BIOS, GPT, encryption, btrfs, xfs. encrypted btrfs root, unencrypted xfs /home
This was created to document the procedures followed during the installation of Arch Linux. This is intended to act as a guide in the event a full installation is required in the future. This is primarily for my own use. I plan to document each step with code. If anyone finds this helpful, then please use it at your own risk, I assume no responsibility for any damage incurred from following these notes. I would recommend that you follow the Arch Linux Installation Guide and the Arch Linux wikis, rather than these set of notes.
- Computer: HP DV6000
- Hard disk: 230 SSD
In addition to the Arch Linux Installation Guide, webpages and blogs listed below were very helpful:
Based on the references, the SSD was formatted as shown below. For no particular reason, I wanted the / partition on btrfs and /home on XFS, as I read is done in openSUSE.
- BIOS boot: 1MiB, Code:EF02, Flags:bios_grub,
- boot: 512 MB, Code:8300, Flags:None
- swap: 6 GB, Code:8200, Flags:None
- root: 66 GB, Code:8300, Flags:None, Attribute: 2 (in expert mode)
- home: rest, Code:8300, Flags:None
- 1.00 MiB at the end of the disk
Gparted live usb can be used for partitioning the harddisk. The instructions for creating a live usb can be found at their website. tuxboot can be used to create the bootable usb. The squence of commands for partitioning in gparted commandline are presented below:
sudo gdisk /dev/sda
o, y
n, 1, [enter], +1M, ef02
n, 2, [enter], +512M, [enter]
n, 3, [enter], +6G, 8200
n, 4, [enter], +65G, [enter]
n, 5, [enter], -1M, [enter]
x, a, 4, 2, [enter]
w, Y
- BIOS boot: unformatted, location: /dev/sda1
- boot: File system: ext4, Label: boot location: /dev/sda2
- swap: File system: linux-swap, Label: swap location: /dev/sda3
- root: File system: btrfs, Label: root location: /dev/sda4
- home: File system: xfs, Label: home location: /dev/sda5 The sequence of commands to create the file systems were:
sudo mkfs.ext4 -L "bios" /dev/sda2
sudo mkswap -L "swap" /dev/sda3
sudo mkfs.btrfs -L "root" /dev/sda4
sudo mkfs.xfs -L "home" /dev/sda5
These steps can be performed with the ARCH installation image, however using gparted gives the option of visualisation in the gui.
Download the image from the website and write the image using USBWriter. It is one of the recommended writers. Boot with Arch live usb.
Once again the Installation Guide is the correct document to follow.
If the device has no wired connection, to get the wireless working follow Wireless network configuration. These were the sequence of commands for inspection and setting up the wireless connection. Use ip link to determine wireless interface. The wireless interface was wlp2s0. If using wireless then stop the dhcpcd daemon for wired connection.
systemctl stop dhcpcd@ Tab
lspci -k
ip link
ip link set wlp2s0 up
iw dev wlp2s0 scan | less
wpa_supplicant -i wlp2s0 -c < (wpa_passphrase "SSID" "key")
wlp2s0 was the wireless interface. If connection to wireless is successful use Ctrl+c to quit wpa_supplicant and add -B switch to run the command in background.
wpa_supplicant -B -i wlp2s0 -c <(wpa_passphrase "SSID" "key")
iw dev wlp2s0 link
dhcpcd wlp2s0
timedatectl set-ntp true
timedatectl set-timezone America/Kentucky/Louisville
timedatectl set-local-rtc true
Partition the disk as desired.
