§2023-06-13

• Generic AArch64 Installation

• This installation contains the base Arch Linux ARM userspace packages and default configurations found in other installations, with the mainline Linux kernel.

• This is intended to be used by developers who are familiar with their system, and can set up the necessary boot functionality on their own.

• Download the latest tarball: http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-aarch64-latest.tar.gz

• Extract as the root user (not via sudo) using bsdtar to preserve extended attributes and ACLs:

  • sudo bsdtar -xvpf ArchLinuxARM-aarch64-latest.tar.gz -C mountpoint

• The kernel package (linux-aarch64) provides both an EFI-stubbed Image file that can be directly booted, along with an Image.gz, located in /boot.

• All dtb files can be found in /boot/dtbs, with files for those systems currently supported in the mainline kernel.

• The default configuration of the userspace is:

  • Packages in the base group, kernel firmware and utilities, openssh, and haveged
  • Default root password is root
  • A normal user account named alarm is set up, with the password alarm
  • sshd started (note: system key generation may take a few moments on first boot)
  • haveged started to provide entropy
  • systemd-networkd DHCP configurations for eth0 and en* ethernet devices
  • systemd-resolved management of resolv.conf
  • systemd-timesyncd NTP management
  • After booting, initialize the pacman keyring and populate the Arch Linux ARM package signing keys:
    • pacman-key --init
    • pacman-key --populate archlinuxarm