My preferred Arch Linux install reference
Here is a quick reference to my preffered Arch Linux setup. If you like what you see I assume you know what you are doing and if it breaks you get to keep the pieces. As I am setting this up on an OG Lattepanda Alpha you will see some unusual steps, such as using the onboard MMC in its entirety as the system partition. You can get a similar model on dfrobot where I picked up mine.
On a single disk setup I would expect this to be the first partition of your main disk instead. In simpler times I used to perform gentoo installs from memory without referencing the handbook so if you use this quick reference it is expected to be comfortable remixing it as you go as you see fit. If in doubt reference the official wiki at wiki.archlinux.org.
Now with that disclaimer out of the way lets get started.
cgdisk /dev/mmcblk0
Create one new partition
- Type: ef00
- Name: boot
Accept defaults for the rest
cgdisk 1.0.9.1
Disk Drive: /dev/mmcblk0
Size: 122142720, 58.2 GiB
Part. # Size Partition Type Partition Name
----------------------------------------------------------------
1007.0 KiB free space
1 58.2 GiB EFI system partition boot
1007.5 KiB free space
cgdisk /dev/sda
On the boot drive create one main partition.
- Name: salty
You can pick whatever label you like, just remember to replace later instances.
cgdisk 1.0.9.1
Disk Drive: /dev/sda
Size: 1953525168, 931.5 GiB
Part. # Size Partition Type Partition Name
----------------------------------------------------------------
1007.0 KiB free space
1 931.5 GiB Linux filesystem salty
711.5 KiB free space
Anymore I always encrypt as a default. If you decide to use a keyfile method I leave that as an exercise to the user, refer to the wiki for that.
cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/disk/by-partlabel/salty
WARNING!
========
This will overwrite data on /dev/disk/by-partlabel/salty irrevocably.
Are you sure? (Type 'yes' in capital letters): YES
Enter passphrase for /dev/disk/by-partlabel/salty:
Verify passphrase:
cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/disk/by-partlabel/salty
Open sesame.
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/disk/by-partlabel/salty decrypt0
Create the volume group. I'd recommend picking unique names when installing on multiple machines here especially if you are in a pinch and expect to drive this in another machine with a similar setup. That will avoid any name collision weirdness.
vgcreate panda0 /dev/mapper/decrypt0
Physical volume "/dev/mapper/decrypt0" successfully created.
Volume group "panda0" successfully created
Prepare for swap and root. Size swap to your liking. I expect to do some really silly things and want to keep the backwards cow at bay for as long as possible.
lvcreate -C y -L 16G panda0 -n swap
lvcreate -l +100%FREE panda0 -n root
Check our work:
pvdisplay -C && vgdisplay -C && lvdisplay -C
PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree
/dev/mapper/decrypt0 panda0 lvm2 a-- 931.49g 0
VG #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize VFree
panda0 1 2 0 wz--n- 931.49g 0
LV VG Attr LSize Pool Origin Data% Meta% Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
root panda0 -wi-a----- 915.49g
swap panda0 -wc-a----- 16.00g
Format all the things
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/disk/by-partlabel/boot
mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/panda0-root
mkswap /dev/mapper/panda0-swap
swapon /dev/mapper/panda0-swap
Mount for strapping
mount /dev/mapper/panda0-root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/disk/by-partlabel/boot /mnt/boot
pacstrap time! If you want to follow the latest stable kernel just remove -lts
pacstrap -K /mnt base linux-lts linux-firmware
Generate a proper fstab and chroot
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt
Install the microcode for your processor, this will be amd-ucode on AMD processors respectively.
pacman -S intel-ucode
Set timezone. I'll leave setting up ntp automatic updates as an exercise for the user.
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
Install nano and edit /etc/locale.gen
Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
For simplified Chinese uncomment zh_CN.UTF-8 UTF-8
If you end up doing that I expect you know what fonts you need there.
locale-gen
Create a locale.conf
echo 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' > /etc/locale.conf
Set your preffered console font.
echo 'FONT=Lat2-Terminus16' > /etc/vconsole.conf
Update /etc/mkinitcpio.conf lines for modules and hooks.
MODULES=(i915)
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont block encrypt lvm2 filesystems fsck)
Run mkinitcpio, again drop the -lts if needed here. Ensure lvm2 is installed.
pacman -S lvm2
mkinitcpio -p linux-lts
Set the root password.
passwd
Install NetworkManager.
pacman -S networkmanager
Install efibootmgr.
pacman -S efibootmgr
Configure our EFISTUB. Note that while I show resume here as an example all attempts to suspend on this machine. I haven't hand a stable resume for awhile on this particular piece of hardware.
efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/mmcblk0 --part 1 --label "Arch Linux" --loader /vmlinuz-linux-lts --unicode \
"root=/dev/mapper/panda0-root rw cryptdevice=PARTLABEL=salty:decrypt0:allow-discards resume=/dev/mapper/panda0-swap initrd=/intel-ucode.img initrd=/initramfs-linux-lts.img quiet"
Lets exit the chroot, unmount, reboot, and hold onto your butts.
exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot
Enter your credentials to get back to root and lets finish our initial setup.
Start NetworkManager and enable at boot.
systemctl enable NetworkManager
systemctl start NetworkManager
Install openssh, enable and run. Note that you must set PermitRootLogin yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config
if you are using this to finish up the install without pubkey auth like I am.
pacman -S openssh
systemctl enable sshd
systemctl start sshd
At this point you probably notice archiso is the current hostname as we haven't set that yet. We can
use hostnamectl to fix that now.
hostnamectl hostname lattepanda
If you have an open shell, exit and reconnect.
[root@lattepanda ~]#
Much better.
Install gnome and add our intial user.
pacman -S gnome
useradd -m -G wheel graywind
passwd graywind
If you want to play 32-bit games or have a stable steam setup, uncomment multilib in /etc/pacman.conf
and sync with pacman -Syu. I have older notes referring to lib32-intel-dri. This is apparently what
you want now.
pacman -S lib32-mesa lib32-vulkan-intel lib32-libva-mesa-driver libva-mesa-driver xf86-video-intel
Setup sudo
pacman -S sudo
Uncomment %wheel line in /etc/sudoers
Start and enable gdm (after confirming that there are no errors, a separate ssh session works great for this.
systemctl start gdm
systemctl enable gdm