13 KiB
Installation
This is a full Arch Linux installation guide, from live cd to a working OS. This installation includes steps for full disk encryption, and sets up the system with some basic tools and my zsh configuration.
Partition, format and mount the disks
This will depend on your setup, following are the commands I used for my specific setup as a reference, however you'll very like want a different disk structure, and you probably won't even have the drives in the same configuration as I do.
Create partitions for the drives
fdisk /dev/nvme0n1
# Create new GPT table and make 3 partitions
# first for boot (1G), second for swap (16G),
# third for btrfs (root + /home + data) (rest of the space)
fdisk /dev/nvme0n2
# Create a single partition for btrfs data
Format partitions that shouldn't be encrypted
mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
fatlabel /dev/nvme0n1p1 EFI
mkswap -L SWAP /dev/nvme0n1p2
Format drives using LUKS for encryption and open them to mapper devices
cryptsetup luksFormat --type luks2 --label ARCH_LUKS /dev/nvme0n1p3
cryptsetup luksFormat --type luks2 --label DATA /dev/nvme0n2p1
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_LUKS cryptroot
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/disk/by-label/DATA cryptdata
Create BTRFS filesystem on the encrypted drives
mkfs.btrfs -f -L ARCH /dev/mapper/cryptroot
mkfs.btrfs -f -L DATA /dev/mapper/cryptdata
Mount btrfs and create subvolumes
# Cryptroot
# - We set `noatime` to disable updating of the file access time
# every time a file is read. This is done for performance improvements,
# especially on SSDs, and we don't really need to know this information
# anyway.
# - We set `compress=zstd:1` to enable level 1 zstd compression (lowest),
# which still provides quite fast read/write speeds, while saving some space.
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd:1 /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@ # / (root)
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home # /home
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@log # /var/log
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@cache # /var/cache
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@tmp # /tmp
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@data # /data
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@snapshots
umount /mnt
# cryptdata
# - We use same options for mounting the root btrfs drive as
# we did for cryptroot here, however we will use a bigger compression
# rate for the individual subvolumes when mounting them.
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd:1 /dev/mapper/cryptdata /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@data # /data2
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@backups # /backups
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@snapshots
umount /mnt
Mount the subvolumes and drives
# cryptroot btrfs subvolumes
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:1,subvol=@ /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:1,subvol=@home /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/home --mkdir
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:2,subvol=@log /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/var/log --mkdir
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:3,subvol=@cache /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/var/cache --mkdir
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=no,subvol=@tmp /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/tmp --mkdir
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:5,subvol=@data /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/data --mkdir
# cryptdata btrfs subvolumes
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:5,subvol=@data /dev/mapper/cryptdata /mnt/data2 --mkdir
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd:10,subvol=@backups /dev/mapper/cryptdata /mnt/backups --mkdir
# physical partitions
mount /dev/disk/by-label/EFI /mnt/efi --mkdir
mkdir /mnt/efi/arch-1
mount --bind /mnt/efi/arch-1 /mnt/boot --mkdir
swapon /dev/disk/by-label/SWAP
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
# Note: We'll need to edit fstab later on, to use UUIDs, and to set proper compression levels
# as the generated options will just use zstd:1 everywhere, the final fstab is shown late.
# during bootloader config
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
Exit and reenter chroot, this time into zsh shell
exit
arch-chroot /mnt zsh
Create non-privileged user
useradd itsdrike
usermod -aG wheel itsdrike
install -o itsdrike -g itsdrike -d /home/itsdrike
passwd itsdrike
chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh itsdrike
su -l itsdrike # press q or esc in the default zsh options
Setup user account
git clone --recursive https://github.com/ItsDrike/dotfiles ~/dots
cd ~/dots
./install_user.sh
Exit (logout) the user and relogin, this time into configured zsh shell
exit
su -l itsdrike
Install astronvim
git clone https://github.com/AstroNvim/AstroNvim ~/.config/nvim
git clone https://github.com/ItsDrike/AstroNvimUser ~/.config/nvim/lua/user
Auto-mounting encrypted partitions
We've created a LUKS encrypted partition to store our date into, however it would be very inconvenient to have to mount it ourselves on each boot. Instead, we'll probably want to set up a way to mount them automatically. Leaving only the root partition that we'll need to enter a password for on boot.
Key files
LUKS encryption has support for multiple keys to the same parition. We'll utilize this support and add 2nd key slot to all of the partitions that we wish to auto-mount.
For this 2nd key slot, we will use a key file, as opposed to the regular user-entered text, so that we can store this key in the file system directly. We will later be using this stored key to auto-mount. The key file will contain random data that will be used as the key.
Note that it is very important to have these key files themselves stored on an encrypted partition, in this case, we're storing them in /etc/secrets, and our root is encrypted. If you don't have encrypted root partition, it is unsafe to keep those files in there!
