Arch Linux ARM on proot-distro

Quick setup guide for running Arch Linux ARM inside proot (on Termux) with a regular sudo user.

1. Install proot-distro and Arch Linux ARM

Run in your host shell (Termux):

apt update -y && apt upgrade -y
apt install proot-distro
proot-distro install danhunsaker/archlinuxarm:latest

2. Log in as root

proot-distro login archlinuxarm

3. Disable pacman sandbox

The sandbox does not work under proot, so turn it off.

Open the config file:

nano /etc/pacman.conf

Scroll to the [options] section and add this line exactly as written:

DisableSandbox

Save and exit (Ctrl+O, Enter, Ctrl+X).

4. Install sudo and nano

pacman -Sy sudo nano --noconfirm

5. Create a user

Replace yourusername with your own name:

useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash yourusername
passwd yourusername

6. Give the wheel group sudo access

EDITOR=nano visudo

Find and uncomment this line (remove the leading #):

%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Save and exit.

7. Log in as your user

Exit the root session (exit), then from the host shell:

proot-distro login archlinuxarm --user yourusername

Test sudo:

sudo whoami   # should print: root

Notes

• Run pacman -Syu occasionally to keep the system up to date.
• If sudo complains about the sandbox or pacman fails to download, double-check that DisableSandbox is inside [options] in /etc/pacman.conf.
• This is the user dir you can access from host shell (Termux): $PREFIX/var/lib/proot-distro/containers/archlinuxarm/rootfs/home/yourusername