Creating and using a script to Install Arch linux through wifi

There are many different ways to create a bootable USB flash drive. I will in this guide, not show you how to create a bootable USB flash drive.

After rebooting your computer from the USB flash drive and when the installation medium’s boot loader menu appears

archinstall

The default console key-map is US. You can change that using for example:

loadkeys sv-latin1

Use iwctl to connect to a wireless network (If you are using a cable to connect to the internet, you can skip this step)

  • To get an interactive prompt, use the command

    iwctl

  • The interactive prompt is then displayed with a prefix of [iwd]#

    iwctl

  • First, if you do not know your wireless device name, list all Wi-Fi devices:

    device list

  • If the device or its corresponding adapter is turned off, turn it on:

    device [name] set-property Powered on

  • Then, to initiate a scan for networks (note that this command will not output anything):

    station [name] scan

  • You can then list all available networks:

    station name get-networks

  • Finally, to connect to a network:

    station name connect [Network name]

  • To display the connection state, including the connected network of a Wi-Fi device:

    station device show

  • To exit from iwctl, type exit.

To be able to save the install script you need to mount your USB flash drive.

First we need to locate the USB flash drive on you system. Discs are assigned to a block device such as /dev/sda or /dev/nvme0n1. The command lsblk gives us that information. On my machine, lsblk shows me that my USB flash drive is assigned to sda1. Next we need to mount the USB flash drive:

mount --mkdir /dev/sda1 /mnt/myusb

Run archinstall script

archinstall

archinstall_start

After you have gone through the install scrip, it should look something like this. This is just a example!

archinstall_after

It is now time to save you configuration to your USB flash drive. Do this by choosing ‘Save configuration’.

There are 2 different configuration files to consider

  • user_configuration.json - contains all general installation configuration
  • user_credentials.json - contains the sensitive user configuration such as user password, root password, and encryption password.

I recommend that you only save user_configuration.json, to avoid saving sensitive information to the USB flash drive

Now that you have saved your configuration to your USB flash drive, you can safely continue with your installation of arch-Linux.

The next time you want to install arch-Linux, using the preloaded configuration file, simply insert you USB flash drive and type:

archinstall --config /mnt/myusb/user_configuration.json

Known errors

During the installation I stumbled across this error

Could not strap in packages: 256

Probably a problem when downloading from a mirror. Try again or from another mirror.

Could not strap in packages, signature from “nnn” is unknown trust

  • To force a refresh of all package lists and upgrade

    pacman -Syu

  • Or: refreshing your keys (this may take a long time, prepare with lots of coffee).

    pacman-key --refresh

Rickard Hillebrink

Consultant at Redpill Linpro

Rickard has been part of Redpill Linpro since 2018. Working as a senior consultant with API and Java as his specialty

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