Wiki: Installation

27/02/24

by ngn

This guide for installing MatterLinux 24 assumes you are in a live USB/CD/DVD environment. If you are not, then see the introduction page.

Loading keys for the ISO

If you are using the MatterLinux ISO for the installation, you should load your key map to make
it easier to work in the TTY. All the available key maps can be listed with:

# localectl list-keymaps

To load a key map, you can use the loadkeys command, for example:

# loadkeys tr_q-latin5

Setting up the installation disk

During the installation, the installation disk will be referred as $DISK. In order to copy paste commands easily, you can set this as an environment variable:

# export DISK=/dev/sda

If you are not sure which disk is your installation disk, you can use the lsblk command.

Please note that the installation will wipe your entire drive, so backup any important data you may have.

Creating partitions

You can use the fdisk tool to format your disk:

# fdisk $DISK

Here are the simple commands in fdisk:

d: Delete the last partition
n: Create a new partition
w: Save the changes

If you have old partitions left on the disk, clean them with the d command.

For this guide we will be using two separate partitions for /boot and /. So after removing old partitions create 2 new partitions with the n command:

For the first partition hit enter till you see the Last Sector input. Here type +1G. You can make your /boot partition larger or smaller if you wish.
For the second partition, just hit enter for all the inputs to use the rest of the disk.

When you are done save the changes with w.

Formatting the partitions

Now you should have 2 new partitions. You can confirm this using the lsblk command:

# lsblk $DISK

We will refer these partitions as $BOOT and $ROOT:

# export BOOT=${DISK}1
# export ROOT=${DISK}2

We will be formatting $BOOT and $ROOT with EXT4. You can really use any file system.

Important

You should use FAT32 for $BOOT if you are doing an UEFI installation.

To format the partitions as described above:

# mkfs.ext4 $BOOT
# mkfs.ext4 $ROOT

Mounting

Mount the $ROOT partition to /mnt, and the $BOOT partition to /mnt/boot:

# mount $ROOT /mnt
# mount --mkdir $BOOT /mnt/boot

Installing the base system

Download and verify the latest release archive. This can be done using the curl and the gpg tool.

After downloading and verifying the archive extract it to the /mnt directory:

# tar xvf <archive name> -C /mnt

Package manager configuration

Edit the default matt configuration and enable the pools you want to use:

# vim /mnt/etc/matt/config.ini

Change root

To change root (chroot) into the new system, you can use the matter-chroot tool, which is a part of MatterLinux tools project:

# matter-chroot /mnt

Setup timezone

Link /etc/localtime to your localtime zone. Timezones are located under /usr/share/zoneinfo. For example:

# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Istanbul /etc/localtime

Setup locales

List all the avaliable locales with locale -a, then place the locale you want into the /etc/locale.gen file with the following format:

full_locale_name UTF-8

For example:

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

Then run the locale-gen command to generate all the locales. Lastly place the locale of your choice into the /etc/locale.conf file, for example:

# echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf

Installing important packages

After changing root, you can now start installing other base system packages that are not included in the release archive. But first thing first, sync all the packages and add the repo public keys:

# matt sync
# gpg --receive-keys F9E70878C2FB389AEC2BA34CA3654DF5AD9F641D

Now it is time to install packages. You should install systemd and dhcpcd:

# matt install systemd dhcpcd

You should also run this systemctl command after installation:

# systemctl preset-all

Host name and fstab

Enter your host name into /etc/hostname using a text editor like vim or nano. Then configure the /etc/fstab, again, using the text editor of your choice:

# device   | mount-point | file system | options    | dump  | fsck 
# ======== | =========== | =========== | ========== | ===== | =======
$ROOT        /             ext4          defaults     1       1
$BOOT        /boot         ext4          defaults     0       0

Change the configuration accordingly.

Editing the hosts file

Add your hostname to the /etc/hosts file, right beside 127.0.0.1:

127.0.0.1   localhost <hostname>

Changing the root password

Change your root password:

# passwd

Installing the kernel

Install the linux kernel with mp:

# matt install linux

Verify the installation:

# ls -la /boot/vmlinuz-linux

Installing GRUB

For the grub BIOS installation, install the grub-bios package:

# matt install grub-bios

Important

For the grub UEFI installation, install the grub-efi package instead of grub-bios

Installation and configuration

To install grub to your boot partition, run:

# grub-install $DISK

To auto generate grub configuration, run:

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Cleanup and reboot

Exit the chroot environment and umount all the disks:

# umount $BOOT
# umount $ROOT

Now reboot your system and boot from the installation disk. Login with as root with your password. Congratulations, you have just installed MatterLinux!