all): c
Changed type of partition 'Linux' to 'W95 FAT32 (LBA)'.

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
p primary (1 primary, 0 extended, 3 free)
e extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (2-4, default 2): 2
First sector (206848-15196159, default 206848): RETERN
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (206848-15196159, default 15196159): RETERN

Created a new partition 2 of type 'Linux' and of size 7.1 GiB.

Command (m for help): w

I then formatted the first partition.

$ sudo mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1
mkfs.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)

I then mounted the first partition.

$ mkdir boot

$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 boot

I then formatted the second partition.

$ sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdb2
mke2fs 1.46.4 (18-Aug-2021)
Creating filesystem with 1873664 4k blocks and 468640 inodes
Filesystem UUID: d2874535-cf2f-4e5f-bbb4-758320c6effb
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (16384 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:
done

I then mounted the second partition.

$ mkdir root

$ sudo mount /dev/sdb2 root

I then downloaded the current Arch Linux Arm ISO file.

$ wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-rpi-armv7-latest.tar.gz

I then extracted the contents of the ISO file onto the second partition of the SD card and also populated the first partition.

$ su root
$ bsdtar -xpf ArchLinuxARM-rpi-armv7-latest.tar.gz -C root
$ sync
$ mv root/boot/* boot

I then unmounted the partitions.

$ umount boot root

Setting Up Arch Linux

I then plugged the SD card into the Raspberry Pi and booted it. I plugged in a monitor and keyboard and logged into the system's default account, which has user name alarm and password alarm.

I then changed the password of the alarm user.

$ passwd

I then logged in as the root user, which has default password root.

$ su root

I then changed the password of the root user.

$ passwd

I then connected to Wi-Fi using wifi-menu.

# wifi-menu

For some reason, after rebooting, the Pi would not automatically reconnect to the Wi-Fi network (I think that, in the past, it would do so automatically). Consequently, I ran the following netctl command with the name of the network profile to which the Pi was connected. This ensures that it connects to the Wi-Fi network automatically upon boot.

# netctl enable <name_of_wifi_profile>

I then setup the package management system and updated all of the out-of-date packages.

# pacman-key --init
# pacman-key --populate archlinuxarm
# pacman -Syu

I then installed sudo and vim because they are useful tools for me.

# pacman -S sudo
# pacman -S vim

I also added the alarm user to the wheel group.

# usermod -aG wheel alarm

I then used visudo to make the alarm user a sudoer and configure its privileges.

# export EDITOR="/usr/bin/vim"
# visudo

I added the following three lines to the sudoers file.

%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
alarm ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/pacman
alarm ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/shutdown

I then reverted to the alarm user and added the following line to the /home/alarm/.bashrc in order to change the appearance of the prompt

export PS1="\[\e[1;33m\][\[\e[1;37m\]\W\e\[[1;33m]\]#\[\e[0m\] "




		I then went back to my laptop and logged into the Pi via SSH. I found its IP address in the same way that I did in this article.
		
			
				# ssh alarm@192.168.1.29

			
		

		I then set up an SSH key pair so that I can log into the Pi without using its password. In order to do that, I ran the following two commands on my laptop.
		
			
				# ssh-keygen

					Generating public/private rsa key pair.

					Enter file in which to save the key (/home/idm/.ssh/id_rsa):

					Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):

					Enter same passphrase again:

					Your identification has been saved in /home/idm/.ssh/id_rsa

					Your public key has been saved in /home/idm/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

					The key fingerprint is:

					SHA256:jzSLReSOTPKlJ+6FiqdyUVCvs1g+RZEEs6XwSRvnrO8 idm@HP-Arch

					The key's randomart image is:

				# ssh-copy-id alarm@192.168.1.29

			
		
		
		
			
				Previous
				Published August 31, 2022
				Next