Format each of the partitions as desired.
cryptsetup --cipher aes-xts-plain64 --hash sha512 --use-random --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sda4
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda4 cryptroot
mkfs.btrfs /dev/mapper/cryptroot
mount -o noatime,compress=lzo,discard,ssd,defaults /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt
Create btrfs subvolumes
cd /mnt
btrfs subvolume create __active
btrfs subvolume create __active/rootvol
btrfs subvolume create __active/var
btrfs subvolume create __snapshots
System configuration
cd
umount /mnt
mount -o subvol=__active/rootvol /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt
mkdir /mnt/{home,var}
mount -o inode64,nobarrier /dev/sda5 /mnt/home
mount -o subvol=__active/var /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/var
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot
sync
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel btrfs-progs
genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
Chroot into the new System
arch-chroot /mnt
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Kentucky/Louisville /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
Set LANG variable in locale.conf
nano /etc/locale.conf
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
Create the hostname file
nano /etc/hostname
myhostname
Add a matching entry to hosts
nano /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
::1 localhost.localdomain localhost
127.0.1.1 myhostname.localdomain myhostname
Install iw and wpa_supplicant for wireless configureation because these packages are not available after fresh install.
Modify to mkinitcpio.conf to include:
- MODULES="aes_x86_64"
- BINARIES="/user/bin/btrfsck"
- HOOKS="...... encrypt filesystems ... btrfs" Add the encrypt hook before filesytems and btrfs at the end and remove the fsck hook
nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
HOOKS="base udev autodetect modconf block encrypt filesystems keyboard btrfs"
Save the file and run
mkinitcpio -p linux
'root' password
passwd
Install grub
pacman -Syu grub
grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda2
Create grub.cfg
Add encrypted root partition to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX= in '/etc/default/grub'
nano /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""crytpdevice=/dev/sda4:cryptroot""
Save the file and generate grub.cfg
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Reboot
Log in as root with the root password from above.
Since I was using wireless network
ip link set wlp2s0 up
iw dev wlp2s0 scan | less
wpa_supplicant -B -i wlp2s0 -c <(wpa_passphrase "SSID" "key")
dhcpcd wlp2s0
Add your username and password. If 'archie' is the desired username then:
useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash archie
passwd archie
Change the default editor from visudo to nano. Since the user was already added to the wheel group, sudo was configured to allow members of the wheel group sudo access.
EDITOR=nano visudo
Uncomment the line
%wheel All=(ALL) ALL
Logout and then login as user with user password. Test sudo with pacman
Allows users to run 32-bit applications on 64-bit installation of Arch Linux.
Uncomment [multilib] section in /etc/pacman.conf
[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
sudo pacman -Syu weston
sudo pacman -S xorg-server-xwayland
Use GNOME display manager
sudo pacman -S gdm
sudo systemctl enable gdm.service
sudo pacman -S gnome gnome-extra
sudo pacman -S intel-ucode
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Create a profile in /etc/netctl by copying and editing one of the examples in /etc/netctl/examples/. Also to obfuscate wireless passphrase use wpa_passphrase to compute the 256-bit PSK. An example from the netctl is given below. For example if the essid is highway and the passphrase is alongandwindingroad:
wpa_passphrase highway alongandwindingroad
The output will be as follows:
network={
ssid="highway"
#psk="alongandwindingroad"
psk=b2faeec84b34a37f95cc4b4e5696d73eccc1821f4ea4f209606850fb90c3d427
}
Edit one of the example files as shown below for the example given above and save with an appropriate file name wireless-wpa_highway
Description='A simple WPA encrypted wireless connection using 256-bit PSK'
Interface=wlp2s2
Connection=wireless
Security=wpa
IP=dhcp
ESSID='highway'
Key=\"b2faeec84b34a37f95cc4b4e5696d73eccc1821f4ea4f209606850fb90c3d427
Test the created profile
sudo netctl start wireless-wpa_highway
If everything is working then enable the profile to start at boot.
netctl enable wireless-wpa_highway
If netctl keeps failing then one of the reasons could be that dhcpcd.service is enabled. Disalbe the dhcpcd.service as 'netctl' will handle dhcp
sudo systemctl disable dhcpcd.service
The Grub graphics was not very pleasant. Adjusted the framebuffer resolution in /etc/default/grub
GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x800x32,auto
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
After saving the changes
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Changed Grub theme to arch-silence
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides button-layout close,minimize,maximize
This needs verification.
- install wpa_actiond
# pacman -S wpa_actiond
- Enable the interface
sudo systemctl enable netctl-auto@wlp2s0.service