I've tried VirtualBox, I've even given some unorthodox installation ways a go, like using Architect or Arch-Anywhere, but eventually found the vanilla ISO image to be much better and far more up to the task.
I'll go through my installation process step-by-step.
Initial setup
UEFI system with a single hard drive and a few partitions reserved for Windows (as unfortunate as it may be, I have to use it for work).
Installation strategy
Decreased the size of my last Windows partition, leaving 250 GB for Arch.
Inserted USB, used Rufus to format it and copy the ISO. Now that I think about it, I must've made two mistakes at this stage: a) used ISO mode instead of DD (appears to be an issue in one of the threads here); b) formatted it to MBR for UEFI and BIOS (but it's installation media, so it shouldn't matter, right?).
- Rebooted. Went into the settings, selected my USB drive as the booting device.
- Looked up
efivars
, but the directory didn't exist (unlike what the Beginners' Guide states, and I clearly have a GPT system). - Created one partition for
/boot
and another one - for/
. This is where the GUI helpers (Architect and Arch-Anywhere) failed completely, because somehow they'd let me partition the drive manually but wouldn't allow mounting directories. Also, as I later found out,parted
andgdisk
didn't work quite as expected either: both would leave unallocated space between Linux partitions and the Windows ones, and somehow both ignored the schemes I'd choose (FAT32 and Ext4 turned out as a single Ext2 partition for one tool and as a FAT32 and an Ext3 partition for the other). And while the empty space I can explain (confusion due toprint
printing information in GB and the actual commands using GiB for some weird reason), I have no idea how Ext4 would result in either Ext2 or Ext3. Anyway, that bit is not particularly crucial, because I can always format my system properly under Windows. - Where it starts getting mystical for me is this stage:
pacstrap
. No matter what I did to themirrorlist
on the vanilla ISO, it would fail connecting to repositories. Normally I'd blame Australia and its glorious Internet connectivity, but I've actually seen those repositories work within Architect and Arch-Anywhere. "Okay," I said to myself, "to hell with those libraries, it's an optional step, I'll try booting the damn thing." - So I've tried booting it. And
bootctl install
came up with something around the lines of "can't boot into a non-FAT32 non-EFI partition". That's where I lost all hope and started contemplating leaving IT and becoming a professional alcoholic or a full-time scrubber-wielder.
All in all, I'd just like to know where I screwed up. I've learnt the Beginners' Guide by heart, but it didn't help me, so if anyone has a functioning guide that actually explains every step for my particular situation (because I'd say the Guide doesn't), I'd love to see it. I'm also curious as to why parted
and gdisk
were being so weird.
I don't quite understand how "mounting" works either.
dd
, or if you don't have access to a Linux box, USBWriter, to create the bootable image...