Skip to content

Alpha - Archinstoo

Group 1

What is archinstoo

An operating system installer (and tools) for archlinux.

Tip

In the ISO, you are root by default. Use sudo or equivalent, when from an existing system.

Or from any Linux host: ./RUN --script bootstrap -- [archinstoo args...] runs archinstoo inside the Arch bootstrap tarball, see distros/.

Setup / Usage

0. Keymap

Select a layout: loadkeys <somekblayout>

Can also check available ones:

localectl list-keymaps otherwise defaults to us.

1. Get internet access

Note

Ethernet cable is plug and play. You can then skip wifi setup below

Test: ping -c 3 google.com if this returns ttl=109 time=10.1 ms 3 times...

For Wifi: 

# check devices
$ ip link

$ iwctl station wlan0 connect "SSID"
# where SSID is the name of your wifi
# where wlan0 is your device name
# case sensitive and will prompt for password

$ nmcli dev wifi connect "SSID" -a
# alternative

2. Prep

If on the ISO instead of a live system 

pacman-key --init
pacman -Syy git python

Note

The ISO has limited cow_spacesize (256M by default). Optionally, if you need space in the temporary environment, simply: mount -o remount,size=1G /run/archiso/cowspace

3. Get the source code

git clone https://github.com/h8d13/archinstoo

4. Run the code

cd archinstoo/installer
python -m archinstoo [args] # try -h or --help
# some options are behind --advanced

5. Enjoy your new system(s)

Screenshot_20260608_165700

Make your pizzas. Una pizza con funghi e prosciutto.

See Newb-Corner if you're just starting out with Arch.

Tip

Alternatively: There are wrappers/helpers (which perform similar step to 4) from the repo root:

./RUN # regular
./DEV # advanced

Modify/Extend

You can create any profile in archinstoo/default_profiles/ following convention, which will be imported automatically. Or modify existing ones directly. Can also see here for examples

You can make plugins easily --script list for archinstoo, anything inside scripts/ is also imported.

The full structure of the project can be consulted through TREE

Install steps are ordered in installer.py here search/find/replace is your friend.

A man page is also available man -l installer/docs/archinstoo.1

Use cases / Docs

See the full documentation on mkdocs generated from this repo.

Testing

Host-to-target: testing (without ISOs) here you will need more dependencies.

See historical/latest changes Changelog

The process would be the same with git clone -b <branch> <url> to test a specific fix. Usually reproduced then tested on actual/appropriate hardware.

Any help in this regard is deeply appreciated, as testing/digging takes just as long as writing code. Accurate reports/PRs will be addressed in a timely manner: PRs, Issues and Contributing

Philosophy: Simplify, No backwards-compat, Move fast (even if it means breaking and fixing). More...

Building sources

Note

For DEV top-level PKGBUILD has extra tools like archiso, qemu-*, pacman-contrib and nvchecker.

For non-dev see installer/PKGBUILD uses the repo without its top part from git.

But it is recommended to use latest from git master instead.

See archinstall and thanks to the many original contributors. And the arch-wiki.

See mirror for a copy of this repo, not hosted on GitHub.