Once you have downloaded a Void image to install and prepared your install media, you are ready to install Void Linux.
Booting
Boot your machine from the install media you created. If you have enough RAM, there is an option on the boot screen to load the entire image into ram, which will take some time but speed up the rest of the install process.
Once the live image has booted, log in as root with password voidlinux. Then, check if date/time is correct, with the date command. Especially on old Macs with bad batteries and in some VMs it may be set to 1970. If that is the case, fix it again with the date command.
Afterwards, run:
# void-installer
The following sections will detail each screen of the installer.
Keyboard
Select the keymap for your keyboard; standard “qwerty” keyboards will generally use the “us” keymap.
Network
Select your primary network interface. If you do not choose to use DHCP, you will be prompted to provide an IP address, gateway, and DNS servers.
If you intend to use a wireless connection during the installation, you may need to configure it manually using wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd manually before running void-installer.
Source
To install packages provided on the install image, select Local. Otherwise, you may select Network to download the latest packages from the Void repository.
Note: if you are installing a desktop environment from a ”flavor” image, you MUST choose
Localfor the source!
Hostname
Select a hostname for your computer (that is all lowercase, with no spaces.)
Locale
Select your default locale settings. This option is for glibc only, as musl does not currently support locales.
Timezone
Select your timezone based on standard timezone options.
Root password
Enter and confirm your root password for the new installation. The password will not be shown on screen.
User account
Choose a login (default void) and a descriptive name for that login. Then enter and confirm the password for the new user. You will then be prompted to verify the groups for this new user. They are added to the wheel group by default and will have sudo access.
Partition
Next, you will need to partition your disks. Void does not provide a preset partition scheme, so you will need to create your partitions manually. Depending on your platform, the installer will guide you with instructions on how to partition your drive. You might need to use different partitioning tools depending on the hardware (cfdisk for most, pmac-fdisk for Macs).
See the Partitioning Notes for more details about partitioning your disk.
Filesystems
Create the filesystems for each partition you have created. For each partition you will be prompted to choose a filesystem type, whether you want to create a new filesystem on the partition, and a mount point, if applicable. When you are finished, select Done to return to the main menu.
Bootloader
OpenPOWER systems
Since OpenPOWER systems use Petitboot, you will not be able to install a bootloader. The installer will still ask you whether to at least use GRUB for generating the configuration file. As Petitboot can read these configs, it can generate a menu for you. You will probably want to say Yes.
IBM OF systems
These use the PReP boot partition. You will need to point the installer to it so that it can put GRUB in there. You will also be asked whether to use a graphical terminal. That’s generally up to you, in either case you will get a boot menu.
NewWorld PowerPC Macs
You will need to select your bootstrap partition. The choice of graphical bootloader is again up to you, but keep in mind that it might be slow on this hardware, so you will likely want to say No.
Other hardware
Other hardware is generally unsupported by the installer when it comes to bootloader setup, though you can still use it for other things and skip the bootloader installation, then do it manually.
Review settings
It is a good idea to review your settings before proceeding. Use the right arrow key to select the settings button and hit <enter>. All your selections will be shown for review.
Install
Selecting Install from the menu will start the installer. The installer will create all the filesystems selected, and install the base system packages. It will then generate an initramfs and install a GRUB2 bootloader to the bootable partition.
These steps will all run automatically, and after the installation is completed successfully, you can reboot into your new Void Linux install!
Post installation
See the Post-Installation guide for some tips on setting up your new system.
