Prebuilt ISO
The primary way to install: an ISO that boots directly into the installer.
A prebuilt installer ISO is published every month as a GitHub release at github.com/Dwarf1er/sobarch/releases/latest. It is built a few days after Arch's own monthly ISO, on the fifth, from Arch's own releng profile, so the kernel and live tools track upstream. Each release carries the ISO (sobarch-YYYY.MM.DD-x86_64.iso) and a detached signature next to it (.iso.sig).
The alternative is the stock Arch ISO plus one command, which always runs the newest installer. The installer on the sobarch ISO is whatever was current when that month's image was built.
What it adds to the stock ISO
- It boots straight into the installer. The first console (tty1) auto-launches the TUI, so there is no command to type.
- It needs a network connection. Packages, including the vendored AUR ones, are downloaded (and built, where needed) during the install, exactly as they are from the stock Arch ISO. Nothing is cached on the image.
- It supports T2 Macs. UEFI boots through GRUB, which has an extra Sobarch installer for T2 Macs entry running the
linux-t2kernel (selected automatically on Apple hardware). See T2 Macs. - It works for unattended and PXE installs. If a
script=kernel parameter is present, the ISO runs that script instead of launching the TUI, the same hook the stock Arch ISO provides. See PXE Netboot.
If the machine is offline, the installer adds a Network step as usual. The installer, partitioning, and result are identical to the other path.
Verifying the download
Each release is signed with a project-dedicated key (fingerprint 9CC2 2D5E C575 F128 628E A8F6 AFC1 54B3 F842 8676). The public key is sobarch-iso-signing.asc in the repository. Import it once, then verify the same way you would the official Arch ISO's .sig:
gpg --import sobarch-iso-signing.asc
gpg --verify sobarch-YYYY.MM.DD-x86_64.iso.sig sobarch-YYYY.MM.DD-x86_64.isoGitHub also shows a SHA256 digest next to each release asset, if you only want a plain checksum comparison.
Writing it to a USB drive
Write the ISO to a drive the same way as any Arch ISO, for example with dd:
sudo dd if=sobarch-YYYY.MM.DD-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=syncReplace /dev/sdX with the whole USB device, not a partition. The installer never offers the disk it booted from as an install target.