Setup your SD card

Follow this guide

I used the MacOS command line version, as the (mostly graphical interface) version forgot to mention changing disk3s1 to rdisk3

After the dd command, you should be able to read your card in Mac. Then delete all the dot folders created by Mac

rm -rf .Spotlight-V100 .Trashes ._.Trashes .fseventsd                                              

(Optional) uncomment these two lines in config.txt:

config_hdmi_boost=4
hdmi_force_hotplug=1

That's it, put the SD card in and boot it.

Basic Steps After Boot

login as root:root, the default hostname is alarmpi.

Resize your SD card following the Manually resizing the SD card on Raspberry Pi part of this guide

Alternatively, follow these steps:

As root:

fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

Delete the second partition /dev/mmcblk0p2

d
2

Create a new primary partition and use default sizes prompted. This will then create a partiton that fills the disk

n
p
2
enter
enter

Save and exit fdisk:

w

Now reboot:

shutdown -r now

Once rebooted:

resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2

Then to create a swap file, run the following commands (taken from Arch wiki):

fallocate -l 512M /swapfile

chmod 600 /swapfile

mkswap /swapfile

swapon /swapfile

and add /swapfile none swap defaults 0 0 to /etc/fstab.

If your ethernet cable is pluged in when booting, then you should have your ip address assigned and working. If not, try the following guide for setting static ip

The useful part (Wired) is copied here, plus some extra:

First, identify the name of your ethernet interface. ip link Usually it's eth0.

You also need to know these settings:

(on a Mac, you can find them in airport utility)

Static IP address. Subnet mask. Gateway's IP address. Name servers' (DNS) IP addresses. Domain name (unless you're on a local LAN, in which case you can make it up).

Activate the connected Ethernet interface (e.g. eth0): ip link set eth0 up

Add the address: ip addr add <ip address>/<subnetmask> dev <interface> For example: ip addr add 192.168.1.101/24 dev eth0 Add your gateway like this, substituting your own gateway's IP address: ip route add default via <ip address> For example: ip route add default via 192.168.1.254 Edit resolv.conf, substituting your name servers' IP addresses and your local domain name: vi /etc/resolv.conf nameserver 192.168.1.254

Change hostname in /etc/hostname and add the same host name to /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost yourhostname

Update System

Pacman

pacman-key --init

press Alt + F2 to another console and type some random commands go back to Alt + F1 and see if the key is generated.

update pacman itself:

pacman -Sy pacman

update the rest:

pacman -Syu

Change Console Font and Keymap

Keymap is easy, according to this guide just change the first line in /etc/vconsole.conf to keymap=uk, and it works for me.

Again in /etc/vconsole.conf for font, I used sun12x22.

User Management

TBA

Wireless Network

use netcfg is the easiest.

tools needed: netcfg, iwconfig(part of wirelesstools), wpasupplicant optional: iw(does NOT work on arch linux arm, complains nl80211 not found, don't know why yet)

sudo cp /etc/network.d/examples/wireless-wpa /etc/network.d/swang-wireless

put correct ESSID (network name), KEY (wireless key) leave the rest as is

to manually connect to a profile:

netcfg swang-wireless

or, to automatically connect to a wireless network: edit /etc/conf.d/netcfg, add swang-wireless to NETWORKS=()

then

systemctl enable netcfg

to automatically to a wired network on plugin:

systemctl enable net-auto-wired