Arch install process - UEFI

I was sure I wrote this stuff down the first time I fumbled through an arch uefi install. Guess not. Since this is going to be the process I use in whatever new laptop I end up getting, I thought I'd best record it as I go.

A few differences from previous arch self-guide. I'm not doing the partitioning from a gui in a live CD, I'm just using the archlive installation usb to run cli programs like gdisk. I'm also not using LVM - I'll need to look at how that works with UEFI and stuff going forward. I'm using a 128G SSD, so don't need / can't have loads of other OSs. Anyway, let's go.

Clear disk, create partitions and filesystems
Boot into the latest arch iso then run gdisk on the disk you want to use (sda here):


gdisk /dev/sda

Clear the existing partition table:

O

Create a new EFI System partition

n
1
[return]
+512M
ef00

Create swap partition:

n
2
[return]
+2G
8200

Create a partition on the rest of the disk for the OS and storage

n
3
[return]
[return]
[return]

Write the changes to disk

w
[confirm Y]


quit gdisk and use the following command to create the filesystem for the EFI partition

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

There's also some thing about block alignment for ssd cards. After reading the article you're told that gdisk probably takes care of it automatically. Use the following command to check. If it returns 0 then the blocks are aligned

blockdev --getalignoff /dev/sda[x]

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
mkswap /dev/sad2
swapon /dev/sda2
loadkeys uk
timedatectl set-ntp true

OK, now I followed the instructions in the List by speed section of the aw mirrors page, but didn't really think it through our follow the instructions to the end. So when it completed I'll probably have the 6 fastest mirrors but they may be out of date. This is something to look at after the installation is finished. Maybe I should use a script to keep the mirrors up to date?

Seems OK. Now I'll proceed with the installation

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel

genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt
echo archasus > /etc/hostname

Why does the beginners guide differ in certain respects? Flag -U on genfstab? 

tzselect and get the zone info


ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime


Edit /etc/locale.gen to uuncomment en_GB.UTF-8

locale-gen
echo LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf

Edit /etc/vconsole.conf to say 

KEYMAP=UK (I don't know if this is right)

The installation guide says to configure the network at this point but I think it's already fine. Pings are OK anyway.

mkinitcpio -p Linux

passed

Jump back to beginners guide.

bootctl install

Do the config file bit, exactly as indicated. Then follow on from that point to the network config part of the beginners guide

pacman -S iw wpa-supplicant dialog

exit chroot, umount -R, reboot

Won't boot. Sigh.