After you finished the setup of Arch on your SD card, you can start configuring this Linux Distro to your needs. Here’s my config…
Note: In case you need to resize your root partition it’s best to do it before you do anything else, this way you avoid the risk to loose any data. You can find a tutorial to this here.
Configure Arch
Change Root Password
passwd
Update all packages
pacman -Syu
Install some extra handy packages. These are all optional except for the sudo package. I use vim as my default editor, change it to nano if that’s your editor of choice.
pacman -S sudo screen vim git htop tmux
Setting up correct time
Install Network Time Protocol
pacman -S ntp
Install the NTP service
systemctl enable ntpd.service
Enable NTP
timedatectl set-ntp 1
Check your time settings
timedatectl status
Check your time zone. If it is not correct, call the list of available time zones (<space> for next page, <b> for previous page, <q> to quit):
timedatectl list-timezones
Set your time zone
timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Brussels
Add a new user
It’s a best practice to create a new user instead of doing everything under root.
Add a new user (ex. pi)
useradd -m -g users -s /bin/bash pi
Set the password for the new user
passwd pi
Allow your new user to use sudo
EDITOR=vim visudo
Search for root ALL=(ALL) ALL and add the following line just below:
pi ALL=(ALL) ALL
Configure your environment
Add Color to your Bash Prompt
Go to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ColorBashPrompt and copy the text located under /etc/bash.bashrc somewhere in the middle of the page. Then open your .bashrc in your editor:
sudo vim ~/.bashrc
Paste the copied text in this file. At the bottom of the file add the following line to set your default editor:
export EDITOR=vim
Save and quit.
Go back to your browser (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ColorBashPrompt) and copy the text under /etc/DIR_COLORS and create a new file:
sudo vim /etc/DIR_COLORS
Paste the copied text in this file, save and quit.
Open /etc/pacman.conf
sudo vim /etc/pacman.conf
Uncomment the #Color line.
Save and quit.
Change your hostname
sudo vim /etc/hostname
change alarmpi to [yournewhostname]
Get yourself a nice Welcome Screen
Install Archey
sudo pacman -S yaourt
yaourt archey
Choose option 1
Launch Archey on startup
sudo vim .bash_profile
Add 'command archey3' at the beginning of the file.
Save and quit.
Take a backup
On linux you can use something like this:
Locate your SD card:
sudo fdisk -l
Backup the card:
sudo dd bs=4M if=/dev/sdf | gzip > /home/macuser/image-arch-`date +%d%m%y`.gz
(Restore:)
sudo gzip -dc /home/macuser/image.gz | sudo dd bs=4M of=/dev/sdf
In my next post I will cover the network config on Arch.