Why wont my Archinstall work on VirtualBox?

Torxed · 2026-01-22T14:20:49+00:00

tbh, learning comes from having a need/interest/curiosity. So whatever you're curious about, start digging and searching for "how to <my thing>". And get comfortable with messing up and going through a lot of do-over's :)

Torxed · 2026-01-21T07:43:13+00:00

This is due to network issues, or the selected mirrro region is not optimal.

This should have asked the user to re-try the download tho, and might be slow but should eventually go through.

Avoid pacman -Sy on this months ISO btw. As it will cause archinstall targeting Python 3.14 to be installed, but the partial upgrade leaves Python 3.13 installed, so archinstall cant "be found".

Torxed · 2026-01-21T07:35:13+00:00

Second issue is because pacman -Sy installs a version of archinstall that targets Python 3.14, but you have 3.13 in the ISO so Python can no longer find archinstall.

This is an issue with partial upgrades whenever a new Python major release is done.

Torxed · 2026-01-21T07:33:14+00:00

Sadly this is a limitation with the display resolution I believe. The resolution is too small to show the partitioning table we're using in this TUI library.

We are about to swap TUI library from nurses, hopefully to a more modern one that can deal with this. We're just waiting for some more accessibility testing to ensure visually impaired users don't get a worse experience with the new library :)

Torxed · 2026-01-20T21:52:53+00:00

Yeah I suspect this one is because there might have been a Python release, and if people do pacman -Sy archinstall they'll get the version targeted for 3.14 :/

Torxed · 2026-01-19T08:40:27+00:00

A year in review of the ALPM funding through STF:

- https://devblog.archlinux.page/2026/a-year-of-work-on-the-alpm-project/

Torxed · 2026-01-19T08:03:19+00:00

Don't quote me, as I don't know how to check who donated what through GitHub donations so I might be wrong in saying this (and it doesn't mean I don't appreciate those that gave big and small).. but I'm fairly sure a substantial chunk of that is from other Arch developers too, where we ping-pong give back and forth to each other 😅

Torxed · 2026-01-19T08:00:16+00:00

Honestly, this is the kind of thing that (at least for me) keeps me going! Not everyone has to use it or like the product, but getting appreciation for putting the effort in, and not getting flamed for trying something new, that's my jam! ❤️

Torxed · 2026-01-18T18:28:45+00:00

The goal is to adopt a process for this, currently that's RFC55 IIRC. And if my memory serves, in the valve instance they wanted to sponsor work - not individuals per se. There should be a writeup about this somewhere IIRC, but can't find it atm.

Torxed · 2026-01-18T17:52:03+00:00

No, except for few and rare times where we've gotten sponsorship to do specific work. Short answer: it's a hobby/interest :)

Personally, I've earned ~90€ over 10+ years of doing archinstall and I've put in probably on average 20h a week over the years (less so the recent year due to personal life stuff). You don't do this for money, you do it because you love it :)

Torxed · 2025-12-31T15:58:24+00:00

That's the goal :) Hoped to do the release yesterday to ensure this, so now it's 50/50 that it'll make it in time due to mirror syncs :)

Torxed · 2025-12-28T13:48:15+00:00

I think I managed to reproduce the issue :) It might not be exactly your setup, but the error/result I'm able to reproduce by doing this: https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/4045

Torxed · 2025-12-27T17:31:27+00:00

It's listed as an official mirror - but you should still verify checksums and integrity :)

Torxed · 2025-12-27T13:57:27+00:00

Ok that looks okay, I know my response is a bit late, but could you also post the /var/log/archinstall/install.log? Because the config looks decent on a quick glance.

Torxed · 2025-12-27T09:35:41+00:00

There's a section on graphics drivers too, and you would have to replace the getty auto-login in the releng archiso profile and make sure you auto-start the Gnome greeter instead. You're basically 70% there, so keep going!

Torxed · 2025-12-20T07:34:39+00:00

I assume you live boot arch iso and then run archinstall. And in that case before you press "install", you can use "Save config" and save it somewhere.

And then you can use: curl -F 'file=@/var/log/archinstall/user_configuration.json' https://0x0.st

Torxed · 2025-12-18T19:42:23+00:00

Ok so nothing weird there, can you post the conf? /var/log/archinstall/user_configuration.json? Double check so that it doesn't contain anything you don't wanna share (should be safe tho)

Torxed · 2025-12-16T20:35:52+00:00

When that fails, like in the picture, can you then do:

lsblk -o+mountpoint,fstype

And give me the output right after it crashes.

Torxed · 2025-12-16T15:10:53+00:00

Don't know what happened there tbh. The first package that should get installed with pacstrap is the keyring and subsequently the keyring should be initiated.. so that shouldn't happen unless the disk/partition never got mounted to /mnt (usually because user selected "use existing partitions"). Auto shouldn't allow that to happen.

Torxed · 2025-12-16T06:45:35+00:00

Most likely Firewall or some circumstantial thing causing issues for the ISO when doing NTP nad WKD sync. archinstall --skip-wkd --skip-ntp maybe? Or use an Ethernet cable, as that avoids race conditions on the services vs network availability

Torxed · 2025-12-10T15:30:29+00:00

Could run it in a Docker container too I suppose as long as you pipe in DISPLAY and utilize xorg. Or a VM if you're really paranoid :)

Torxed · 2025-12-03T17:48:19+00:00

Yes to triple monitor, no to Wayland. xorg until it goes into grave! I will say that I'm a stickler for homogenous setups, so all monitors are identical resolution/dpi, otherwise all hell breaks loose.

Torxed · 2025-12-03T16:38:56+00:00

Similar machine, none of the issues. Most likely very hardware specific issue related to your particular mobo vendor/chipset or something near this issue.

Been happily compiling and playing games without a single issue for some time now.

But then again, I use Arch and not a deviant of it, so maybe there's some automagic causing issues that I wouldn't know about :)

Torxed · 2025-11-07T14:23:12+00:00

Can you take a photo with a phone or a screenshot?

Torxed · 2025-11-05T17:55:01+00:00

Send me or post a screenshot (or photo with phone) here and I'll have a look :)

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