Arch installation

I was a long time a macbook fanboy. After some wired news about apples macOS, some bugs and so on, I had decide to switch to arch-linux. The os that I use already at work, and I’m very happy with that. So, after this decision i sold macbook and bought a dell xps 13 9370. Now I’m writing this post on my new xps with arch.

USB drive

Create a bootable usb drive with a arch iso (for beginner: antergos live iso):

sudo dd bs=4M if=/path/to/archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdX status=progress && sync

Boot the usb drive in efi mode and verify that with efivar -l

Partitioning disk

Show your disk with lsblk and start the partitioning with gdisk /dev/sdX

GPT fdisk
Command: o
This option delets all partitions and creates a new protective MBR.
Proceed? (Y/N): y

Efi partition

Command: n
Partition number (1-128, default 1):
First sector:
Last sector: +250M
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code on GUID: ef00

Root filesystem

Command: n
Partition number (1-128, default 2):
First sector:
Last sector: +185G
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code on GUID (Enter = 8300): 

Swap partition

Command: n
Partition number (1-128, default 3):
First sector:
Last sector: 
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code on GUID (Enter = 8300): 8200

Show the configuration with p in gdisk menu.

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048          514047   250.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System
   2          514048       388487167   185.0 GiB   8300  Linux filesystem
   3       388487168       410007551   10.3 GiB    8200  Linux swap

To save this partitions, press w and confirm with y

Create the filesystems with the following commands:

# mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n EFI /dev/sdX1
# mkfs.btrfs -f -L ROOT /dev/sdX2 /dev/sdX
# mkswap -L SWAP /dev/sdX3
# swapon /dev/sdX3

Create btrfs subvolumes on the data partition:

# mount /dev/sdX2 /mnt
# cd /mnt
# btrfs sub create @
# btrfs sub create @home
# btrfs sub create @pkg
# btrfs sub create @snapshots
# ls
@ @home @pkg @snapshots
# cd
# umount /mnt

Mount btrfs subvolumes

# mount -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache,ssd,subvol=@ /dev/sdX2 /mnt
# mkdir -p /mnt/boot
# mkdir -p /mnt/home
# mkdir -p /mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg
# mkdir -p /mnt/.snapshots
# mkdir -p /mnt/btrfs
# mount -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache,ssd,subvol=@home /dev/sdX2 /mnt/home
# mount -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache,ssd,subvol=@pkg /dev/sdX2 /mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg
# mount -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache,ssd,subvol=@snapshots /dev/sdX2 /mnt/.snapshots
# mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/boot
# mount -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache,ssd,subvolid=5 /dev/sdX2 /mnt/btrfs

Show all the configurations with df -Th

Filesystem          Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
[...]
/dev/sdX2      btrfs     185G   25G  161G  14% /btrfs
/dev/sdX2      btrfs     185G   25G  161G  14% /.snapshots
/dev/sdX2      btrfs     185G   25G  161G  14% /var/cache/pacman/pkg
/dev/sdX2      btrfs     185G   25G  161G  14% /home
/dev/sdX1      vfat      247M   58M  190M  24% /boot

Arch installation

Install arch on the mounted partitions:

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel btrfs-progs dosfstools bash-completion wpa_supplicant dialog

Create fstab with genfstag -Lp /mnt > /mnt/etc/fstab and check it with cat /mnt/etc/fstab

Change root to your arch system with arch-chroot /mnt and do some configurations:

# echo myhost > /etc/hostname
# echo LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
# vi /etc/locale.gen
# locale-gen
# echo KEYMAP=de-latin1 > /etc/vconsole.conf
# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin /etc/localtime

Change some kernel parameters for btrfs in your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:

[...]
MODULES=(vfat btrfs)
[...]
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf block btrfs filesystems keyboard)
[...]

and recreate your kernel with mkinitcpio -p linux

Set root password with passwd

Install the bootctl bootloader:

# bootctl --path=/boot install

Change the loader configuration in /boot/loader/loader.conf to:

default     arch
editor      0

Create the arch entrie in boot/loader/netries/arch.conf:

title   Arch Linux Btrfs
linux   /vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /intel-ucode.img
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
options root=LABEL=ROOT rootflags=subvol=@ rw

Optional: Cleaning up efi entries with efibootmgr -b 2 -B (ex. delete entrie 2)

Install the last packages before reboot: pacman -Syu && pacman -S xorg-server xorg-init

Sources

unicks.eu - Arch my way
tadly/pacaur_install.sh gloriouseggroll