Arch Linux Setup

Created: 2024-10-13
Last Modified: 2025-02-22

Arch Linux Setup

I recently installed Arch Linux on my PC. And I saw this as a nice oppoturnity to drop a new post on this site with my notes on the installation.

Everything I did, I mainly followed the Arch Linux install guide. Just for the specific parts regarding LVM and Cryptsetup I followed another linked page of the wiki.

Therefore, my notes show how I installed my system whilst having a fully encrypted partition with my data.

WARNING

This is not a guide, neither is it a full installation instruction. I installed Arch Linux before already, so I was familiar with the process. But this is my first time installing it with LVM and Cryptsetup. These are justm y notes.

Do not follow this guide expecting to have a working system in the end. I expect you to know what you are doing if you should run these commands. Maybe I made some mistake while writing things down. So far everything looks good on my machine, so I doubt I made large mistakes during the installtion.

Please follow the official docs over on https://wiki.archlinux.org/!

I warned you.

I use Arch btw

meme0

Process

Download arch iso and flash to usb drive

I partitioned the drive beforehand into two paritions on another machine.

nvme0n1                259:6    0 953.9G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1            259:7    0   512M  0 part
└─nvme0n1p2            259:8    0 953.4G  0 part

Then create the encrypted container on /dev/nvme0n1p2 and choose a password

cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/nvme0n1p2

Open the container and name it luks

cryptsetup open /dev/nvme0n1p2 luks

Create the logical volumes in the group called vg

pvcreate /dev/mapper/luks
vgcreate vg /dev/mapper/luks
lvcreate -L 64G -n root vg
lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n home vg
lvreduce -L -265M vg home

Create the file systems (boot, root, home)

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg/root
mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg/home

Now mount filesystem accordingly

mount --mkdir /dev/vg/root /mnt/
mount --mkdir /dev/vg/home /mnt/home
mount --mkdir /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot

Install base system and switch into it

 pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware git vim amd-ucode lvm2
 genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
 arch-chroot /mnt

Setup root password

passwd

Setup timezone and update system clock

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

Setup locale

vim /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf

Set hostname

echo "ZeljkoLinuxDesktop" >> /etc/hostname

Setup bootloader, I use systemd-boot

$ cat /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
title	Arch Linux
linux	/vmlinuz-linux
initrd	/initramfs-linux.img
options	rd.luks.name="ID_OF_PARTITION_HERE"=luks root=/dev/vg/root rw rootfstype=ext4

$ cat /boot/loader/entries/arch-fallback.conf
title	Arch Linux (fallback initramfs)
linux	/vmlinuz-linux
initrd	/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
options	rd.luks.name="ID_OF_PARTITION_HERE"=luks root=/dev/vg/root rw rootfstype=ext4

The UUID of the partition can be fetched with blkid.

$ blkid | grep '/dev/nvme0'
/dev/nvme0n1p1: UUID="SOME_ID" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="SOME_UUID" # this is my boot partition!
/dev/nvme0n1p2: UUID="THE_ID_OF_THE_PARTITION" TYPE="crypto_LUKS" PARTUUID="SOME_UUID" # this is the encrypted partition

Edit the mkinitcpio.conf and add LVM, dm-crypt and friends. Please check out the official docs for that.

Regenerate initramfs

mkinitcipio -p

Install the bootloader

bootctl install

From this moment on the system should be usable. Reboot and check if everything is correct.

Then I setup the system to how I need it.

Add myself as a user

pacman -S sudo
useradd -m zeljkobekcic
passwd zeljkobekcic
usermod -aG wheel zeljkobekcic
vim /etc/sudoers # uncomment the line with wheel

From this moment on I just install all packages which I need and I am ready to go. I try to write down each package which I install in my dotfiles.