If you use an ethernet connection, you do not need to do nothing, it works.
If you want to use a WI-FI connection, you should use iwctl, you can find all the
information you need here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Iwd
I like to install Archlinux using SSH, you can use this guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_via_SSH
Basically it is just systemctl enable sshd && passwd.
In order to use the provisioner we need to install ansible git and make, as we are going
to use the provisioner to bootstrap the entire system.
mount -o remount,size=1G /run/archiso/cowspace
pacman -Sy --noconfirm ansible git make
The first command is needed because the root partition from live USB is just 256M which is not enough to install other dependencies.
Let me start by mentioning this guide: https://github.com/egara/arch-btrfs-installation which is definetely my main source of truth for the following steps.
I want to use a BTRFS filesystem with the following layout:
nvme0n1 (Volume)
|
|
- @ (Subvolume - It will be the current /)
- @home (Subvolume - it will be the current /home)
- @snapshots (Subvolume - It will contain the root snapshots)
- @home.snapshots (Subvolume - It will contain the home directories snapshots)
I don't know if this layout is the best choice, but AFAIK this is the simplest way to start and most compatible layout with tools like snapper or timeshift.
What i've used as a reference:
- https://forum.manjaro.org/t/default-btrfs-mount-options-and-subvolume-layout/43250/33
- https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/fkcamq/noob_btrfs_subvolume_layout_help/fks5mph/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
- https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/SysadminGuide#Layout
- https://www.jwillikers.com/btrfs-layout
- https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:BTRFS#Default_Subvolumes
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/User:M0p/LUKS_Root_on_Btrfs
This is the most flexible way to keep the things well separated and giving me the chance
to automatically snapshot the root or home volumes separately and using grub-btrfs
to automatically from snapshots.
This is my current disk layout (using cfdisk):
Disk: /dev/nvme0n1
Size: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Label: gpt, identifier: 4BAEBBEA-64DB-4DE6-A7F2-04E8972BF153
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 487423 485376 237M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 487424 1139156991 1138669568 543G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3 1139156992 1206265855 67108864 32G Linux swap
I will use /dev/nvme0n1p4 and /dev/nvme0n1p5 respectively for / and swap partitions. The swap partition is optional, you can use a Swap file if you want the ability to vary its size on-the-fly.
The rest is a Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installation. I'll share the EFI partition too between the two distros.
Export the following variables, that we'll be used by next installation steps:
export UEFI_PARTITION=/dev/nvme0n1p1
export ROOT_PARTITION=/dev/nvme0n1p2
export SWAP_PARTITION=/dev/nvme0n1p3
export LUKS_PARTITION=/dev/mapper/cryptrootNOTE: the
/dev/mapper/cryptrootis the open decrypted partition. Thecryptsetup opencommand described below will create the proper device and it will link it to this path. At the moment of the execution of the export commands the device is not present yet, so thels /dev/mappercommand will not show it.
Just to be sure about the partitions, you can always run lsblk to see partitions per disk.
VERY IMPORTANT: From now on i'll use
/dev/nvme0n1p2for the root partition and/dev/nvme0n1p3for the swap one. Adjust them according to your setup.
If you are going to install Archlinux beside Windows, you should shrink the Windows partition to make space for the new installation. You can do this directly from Windows 11 Disk Management tool and without the need of disabling the BitLocker encryption.
As described here, you must disable Secure Boot in the UEFI settings. After this process, you have to recover the Windows BitLocker encryption using the recovery key. The recovery process of the Windows BitLocker encryption has to be re-taken after the installation of Archlinux, booting into Windows using GRUB. If you bootstrap Windows using a Microsoft account, you can find the recovery key in the Microsoft account page here.
