Flashing SD card with Arch Linux ARM for Raspberry Pi 2 and 3

Prereqs

• dosfstools (which supplies mkfs.vfat)
• fdisk

Preparing SD card

Start fdisk to partition the SD card:

fdisk /dev/sdX

• Type o. This will clear out any partitions on the drive.
• Type p to list partitions. There should be no partitions left.
• Type n, then p for primary, 1 for the first partition on the drive, press ENTER to accept the default first sector, then type +100M for the last sector.
• Type t, then c to set the first partition to type W95 FAT32 (LBA).
• Type n, then p for primary, 2 for the second partition on the drive, and then press
• ENTER twice to accept the default first and last sector.
• Write the partition table and exit by typing w.

Create and mount the FAT filesystem:

mkfs.vfat /dev/sdX1
mkdir boot
mount /dev/sdX1 boot

Create and mount the ext4 filesystem:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX2
mkdir root 
mount /dev/sdX2 root

Download archive

curl -LO http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-rpi-3-latest.tar.gz

Extract the root filesystem (as root, not via sudo)

bsdtar -xpf ArchLinuxARM-<rpi-version>-latest.tar.gz -C root
sync

Move boot files to the first partition:

mv root/boot/* boot

Unmount the two partitions:

umount boot root

Installing

Refer to the Arch Linux Installation Guide for detailed information.

Connect the Pi to the local network and do an arp-scan to find its IP address

# arp-scan -l --interface=enp3s0

SSH to it and login with alarm:alarm

$ ssh alarm@$PI_ADDRESS

Change password immediately

alarm@alarm$ passwd

Use su to get root and change root password. Default root password is root

alarm@alarm$ su
root@alarm# passwd

References

• http://elinux.org/ArchLinux_Install_Guide