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Operating systems

Arch Linux

Arch on a server: no version to choose because it rolls, why partial upgrades break machines, and what the image does not give you.

Arch has no releases. It rolls: every package moves forward continuously, and the system you install today is the same system as one installed two years ago that has been kept up to date. You get current software and a small, explicit base, in exchange for being the one who reads before upgrading.

Install it from the panel ​

In the client area, open your server, then Reinstall the server. Pick the Arch Linux tile, open its version list and choose the one you want, then fill in the partitioning, the software RAID, the hostname and the password below the grid. The form itself is described in reinstalling your OS.

The tile carries no version list, only x86_64. There is nothing to choose: what installs is the current state of the distribution.

Careful

A reinstall erases every drive in the machine. There is no undo and we keep no copy: take your backups off the server first.

Upgrade fully or not at all ​

This is the one rule that breaks Arch servers. pacman has no notion of a partial upgrade that works: installing a single package against an out of date system pulls in libraries the rest of the system is not built for.

bash
pacman -Syu

Never pacman -Sy something. Always -Syu, and let it finish.

Read before upgrading ​

Breaking changes are announced on the Arch news feed before they land, with the manual step required. An upgrade that needs intervention and does not get it is how a machine comes back without networking.

bash
pacman -Qu          # what would move
pacman -Syu

On a server, that means upgrading on purpose, when you are watching, rather than from a cron job.

What the image does not give you ​

The base install is deliberately minimal: no firewall, no mail transfer agent, no automatic updates, and only the packages the base group carries. Everything else you install yourself.

Good to know

The AUR is not part of Arch: its build recipes are user submitted and unreviewed. On a machine that matters, read the PKGBUILD before you build it, the same way you would read any script you are about to run as root.

Careful

Arch is a poor fit for a machine you want to leave untouched for a year. Nothing breaks on its own, but an Arch system that has not been upgraded in months is harder to upgrade than one upgraded weekly. If that is your pattern, Debian suits it better.

Where to go next ​

  • First connection: your own user, SSH keys, password logins off.
  • IP addresses: configuring the additional addresses on the fresh system.
  • The console: watching the install, and getting in when the network does not answer.

Reviewed on September 15, 2026