Abhishek AN

Dual boot Arch Linux with Windows(UEFI)

by Abhishek AN 4 min read

If you have come here, you should have downloaded the Arch ISO and created a bootable disk and did the following:

  1. Disable Secure Boot
  2. Disable Launch CSM or Legacy Support
  3. Set Boot Mode to UEFI
  4. Enable USB Boot
  5. Set USB Disk as boot priority

Installing Arch Linux is a notably quite complicated procedure compared to other Linux/GNU distros. This guide is aimed for EFI systems which most modern computers come with. Let’s begin the installation!

To verify if you are in UEFI mode, type

# ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

Create partitions using cgdisk

Type

cgdisk /dev/sda

Create the swap partition:

Hit New again from the options at the bottom of partition list.
Just hit enter to select the default option for the first sector.
For the swap partition size, it is advisable to have 1.5 times the size of your RAM. I have 8GB of RAM so I’m gonna put 12GiB for the partition size. Hit enter.
Set GUID to 8200. Hit enter.
Set name to swap. Hit enter.

Create the root partition:

Hit New again.
Hit enter to select the default option for the first sector.
Hit enter again to use the remainder of the disk.
Also hit enter for the GUID to select default.
Then set name of the partition to root.

Hit write at the bottom of the patitions list to write the changes to the disk. Type yes to confirm the write command. Now we are done partitioning the disk. Hit Quit to exit cgdisk.

See new partition table

lsblk

Output should be similar to this

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 238.5G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   450M  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0   100M  0 part 
├─sda3   8:3    0    16M  0 part 
├─sda4   8:4    0  63.1G  0 part 
├─sda5   8:5    0   851M  0 part 
├─sda6   8:6    0  99.6G  0 part 
├─sda7   8:7    0    10G  0 part 
└─sda8   8:8    0  64.4G  0 part

Enable the swap partition:

mkswap -L "Linux Swap" /dev/sda7
swapon /dev/sda7

To Verify swap is activated:

free -m

Format root partition as ext4:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda8

Mount the root partition:

mkdir /mnt
mount /dev/sda8 /mnt

Connect to a network using Ethernet or Wirelessly using

wifi-menu

Install the base components

As of 2019-10-06 it is required to install a kernel along with the base package. Else the mkinitcpio package will not be installed and you will face errors in the installation ahead.

pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware

Mount EFI Partition

mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi

Check partiton table

gdisk -l /dev/sda

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048          923647   450.0 MiB   2700  Basic data partition
   2          923648         1128447   100.0 MiB   EF00  EFI system partition
   3         1128448         1161215   16.0 MiB    0C01  Microsoft reserved ...
   4         1161216       133424499   63.1 GiB    0700  Basic data partition
   5       133425152       135167999   851.0 MiB   2700  
   6       135170048       344066047   99.6 GiB    0700  Basic data partition
   7       344066048       365037567   10.0 GiB    8200  swap
   8       365037568       500118158   64.4 GiB    8300  root

EFI partiton number is 2

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot/efi

Generate fstab

genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Check the fstab

cat /mnt/etc/fstab

chroot into system now

arch-chroot /mnt

Setting Locale

The Locale defines which language the system uses, and other regional considerations such as currency denomination, numerology, and character sets. Possible values are listed in /etc/locale.gen. Uncomment en_US.UTF-8, as well as other needed localisations.

Save the file, and generate the new locales:

locale-gen
echo 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' > /etc/locale.conf
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Set the time

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kolkata /etc/localtime

It is recommended to adjust the time skew, and set the time standard to UTC:

hwclock --systohc --utc

Set the hostname:

echo 'arch' > /etc/hostname

For wifi install

pacman -S iw wpa_supplicant dialog

Enable multilib and AUR repositories in /etc/pacman.conf:

nano /etc/pacman.conf

Uncomment multilib (remove # from the beginning of the lines):

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Add the following lines at the end of /etc/pacman.conf:

[archlinuxfr]
SigLevel = Never
Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch

Generate the initramfs image:

mkinitcpio -p linux

Change root user password

passwd root

Then add user with your name

useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power,video -s /bin/bash -c "Abhishek AN" darkabhi

Set password for darkabhi

passwd darkabhi

Add new user to sudoers

EDITOR=nano visudo

Uncomment # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

GRUB INSTALLATION

I prefer GRUB 2.0 so we will be using that.

pacman -Syu grub efibootmgr

Generate grub config

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Install grub to your drive

grub-install /dev/sda

Verify if grub installed, type:

ls -l /boot/efi/EFI/arch/

POST GRUB INSTALLATION - DE/WM/Network

Minimal GNOME DE installation

pacman -S gnome-system-monitor gnome-shell nautilus gnome-terminal gnome-tweak-tool gnome-control-center xdg-user-dirs networkmanager gnome-keyring network-manager-applet xorg gdm

Enable GDM:

systemctl enable gdm

Enable networking:

systemctl enable NetworkManager

You would have noticed when we generated grub config, windows was not found. For that Boot into arch, open terminal and as root type

pacman -Syu os-prober

Generate grub config

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

You can see it has found windows boot manager. Reboot and check now.

That’s it! You have successfully dual booted arch and windows!

Minimal KDE installation

pacman -S plasma-desktop