Test the old stuff

I was bombarded by buzz words of today, Going from creating OpenStack Queens architectures for Telcos, VMWare+VSan sizing for banks, and educating my partners and customers to Kubernetes platforms such as PKS and OpenShift.

Then I looked back on how is the old stuff going on, when I started my journey in systems administration, I was facinated in installing Arch Linux, it was a great challenge back then on how to install it and tried to do it again today.

Installing Arch Linux in KVM

This is the VM requirements:

Resource	Needed
vCPU	1
Ram	2 GiB
Disk	10 GiB

First step is to boot the ISO of Arch

upon booting please choose Boot Arch Linux (x86_64)

Then try if you can reach the internet since Arch needs to have internet later

root@archiso ~ # ping ajohnsc.github.io -c 4

Then partition your disk with this scheme:

Disk partition	Mount Point	Size (in GiB)
/dev/vda1	/	8
/dev/vda2	/boot	1
/dev/vda3	swap	1

Then format them to their appropriate file system

root@archiso ~ # mkfs.ext4 /dev/vda1
root@archiso ~ # mkfs.ext2 /dev/vda2
root@archiso ~ # mkswap /dev/vda3

After that mount it to /mnt as / if the directory is not available create it

root@archiso ~ # mount /dev/vda1 /mnt
root@archiso ~ # mkdir -p /mnt/boot
root@archiso ~ # mount /dev/vda2 /mnt/boot
root@archiso ~ # swapon /dev/vda3

Next is to install the base OS in /mnt

root@archiso ~ # pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel

It will take some time

After the base installation we need to generate the fstab

root@archiso ~ # genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Then change root to /mnt

root@archiso ~ # arch-chroot /mnt

Adjust your time zone

[root@archiso /]#  ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Manila /etc/localtime

Sync your time

[root@archiso /]# hwclock --systohc

Edit /etc/locale.gen to uncomment en_US.UTF-8 in my case for your locale then sync your locale

[root@archiso /]# vim /etc/locale.gen
[root@archiso /]# locale-gen

For best practice the kernel needs to have LANG variable and set it in your locale

[root@archiso /]# echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.conf

Change your root password

[root@archiso /]# passwd

Add the hostname

[root@archiso /]# echo "ArchLinux" >> /etc/hostname

Install the Linux Kernel

[root@archiso /]# pacman -Sy linux

The install grub to /dev/vda

[root@archiso /]# pacman -S grub
[root@archiso /]# grub-install /dev/vda
[root@archiso /]# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

For us to configure the interface

#Check your interface
[root@archiso /]#  ip link
[root@archiso /]# vim /etc/systemd/network/enp1s0.network

[Match]
name=en*
[Network]
DHCP=yes

Save and exit vim

Restart and enable the systemd-netwokd

[root@archiso /]#  systemctl restart systemd-networkd
[root@archiso /]#  systemctl enable systemd-networkd

Then reboot the system

[root@archiso /]#  exit
root@archiso ~ # reboot

You have successfully installed Arch in KVM