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Linux Install

https://xkcd.com/538/

These are rough notes written for me, hope it helps somebody.

I'm currently running Arch Linux on my desktop, but this would be applicable to Fedora with a minimal install (somewhat) etc.

I wanted my Linux install to have these things:

Based off:

TODO

  • snapshots and restore
  • dual boot with Windows working properly
    • systemctl reboot --boot-loader-entry=x.conf

Arch Installation

  • Disable the PC speaker (depending on PC, this is annoying): rmmod pcspkrZZZZ
  • Follow the Arch Installation Guide, check here for steps changes

Pre-installation/Set the console keyboard layout and font

Ignore this

Pre-installation/Partition the disks

Partition

Based on:

+-----------------------+------------------------+
| Boot partition        | LUKS2 encrypted root   |
|                       | partition              |
|                       |                        |
| /boot                 | /                      |
|                       |                        |
|                       | /dev/mapper/root       |
|                       |------------------------|
| /dev/BOOT_PARITTION   | /dev/ROOT_PARTITION    |
+-----------------------+------------------------+
  1. Provision the drive with fdisk DRIVE, find with fdisk -l
  2. Delete existing partitions (use d) ? I think 3. handles this
  3. Type g to create a GPT drive
  4. Make EFI partition
    1. Press n
    2. Partition type: Primary
    3. Partition number: 1
    4. First sector: continue
    5. Last sector: +512M
    6. Press t to change the type, press L to list types
    7. Select the type for EFI System
      1. The types seem to differ per motherboard (?), so double check
    8. Don't worry about making/marking as bootable
  5. Make primary partition
    1. Press n
    2. Partition type: Primary
    3. Partition number: 2
    4. First sector: continue
    5. Last sector: continue
    6. Press t to change the type, press L to list types
    7. Select the type for Linux filesystem
      1. The types seem to differ per motherboard (?), so double check
  6. Type p to list the paritions and double check
    1. Validate (see Validate drives below)
  7. Type w to write to the drive

Validate drives

Validate with fdisk -l

Look for the following:

  • Disklabel type: GPT

It should look like:

Disk /dev/nvme1n1: 1.82 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 980 PRO 2TB
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: x

Device           Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/nvme1n1p1    2048    1050623    1048576  512M EFI System
/dev/nvme1n1p2 1050624 3907028991 3905978368  1.8T Linux filesystem

Format boot partition

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/BOOT_PARTITION

Setup LUKS & btrfs

Make LUKS container and initialise btrfs
cryptsetup -y -v luksFormat /dev/ROOT_PARTITION
cryptsetup open /dev/ROOT_PARTITION root
mkfs.btrfs -L arch /dev/mapper/root
mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt

Check mapping works as intended

umount /mnt
cryptsetup close root
cryptsetup open /dev/ROOT_PARTITION root
mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt
Setup BTRFS subvolumes
cd /mnt
btrfs subvolume create _active
btrfs subvolume create _active/rootvol
btrfs subvolume create _active/homevol
btrfs subvolume create _snapshots
btrfs subvolume create _swap
Mount them
cd ..
umount /mnt
mount -o subvol=_active/rootvol,compress=zstd:1,discard=async /dev/mapper/root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/{home,boot,btrfs_root}
mount -o fmask=0137,dmask=0027 /dev/BOOT_PARTITION /mnt/boot
mount -o subvol=_active/homevol,compress=zstd:1,discard=async /dev/mapper/root /mnt/home
mount -o subvol=/,compress=zstd:1,discard=async /dev/mapper/root /mnt/btrfs_root
mount -o subvol=_swap,discard=async /dev/mapper/root /mnt/swap
Swap File
  1. Follow https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/btrfs#Swap_file
    1. Create in the _swap subvolume
  2. Set the swap size to RAM size for hibrenation

Swap files generated with btrfs are excluded from COW

Installation/Select the mirrors

These get copied, so set them up properly now

pacman -Syy
pacman -S reflector
reflector -c AU -f 10 --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Installation/Install essential packages

  • Where CPU_MICROCODE is intel-ucode or amd-ucode or whatever else
pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware neovim networkmanager dhclient sudo chrony CPU_MICROCODE

Configure the system/Fstab

  1. Run genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
  2. In /mnt/etc/fstab remove subvolid= references on each btrfs mount to help with snapshot rollback in the future

It should look like this:

# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/mapper/root LABEL=arch
UUID=x  /           btrfs       rw,relatime,compress=zstd:1,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvol=/_active/rootvol    0 0

# /dev/nvme0n1p1
UUID=x          /boot       vfat        rw,relatime,fmask=0137,dmask=0027,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro   0 2

# /dev/mapper/root LABEL=arch
UUID=x  /home       btrfs       rw,relatime,compress=zstd:1,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvol=/_active/homevol    0 0

# /dev/mapper/root LABEL=arch
UUID=x  /btrfs_root btrfs       rw,relatime,compress=zstd:1,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvol=/   0 0

/swap/swapfile          none            swap            defaults        0 0

Configure the system/Localization

Make sure to uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and do the rest of the steps, ignore console keyboard layout

Configure the system/Network configuration

In addition to /etc/hostname, make an /etc/hosts with the following:

127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME

Configure the system/Initramfs & Configure the system/Boot loader

systemd-boot and LUKS initramfs

See the following:

Enable systemd-boot updating on boot

Edit bootloader config

Edit /boot/loader/loader.conf

and put

default arch.conf
timeout 10
console-mode max
editor no

Add a loader for arch

  • Edit esp/loader/entries/arch.conf
  • Where CPU_MICROCODE is intel-ucode or amd-ucode or whatever else
  • Validate the below files are in the /boot folder, if not then do the below
    • vmlinuz-linux: linux
    • CPU_MICROCODE: package from earlier
    • initramfs-linux.img: mkinitcpio -P
  • Make sure that your initrd CPU_MICROCODE is BEFORE initrd initramfs-linux.img otherwise you'll get a failure
  • Where UUID is your UUID of your root partition
  • You can use :read ! blkid /dev/ROOT_PARTITION in vim to get it, or the same command in a terminal and type it out
  • Add resume and resume_offset for suspend to disk 
title Arch Linux
sort-key 01
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /CPU_MICROCODE.img
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options rd.luks.name=UUID=root root=/dev/mapper/root rootflags=subvol=_active/rootvol rds.luks.options=discard resume=/dev/mapper/root resume_offset=x rw quiet splash

Repeat above for fallback-initramfs

Same config, but reference /initramfs-fallback instead

Configure the system/Root password

Don't forget to do this

Clock sync

Using chrony as systemd-timesyncd does not support NTS

  1. Edit /etc/chrony.conf and replace the Arch pool server with the Cloudflare NTS one:
  2. systemctl enable --now chronyd
  3. Run sudo chronyc -a makestep to force a sync

Reboot

Reboot and that's the end of the Arch Installation

Bootstrap & User setup

Allow wheel group in sudoers

Create a user account

  1. Create user
  2. Add to wheel group
  3. Test sudo

Run bootstrap as user

Other people: please don't use this script

Not tested (sorry future me):

curl -fL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/itsjfx/dotfiles/master/scripts/bootstrap/run_bootstrap.sh >run_bootstrap.sh

bash run_bootstrap.sh

Copy root files

Copy the root files ~/.root-files/ over as they will setup X11 and part of the NVIDIA stuff below correctly

TODO have a script to do this and run diffs

NVIDIA steps

After installing NVIDIA drivers from bootstrap there's a couple of things needed

Remove nouveau/kms from mkinitcpio

I'm not sure if this is needed if you don't install nouveau but listed here https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA#Installation

Remove kms from mkinitcpio.conf and regenerate the initramfs

Setup DRM kernel mode setting

sudo sysfsutils | less you should see multiple entries from nvidia from earlier

Setup Windows dual boot

I couldn't get this working:

I followed this again and it worked:

Get Windows fonts

Probably needed for some stuff.

See: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Microsoft_fonts#Installation

  • Copy from a Windows Install
  • or use the AUR provided package which grabs them from the ISO

Snapshots

TODO