Note that you don't actually need the key files, and if you wish, you can also be prompted to enter a password on each boot instead (for every partition). You should prefer this approach if your root partition isn't encrypted, although know that this can get pretty annoying with more than one encrypted device. If you wish to do this, you can skip this section.
exit # Go back to root account
mkdir -p /etc/secrets
dd if=/dev/random bs=4096 count=1 of=/etc/secrets/keyFile-data.bin
chmod -R 400 /etc/secrets
chmod 700 /etc/secrets
The bs argument signifies a block size (in bits), so this will create 4096-bit keys.
Now we can add this key into our LUKS encrypted data partition:
cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/disk/by-label/DATA --new-keyfile /etc/secrets/keyFile-data.bin
/etc/crypttab
Now that we have the key files ready, we can utilize /etc/crypttab, which is a file that systemd reads during boot (similarly to /etc/fstab), and contains instructions for auto-mounting devices.
This is the /etc/crypttab file that I use:
# Configuration for encrypted block devices.
# See crypttab(5) for details.
# NOTE: Do not list your root (/) partition here, it must be set up
# beforehand by the initramfs (/etc/mkinitcpio.conf).
# <name> <device> <password> <options>
cryptdata LABEL=DATA /etc/secrets/keyFile-data.bin discard
If you want to be prompted for the password during boot instead of it being read
from a file, you can use none instead of the file path.
The discard option is specified to enable TRIM on SSDs, which should improve
their lifespan. It is not necessary if you're using an HDD.
/etc/fstab
While the crypttab file opens the encrypted block devices and creates the mapper interfaces for them, to mount those to a concrete directory, we still use /etc/fstab. Below is the /etc/fstab that I use on my system:
# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# region: Physical partitions
# /dev/nvme0n1p2 LABEL=SWAP UUID=d262a2e5-a1a3-42b1-ac83-18639f5e8f3d
/dev/disk/by-label/SWAP none swap defaults 0 0
# /dev/nvme0n1p1 LABEL=EFI UUID=44E8-EB26
/dev/disk/by-label/EFI /efi vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0137,dmask=0027,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 2
# endregion
# region: BTRFS subvolumes on /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH (decrypted from ARCH_LUKS)
# /dev/mapper/cryptroot LABEL=ARCH UUID=bffc7a62-0c7e-4aa9-b10e-fd68bac477e0
/dev/mapper/cryptroot / btrfs rw,noatime,compress=zstd:1,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvol=/@ 0 1
/dev/mapper/cryptroot /home btrfs rw,noatime,compress=zstd:1,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvol=/@home 0 1
/dev/mapper/cryptroot /var/log btrfs rw,noatime,compress=zstd:2,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvol=/@log 0 1
/dev/mapper/cryptroot /var/cache btrfs rw,noatime,compress=zstd:3,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvol=/@cache 0 1
/dev/mapper/cryptroot /tmp btrfs rw,noatime,compress=no,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvol=/@tmp 0 1
/dev/mapper/cryptroot /data btrfs rw,noatime,compress=zstd:5,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvol=/@data 0 2
# /dev/mapper/cryptdata LABEL=DATA UUID=...
/dev/mapper/cryptdata /data2 btrfs rw,noatime,compress=zstd:5,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvol=/@data 0 2
/dev/mapper/cryptdata /backups btrfs rw,noatime,compress=zstd:10,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvol=/@backups 0 2
# endregion
# region: Bind mounts
# Write kernel images to /efi/arch-1, not directly to efi system partition (esp), to avoid conflicts when dual booting
/mnt/efi/arch-1 /boot none rw,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro,bind 0 0
# endregion
Bootloader
This guide uses systemd-boot (if you want to use GRUB, just follow the arch wiki).
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
support 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 yay -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
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-hyprland.conf, with:
title Arch Linux (Hyprland)
sort-key 0
linux /arch-1/vmlinuz-linux
initrd /arch-1/amd-ucode.img
initrd /arch-1/initramfs-linux.img
options cryptdevice=LABEL=ARCH_LUKS:cryptroot:allow-discards
options root=/dev/mapper/cryptroot rootflags=subvol=/@
options rw loglevel=3
And finally configure loader - /efi/loader/loader.conf (overwrite the contents):
default arch-hyprland.conf
timeout 4
console-mode auto
editor yes
auto-firmware yes
beep no
Reboot
exit # go back to live iso (exit chroot)
reboot
Post-setup
Enable Network Time Protocol (time synchronization)
sudo timedatectl set-ntp true
timedatectl status
Connect to a wifi network
nmtui
Footnotes
Note that this setup is based on my personal system, in which I dual boot multiple (2) arch instances, one running hyprland, the other running KDE (I mainly use the hyprland instance, the KDE one is purely there because it's X11 and supports my NVidia card, which Hyprland currenly doesn't).
The config here only really mentions how to get the first (hyprland) installation ready, however if you wanted to set up both, it's essentially just doing the same thing again, with some minor changes like in the systemd-boot entry and some fstab/crypttab entries.
I do plan on writing a continuation guide for how to set up the system for GUI (Hyprland) too eventually. Once it's done, I will mention it here.