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Installation

This installation guide will walk you through the process of setting up Arch Linux, getting you from live cd to a working OS.

This guide is written primarily as a reference for myself, but it can certainly be a useful resource for you too, if you want to achieve a similar setup.

This guide includes steps for full disk encryption, and sets up the system with some basic tools and my zsh configuration.

Internet

If you're using ethernet, you can skip this part, it focuses on Wi-Fi.

To connect to Wi-Fi from the installation ISO system, run iwctl. From there, run:

device list
# Find the device you're interested in, usually something like wlan0
# Also take notice of the adapter name that this device uses
#
# Before anything else, make sure to power on the device and the adapter
device [device] set-property Powered on
adapter [adapter] set-property Powered on
# Now put the device into a scan mode and get the results
# You can skip this part if you know the SSID
station [device] scan
station [device] get-networks
# Find the SSID of the network you're interested
station [device] connect "[SSID]"
# You'll be prompted for a password, enter it, then you should get connected
# To leave iwd, press Ctrl+D

Finally, let's to sure it worked, run: ping 1.1.1.1.

To get DNS working too, you'll also want to run dhcpcd, then you can with ping google.com

Partitioning

First thing we will need to do is set up partitions. To do so, I recommend using fdisk. Assuming you have a single-disk system, you will want to create 3 partitions:

  • EFI (1 GB)
  • Root, Data & Swap (rest)

Some people like to use a swap partition, however, doing so on an otherwise encrypted system introduces you to unnecessary risk factors, as your swap likely won't be encrypted. This is especially problematic for hibernation, as hibernating into an unencrypted swap partition will allow passwordless restore.

Instead, I prefer using a swapfile within BTRFS. This still allows hibernation with systemd initrd, but only after unlocking the partition.

Note

Don't forget to also set the type for these partitions (t command in fdisk).

  • EFI partition type: EFI System (1)
  • Root partition type: Linux root x86-64 (23)
  • (Extra) Data partition type: Linux filesystem (20)

File-Systems

Now we'll to create file systems on these partitions, and give them disk labels:

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sdX1
fatlabel /dev/sdX1 EFI

cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdX3 --label CRYPTFS
cryptsetup open /dev/disk/by-label/CRYPTFS crypfs
mkfs.btrfs -L FS /dev/mapper/cryptfs

Note

For the LUKS encrypted partitions, I'd heavily recommend that you back up the LUKS headers in case of a partial drive failure, so that you're still able to recover your remaining data. To do this, you can use the following command:

cryptsetup luksHeaderBackup /dev/device --header-backup-file /mnt/backup/file.img

BTRFS Subvolumes

Now we will split our btrfs partition into the following subvolumes:

  • root: The subvolume for /.
  • data: The subvolume for /data, containing my personal files, which should be and backed up.
  • snapshots: A subvolume that will be used to store snapshots (backups) of the other subvolumes
  • swap: A subvolume containing the swap file
mount /dev/mapper/cryptfs /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/root
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/data
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/snapshots
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/swap
btrfs filesystem mkswapfile --size 16g --uuid clear /mnt/swap/swapfile
umount /mnt

Mount the partitions and subvolumes

Note

The compress mount flag will only affect the newly created files, if you're adding this option later on, older files will still remain uncompressed/differently compressed on the disk.

Note

You may have seen others use btrfs options such as ssd, discard=async and space_cache=v2. These are all default on modern kernels (with the ssd being auto-detected), so specifying them is pointless now.

mount -o subvol=root,noatime,lazytime,commit=120,compress=zstd:1 /dev/mapper/cryptfs /mnt
mount --mkdir -o subvol=home,noatime,lazytime,commit=120,compress=zstd:5 /dev/mapper/cryptfs /mnt/data
mount --mkdir -o noatime,lazytime,commit=120,compress=zstd:1 /dev/mapper/cryptfs /mnt/.btrfs
mount --mkdir -o subvol=swap /dev/mapper/cryptfs /mnt/swap

mount --mkdir /dev/disk/by-label/EFI /mnt/efi
mkdir /mnt/efi/arch
mount --mkdir --bind /mnt/efi/arch /mnt/boot

swapon /mnt/swap/swapfile

Base installation

reflector --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist --latest 10 --protocol https --sort rate
pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware linux-headers amd-ucode # or intel-ucode
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt

Configure essentials

pacman -S git btrfs-progs neovim
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/CET /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
sed -i 's/^#en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/g' /etc/locale.gen
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf
locale-gen
echo "pc" > /etc/hostname
passwd

Basic configuration

Clone my dotfiles and run the install script

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ItsDrike/dotfiles ~/dots
cd ~/dots
./install_root.sh

Enter the ZSH shell for a better experience

zsh

Create non-privileged user

useradd itsdrike
usermod -aG wheel itsdrike
install -o itsdrike -g itsdrike -d /home/itsdrike
mv ~/dots /home/itsdrike
chown -R itsdrike:itsdrike /home/itsdrike/dots
passwd itsdrike
su -l itsdrike
fish