Just for reference, the following is the disk layout of a dual boot system:
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 534527 532480 260M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 534528 567295 32768 16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/nvme0n1p3 567296 315140095 314572800 150G Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p4 1996312576 2000408575 4096000 2G Windows recovery environment
/dev/nvme0n1p5 315140096 315652095 512000 250M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p6 315652096 1996312575 1680660480 801.4G Linux filesystemThe /dev/nvme0n1p5 is is the EFI partition for the Archlinux installation, and the /dev/nvme0n1p6 is the encrypted partition that hosts the btrfs filesystem and contains all the subvolumes. In this case, the swap partition is not present, and the swap file is used instead.
Suspend to disk (aka hibernate) feature is a process where the contents of RAM are written to the swap partition (or file) before the system is powered off. It saves the machine's state into swap space and completely powers off the machine. When the machine is powered on, the state is restored. Until then, there is zero power consumption. Here you can find more information about hibernation.
System will be configured to use the the partition labeled as swap as the swap partition.
You must make sure to add this label to the swap partition, it should be like this:
❯ sudo gdisk -l /dev/nvme0n1
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.9.1
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 2099199 1024.0 MiB EF00
2 2099200 1849670069 881.0 GiB 8300
3 1849670070 1953525134 49.5 GiB 8200 swap <----- THIS IS THE LABEL
If you don't have it, you can add it with the following commands:
❯ sudo gdisk /dev/nvme0n1
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.9.1
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): c
Partition number (1-3): 3
Enter name: swap
Command (? for help): w
Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/nvme0n1.
Warning: The kernel is still using the old partition table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot or after you
run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)
The operation has completed successfully.
❯ sudo partprobe
❯ blkid | grep swap
/dev/nvme0n1p3: UUID="29ddcc21-8a13-49b5-8dc1-767ff387b15a" TYPE="swap" PARTLABEL="swap" PARTUUID="30b47a33-c1b3-924d-9c1c-0adff8f018fd"If you decide to use a swap file instead of a swap partition, you have to configure some additional parameters to make hibernation work. You can find the information about configuring the swap file offset here.
In this provisioner, you can configure swapfile.enabled and swapfile.configure_hibernate to true and all the other parameters according to your needs in the config/default.yaml file. The ansible role will take care of creating the swap file and configuring the system to use it.
- Archlinux wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system#LUKS_on_a_partition
- Unofficial guide: https://blog.bespinian.io/posts/installing-arch-linux-on-uefi-with-full-disk-encryption/
We are going to encrypt the entire root filesystem:
- Run
cryptsetup -y -v --pbkdf=pbkdf2 luksFormat ${ROOT_PARTITION}and then typeYESand the new encryption password to encrypt the root partition - Run
cryptsetup open ${ROOT_PARTITION} cryptrootto open the encrypted partition
VERY IMPORTANT: This step is only required when creating a new EFI partition, if you are installing beside another Linux distribution or Windows and you already have an EFI partition, you can skip it.
Run this command: mkfs.fat -F32 ${UEFI_PARTITION}
The swap partition once formatted and activated will be automatically mounted by systemd on the live system:
mkswap ${SWAP_PARTITION}
swapon ${SWAP_PARTITION}
We are going to create btrfs volumes and subvolumes:
mkfs.btrfs -L arch ${LUKS_PARTITION}
mount ${LUKS_PARTITION} /mnt
# This is a layout made to be compatible with timeshift and similare to the Manjaro one (https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/fkcamq/comment/fks5mph/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@snapshots
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home.snapshots
Next, create all the directories needed and mount all the partitions (/boot/efi included) in order to start the installation:
umount /mnt
# Mount root and create default directories.
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@ ${LUKS_PARTITION} /mnt
# Mount boot partition.
mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mount ${UEFI_PARTITION} /mnt/boot
# Mount home.
mkdir -p /mnt/home
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@home ${LUKS_PARTITION} /mnt/home
# Mount all subvolumes just for convenience.
mkdir -p /mnt/mnt/allvolumes
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=/ ${LUKS_PARTITION} /mnt/mnt/allvolumes
NOTE: if you have installed the system with encryption, you can skip this step and go to Install Archlinux using the provisioner.
