Arch Linux

Armigezmo

Member

Registered: 2020-08-02

Posts: 1

Initializing Arch

I am not new to linux, just new to Arch. 

I downloaded the ISO and mounted it in a hypervisor (vmware workstation).  I am following the installation guide (1).  I am able to go through and partition my disks, but I need to create the MBR.  it doesn't go over how to create that, and I can't seem to find a clear set of info on creating the MBR (running a BIOS setup).  I've even cat /install.txt and have been going through that.  It doesn't say how to build the Boot sector. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Second issue is networking:
I set the information per the installation guide(1).  It points to the Networking (2) link and says that I may need to install other networking.  It doesn't say what networking software/drivers I will need to use or how to configure an uplink.  I know CentOS you can go to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-[ethX] and create a new one, add the config it and set up the uplink.  I'm admittedly not as good at finding deep dives on what's in the Arch /etc/ file and how to manually configure it if need be.

Root issue is that I can't get Arch to boot. 

tl;dr
How do I create an MBR/boot sector?
How do I find/configure the network connections?

Referenced links:
1)https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide
2)https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ne … figuration

kermit63

Member

Registered: 2018-07-04

Posts: 372

Re: Initializing Arch

How do I create an MBR/boot sector?

If you created the disk as BIOS/MBR then the boot sector is already there, the first 1MB of the drive. The only time you need to explicitly create an MBR boot sector is if you created the disk as GPT but want to boot as MBR.

How do I find/configure the network connections?

Since this is a virtual machine, the virtualization software will automatically create a wired network for you. All you need to do is install and enable an appropriate network manager (dhcpcd, networkmanager, etc) to manage the network. In most cases, you don't even need to manually configure anything. At least that's my experience with Qemu/KVM and VirtualBox. Not too familiar with VMWare though.

Note that you should only enable 1 network manager, since having 2 or more of these will conflict with each other.

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Roken

Member

From: South Wales, UK

Registered: 2012-01-16

Posts: 1,366

Re: Initializing Arch

If you follow the installation guide you will reach the "Boot loader" at the appropriate time.

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