Arch Linux on Raspberry Pi

After only using Raspbian on my Pi I wanted to try a different OS and as i've heard a lot of good things about Arch Linux decided to give it a try. I am using an SD card for the image.

Image Setup from Linux PC

• Download the latest Arch Linux ARM image
• Verify the file downloaded

 $ sha1sum archlinux-hf-2013-07-22.img.zip
e273d680e89ca9f79c2252c0b00ccc3084cd9b14  archlinux-hf-2013-07-22.img.zip

• The long string can be compared with the SHA-1 given on the page the image was downloaded from
• Extract image (img file will be ~ 1.9GB)

$ unzip archlinux-hf-2013-07-22.img.zip

• Run command 

$ df -h

• Connect SD card to your computer via dedicated port or SD card reader
• Run command

$ df -h 

• A new device will have appeared and this is the SD card to apply the image to shown in the left most column e.g.

 /dev/sdb1        56M   17M   40M  30% /media/cwishaw/3312-932F

• For /dev/sdb1 the 1 refers to the partition number. We will format the whole disk e.g. /dev/sdb
• Umount the device

$ sudo umount /dev/sdb1

• Format SD card
• bs = block size of 4MB 
• if = image file downloaded and unziped
• of = device name (important to get correct)

$ sudo dd bs=4M if=archlinux-hf-2013-07-22.img of=/dev/sdb

•  Once format is complete (it may take a while) insert SD card into Raspberry Pi

Arch Linux on Pi

• By default an IP will be obtained from DHCP and SSHD is enabled
• Username : root
• Password : root
• The Pacman Rosetta guide is a great resource for Software Installations on Arch Linux