We are going to create btrfs volumes and subvolumes:
mkfs.btrfs -L arch ${ROOT_PARTITION}
mount ${ROOT_PARTITION} /mnt
# This is a layout made to be compatible with timeshift and similare to the Manjaro one (https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/fkcamq/comment/fks5mph/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@snapshots
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home.snapshots
Next, create all the directories needed and mount all the partitions (/boot/efi included) in order to start the installation:
umount /mnt
# Mount root and create default directories.
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@ ${ROOT_PARTITION} /mnt
# Mount boot partition.
mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
mount ${UEFI_PARTITION} /mnt/boot/efi
# Mount home.
mkdir /mnt/home
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@home ${ROOT_PARTITION} /mnt/home
# Mount all subvolumes just for convenience.
mkdir -p /mnt/mnt/allvolumes
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=/ ${ROOT_PARTITION} /mnt/mnt/allvolumes
Please note that we are mounting btrfs with compression enabled to reduce writes (and ssd lifespan) and performance here and here some refs.
Done, we can now run the provisioner.
This Archlinux provisioner is not inteded bo a replacement of the Archlinux installation wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide), which i higly reccomend to read it, it's a very precious source of information and best practices.
This installer is based on Ansible, and it's composed by several roles:
playbooks/roles
├── bootstrap
├── gnome
├── logitech
├── nvidia
├── packages
└── system
bootstrap: Bootstrap the base system using pacstrap, configure locales, hostname, time and create the first sudoer user.system: Configure system services (bluetooth, audio, printing) and install some system dependencies.gnome: Install and configure Gnome DE with some extra packages, extensions and some custom shortcuts.logitech: Configure Logitech MX Master 2s mices with logid+solaar.nvidia: Install Nvidia drivers with nvidia-prime autodetection in case of hybrid graphics systempackages: Install all needed packages for development, multimedia, utilities and so on.
Start by cloning the repo:
cd /root
git clone https://github.com/sparkfabrik/archlinux-ansible-provisioner.git provisioner
cd provisionerNow you have to prepare your configuration file, which shuold reside under ./config,
you can start with ./config/default.yaml.tpl as an example.
You can find here the schema documentation.
cp config/default.yaml.tpl config/default.yaml
# --- EDIT THIS FILE ACCORDING TO YOUR NEEDS ---
vim config/default.yaml
# Install the base Arch Linux system using `pacstrap` and configure some basic system settings.
CONFIG=./config/default.yaml make bootstrap
# Install all the packages and configure the system.
CONFIG=./config/default.yaml make system
VERY IMPORTANT: Ansible will use the default values specified by the roles, you should change it or pass it, at the moment the later option is not supported by the Makefile.
The following steps are needed to configure GRUB to be able to boot from an encrypted disk:
- Run
vim /mnt/etc/mkinitcpio.confand, to theHOOKSarray, addkeyboardbetweenautodetectandmodconfand addencryptbetweenblockandfilesystems- It should look like this:
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect keyboard modconf block encrypt filesystems keyboard fsck)
- It should look like this:
- Run
arch-chroot /mnt mkinitcpio -P - Run
blkid -s UUID -o value ${ROOT_PARTITION}to get theUUIDof the device - Run
vim /mnt/etc/default/gruband setGRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="cryptdevice=UUID=xxxx:cryptroot /dev/mapper/cryptroot"while replacingxxxxwith theUUIDof the$ROOT_PARTITIONdevice to tell GRUB about our encrypted file system.- It should look like this:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="cryptdevice=UUID=1aa4277d-f942-49d1-b5b4-74641941dd9c:cryptroot /dev/mapper/cryptroot"
- It should look like this:
Now that the process if finished you can setup the password for the created user:
arch-chroot /mnt passwd <your-user>
- Run
CONFIG=./config/default.yaml make install-grub-with-encryption
- Run
CONFIG=./config/default.yaml make install-grub-no-encryption
Finished, restart your system and enjoy your brand new Archlinux installation.