Setup user account

cd ~/dots
./install_user.sh

Exit (logout) the user and relogin, this time into configured zsh shell

exit
su -l itsdrike

Setup neovim

git clone https://github.com/ItsDrike/lazyvim ~/.config/nvim
nvim --headless "+Lazy! sync" +qa

Fstab adjustments

Finally, we'll want to make some slight modifications to /etc/fstab file, so that we're using labels instead of UUIDs to mount our devices and also fix the permissions for the EFI mount-point (the fmask & dmask options), as by default, they're way too permissive. This is how I like to structure my fstab:

# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.
#
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

# region: Physical partitions

# /dev/nvme1n1p1 LABEL=EFI UUID=A34B-A020
/dev/disk/by-label/EFI     /efi       vfat       rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro   0 2

# endregion
# region: BTRFS Subvolumes

# /dev/mapper/cryptfs LABEL=FS UUID=bffc7a62-0c7e-4aa9-b10e-fd68bac477e0
/dev/mapper/cryptfs /           btrfs       rw,noatime,lazytime,compress=zstd:1,ssd,space_cache=v2,commit=120,discard=async,subvol=/root        0 1
/dev/mapper/cryptfs /data       btrfs       rw,noatime,lazytime,compress=zstd:5,ssd,space_cache=v2,commit=120,discard=async,subvol=/data        0 2
/dev/mapper/cryptfs /swap       btrfs       rw,subvol=/swap                                                                                     0 0
/dev/mapper/cryptfs /.btrfs     btrfs       rw,noatime,lazytime,compress=zstd:1,ssd,space_cache=v2,commit=120,discard=async                     0 2

# endregion
# region: Bind mounts

# Write kernel images to /efi/arch, not directly to efi system partition (esp), to avoid conflicts when dual booting
/efi/arch           /boot       none        rw,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro,bind   0 0

# Swap into a file on the btrfs partition
/swap/swapfile      none        swap        defaults                                                                                            0 0

# endregion

Ask for LUKS password from initramfs

Ask for encryption password of the root partition in early userspace (only relevant if you're using LUKS encryption), you'll also need to set cryptdevice kernel parameter, specifying the device that should be unlocked here, and the device mapping name. (shown later)

# Find the line with HOOKS=(...)
# Add `keyboard keymap` after `autodetect` (if these hooks are already there,
# just keep them, but make sure they're after `autodetect`).
# Lastly add `encrypt` before `filesystems`.
nvim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

This will configure mkinitcpio to build support for the keyboard input, and for decrypting LUKS devices from within the initial ramdisk environment.

If you wish, you can also follow the instructions below to auto-enable numlock:

sudo -u itsdrike paru -S mkinitcpio-numlock
# Go to HOOKS and add `numlock` after `keyboard` in:
nvim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Now regenerate the initial ramdisk environment image:

mkinitcpio -P

Configure systemd-boot bootloader

Note

If you wish to use another boot loader (like GRUB), just follow the Arch Wiki. This guide will only cover systemd-boot

Make sure you're using UEFI

As a first step, you will want to confirm that you really are on a UEFI system. If you're using any recent hardware, this is very likely the case. Nevertheless, let's check and make sure:

bootctl status

Make sure the Firmware is reported as UEFI.

If you're still using BIOS instead of UEFI, you should check the wiki for instructions on how to set up systemd-boot or choose a different boot manager, that is more suited for BIOS firmware.

Install systemd-boot

Install systemd-boot to the EFI system partition (ESP)

bootctl --esp-path=/efi install
# This might report a warning about permissions for the /efi mount point,
# these were addressed in the fstab file above (changed fmask and dmask),
# if you copied those to your fstab, the permissions will be fixed after reboot

Add boot menu entries (Note that we're using LABEL= for cryptdevice, for which udev must be before the encrypt hook in mkinitcpio HOOKS. This should however be the case by default. If you wish, you can also use UUID= or just /dev/XYZ here)

Create a new file - /efi/loader/entries/arch.conf, with:

title Arch Linux
sort-key 0
linux /arch/vmlinuz-linux
initrd /arch/amd-ucode.img
initrd /arch/initramfs-linux.img
options cryptdevice=LABEL=CRYPTFS:cryptfs:allow-discards
options root=/dev/mapper/cryptfs rootflags=subvol=/root
options rw loglevel=3

And finally configure loader - /efi/loader/loader.conf (overwrite the contents):

default arch.conf
timeout 4
console-mode auto
editor yes
auto-firmware yes
beep no

Reboot

Take a deep breath.

exit  # go back to live iso (exit chroot)
reboot

Post-setup

Log in as an unpriviledged user, and:

Connect to Wi-Fi (NetworkManager)

nmtui  # set up your network from here

Enable Network Time Protocol (time synchronization)

sudo timedatectl set-ntp true
timedatectl status

Graphical User Interface

Finally, you can run the install_gui.sh script in my dotfiles, to get all of the packages necessary for a proper graphical experience with Hyprland WM and a bunch of applications/toolings that I like to use.

This final script is definitely the most opinionated one and you might want to make adjustments to it, depending on your preferences.

We're done

If you got this far, good job! You should now be left with a fully functional Arch Linux system, ready for daily use.

That said, you might find some of the other guides helpful if you wish to tinker some more: