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Install guide for my personal Arch setup

Load the correct keyboard layout

loadkeys [euro|de-latin1]

Check for internet connectivity and time settings. If they are not working correctly, refer to the arch wiki

Disk partitioning and formatting

Find the correct device (I will assume it is /dev/sda here) and partition it

fdisk -l
fdisk /dev/sda

Here, make two partitions:

  1. The EFI-partition /dev/sda1 to be mounted under /boot with the Size of 1GB
  2. The Main partition /dev/sda2 which contains all of our btrfs subvolumes

Format the EFI-partition as FAT32

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sda1

Encrypt the main partition

cryptsetup -c aes-xts-plain -s 256 luksFormat /dev/sda2
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda2 luksroot

Format the main partition as btrfs, mount it and create the subvolumes root1, root2, and home. See the arch wiki for more details

mkfs.btrfs /dev/mapper/luksroot
mount -o noatime,ssd,compress=lzo /dev/mapper/luksroot /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/root1
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/root2
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/home
umount /mnt

Mount the EFI-Partition, one of the root subvolumes and the home subvolume

mount -o noatime,ssd,compress=lzo,subvol=root1 /dev/mapper/luksroot /mnt
mount --mkdir /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
mount --mkdir -o noatime,ssd,compress=lzo,subvol=home /dev/mapper/luksroot /mnt/home

Initialize the new system

Install an initial set of packages into the /mnt directory tree. amd-ucode only needs to be installed on one of the root partitions.

pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware amd-ucode btrfs-progs networkmanager openssh neovim git gcc sudo man-db man-pages texinfo os-prober

Generate /etc/fstab

genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Chroot into the new environment

arch-chroot /mnt

Uncomment the desired locales in /etc/locale.gen

...
#de_CH ISO-8859-1  
de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8  
#de_DE ISO-8859-1  
...
#en_SG ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
#en_US ISO-8859-1
...

Set the time zone, syncronize the clock and generate locales

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
locale-gen

save the hostname, the locale and the keyboard layout to their config files

echo <hostname> > /etc/hostname
echo "LANG=de_DE.utf8" > /etc/locale.conf
echo "KEYMAP=euro" > /etc/vconsole.conf

Configure the bootstrap process to correctly deal with encryption

Install grub

pacman -Syu grub grub-btrfs efibootmgr

Write the UUIDs of all devices to a temporary file in order to read them from inside nvim in the next step

blkid > /tmp/blocks

Edit Hooks in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

...
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont block encrypt filesystems fsck)
...

Edit /etc/default/grub

...
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="cryptdevice=UUID=<UUID of /dev/sda2>:luksroot root=UUID=<UUID of /dev/mapper/luksroot> lang=euro locale=de_DE.UTF8"
...
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true

On root2, mount root1, so os-prober can detect it

mount -o noatime,ssd,compress=lzo,subvol=root1 /dev/mapper/luksroot /mnt

Apply these configurations and install grub

mkinitcpio -p linux
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=grub

Further setup

Copy the old etc/pacman.conf over

Install the repository for the klassy kde theme engine and install it, see software.opensuse.org

key=$(curl -fsSL https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:paul4us/Arch/$(uname -m)/home_paul4us_Arch.key)
fingerprint=$(gpg --quiet --with-colons --import-options show-only --import --fingerprint <<< "${key}" | awk -F: '$1 == "fpr" { print $10 }')

pacman-key --init
pacman-key --add - <<< "${key}"
pacman-key --lsign-key "${fingerprint}"

pacman -Sy home_paul4us_Arch/klassy

Install some more essential packages and enable their services

pacman -S plasma-meta sddm sddm-kcm fish fwupd konsole dolphin flatpak flatpak-kcm
systemctl enable NetworkManager
systemctl enable sddm
systemctl enable bluetooth

Set root password

passwd

Create my user

useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /usr/bin/fish MYUSERNAME  
passwd MYUSERNAME

Modify /etc/sudoers:

...
%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
...

Enable sddm autologin in /etc/sddm.conf.d/autologin.conf

[Autologin]
User=MYUSERNAME
Session=plasma

Finally

  • Repeat all necessare steps with the root2 subvolume
  • Copy everything over into the home directory
  • Install ame from the AUR
# as MYUSERNAME
cd Skripte/ame
git pull
makepkg -si
  • Install packages ame ins $(cat packages.pacman)
  • Install flatpaks flatpak install $(cat installed.flatpaks), but remember to first remove runtimes
  • set up tailscale and Uni-VPN
  • ensure that things work: Passwordmanager, SSH, Ansible, Applications, ...
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