Omarchy ISO

The Omarchy ISO is the only supported way to install Omarchy. It ships the Omarchy Configurator, installs Arch Linux, installs the Omarchy packages from the bundled mirror, runs target system setup in the chroot, creates the user, and runs omarchy-setup-user for that user.

Downloading the latest ISO

See the ISO link on omarchy.org.

Creating the ISO

Run ./bin/omarchy-iso-make; output goes into ./release. By default the ISO uses the Omarchy packages and tracks the quattro branch, from the stable mirror. Pass --edge to use omarchy-dev and omarchy-settings-dev from the edge mirror.

For local development, build the ISO from sibling checkouts:

./bin/omarchy-iso-make --local-source ../omarchy-installer ../omarchy-pkgs

Despite the local folder name, the first argument is the Omarchy source checkout (runtime commands, configs, setup scripts, themes, shell, migrations). The installer itself lives in this ISO repo.

Use --dev or --rc to build against those package channels. Both --dev and --edge select the dev packages from the edge mirror.

Autoinstall

The shipped ISO installs itself with no keyboard when it finds its configuration on a second drive. Attach a drive labeled cidata alongside the ISO and the installer copies the config off it and skips the configurator; with no such drive, nothing changes and the wizard runs as usual. No rebuild, no extra boot entry.

cidata is the cloud-init NoCloud label, so Proxmox, libvirt, and Packer already know how to attach one.

Configuration files

These are the configurator's own output files, so the way to get a starting set is to run one interactive install and copy what it wrote into /root.

File	Required	Purpose
user_configuration.json	Yes	archinstall config: disk, hostname, timezone, keyboard
user_credentials.json	Yes	Username and password hash
user_full_name.txt	No	Git full name
user_email_address.txt	No	Git email
user_encrypt_installation.txt	No	true when user_configuration.json carries a disk_encryption block; defaults to false
authorized_keys	No	SSH public keys in sshd's own format, one per line
tailscale_authkey	No	Tailscale auth key; the machine joins your tailnet on first boot

Both required files must be present or the installer falls back to the configurator. Generate the password hash for user_credentials.json with openssl passwd -6 "yourpassword".

Encryption itself is configured by the disk_encryption block inside user_configuration.json — which carries the passphrase in plaintext, so treat a drive built from an encrypted install accordingly. The flag file must match it: it drives the encrypted install's SDDM autologin and the final boot validation, not the encryption.

authorized_keys is the same file sshd reads — copy your own or write one key per line:

ssh-ed25519 AAAA... you@host

When authorized_keys is present, autoinstall installs it as the user's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, enables sshd, and adds a ufw allow ssh rule — a stock Omarchy install ships openssh with the service disabled and its firewall opens neither port 22 nor anything else beyond LocalSend. Networking needs nothing extra; NetworkManager is already enabled with DHCP. Password SSH authentication is left at the distro default. An authorized_keys with no usable keys fails the install rather than producing a machine nobody can reach.

When tailscale_authkey is present (one key, blank lines and # comments ignored), the install adds the tailscale package from the ISO's bundled mirror — nothing is fetched from the network at install or boot — and stages the join for first boot: the key lands at /etc/tailscale/authkey (root-only), tailscaled is enabled, ufw allows traffic in on tailscale0, and a background unit runs tailscale up once the network is actually up, retrying until it succeeds without holding up the boot. After a successful join the key is deleted and the unit disables itself; until then both survive reboots, so a machine installed offline joins whenever it first gets connectivity. The node appears on the tailnet under the configured hostname. Use a reusable, pre-authorized (tagged) key so one drive image serves many machines — or an ephemeral key for disposable VMs.

Building the drive

mkdir cidata
cp user_configuration.json user_credentials.json authorized_keys cidata/
genisoimage -output cidata.iso -volid cidata -joliet -rock cidata/

Proxmox example

qm create 101 --name my-omarchy \
  --bios ovmf --machine q35 --cpu host --cores 4 --memory 8192 \
  --ostype l26 --scsihw virtio-scsi-single \
  --efidisk0 local-lvm:0,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=0 \
  --scsi0 local-lvm:40,discard=on,iothread=1 \
  --net0 virtio,bridge=vmbr0 --vga virtio --serial0 socket \
  --ide2 local:iso/omarchy.iso,media=cdrom \
  --ide3 local:iso/cidata.iso,media=cdrom \
  --boot order='scsi0;ide2'

qm start 101

Boot order is disk first: the empty disk falls through to the ISO on the first boot, and the installed system boots from disk afterwards. The machine reboots into Omarchy on its own when the install finishes.

Encrypted autoinstalls are not fully unattended — the LUKS passphrase prompt still needs someone at the first boot.

Testing the ISO

Run ./bin/omarchy-iso-boot [release/omarchy.iso].

Run ./test/all for the unit tests, which cover cidata autoinstall loading and the orchestrator's SSH access phase without needing a built ISO.

To exercise installation alongside existing Windows-style partitions, run ./bin/omarchy-iso-test-windows-disk [release/omarchy.iso]. It creates a synthetic disk in /tmp with an existing ESP and data partition plus ample unallocated space, then offers to start an interactive installation on it. The fixture exercises Windows partition preservation but does not contain Windows.

Acceptance testing the ISO

Run ./bin/omarchy-iso-test [release/omarchy.iso] to install the ISO into a headless VM by driving the real interactive install flow — the harness reads each screen via QMP screendumps + OCR and answers with virtual keystrokes, so the configurator wizard, install dashboard, reboot prompt, and SDDM login are all exercised exactly as a user would. It then boots the installed system, sends real VM keyboard shortcuts for the primary shell and window-management actions, and runs the in-guest acceptance suite (test/acceptance in the omarchy repo). The suite checks session and service health, the complete core-package manifest, user defaults, representative applications, menus, panels, live weather, launchers, visual selectors, notifications, clipboard, and other interactive shell behavior.

Visual checkpoints are saved as success-<step>.png or failure-<step>.png alongside the serial and install logs in test-runs/<iso>/runs/<timestamp>/. Independent test files and applications continue after a failure so one broken surface does not hide the rest of the report. The harness then stops the VM and opens the ordered screenshots in imv for quick visual review.

The harness syncs the acceptance suite from $OMARCHY_PATH when it is available. The install phase produces a reusable base image, so iterating against another checkout is fast:

./bin/omarchy-iso-test release/omarchy.iso --install-only        # once per ISO
./bin/omarchy-iso-test release/omarchy.iso --reuse-base \
  --sync-omarchy ../omarchy                                      # fast loop against local tests

Pass --encrypt to drive the encrypted install flow (including typing the LUKS passphrase at boot) instead of the unencrypted one. Pass --no-preview to collect the same visual artifacts without opening them in imv when the run finishes.

Signing the ISO

Run ./bin/omarchy-iso-sign [release/omarchy.iso]. The signing key is retrieved from the shared Omarchy vault with the 1Password CLI.

Uploading the ISO

Run ./bin/omarchy-iso-upload [release/omarchy.iso]. This requires rclone configuration (rclone config).

Full release of the ISO

Run ./bin/omarchy-iso-release VERSION to create, test, sign, and upload the ISO in one flow. Add --rc to release an RC build instead.