I use ARCH btw
Following the guide is mostly ok ; A word on something I completely forgot about :
When you use a graphical installer, it will both assist in creating / deleting / reorganizing partitions, then at formatting them or not, then in assigning their roles as "root", "home", or "swap" and so on ; I never realized those where completely independent actions, and that you can partition or not, format or not, and, assign partitions with fstab later on independently.
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READ THE Fine MANUAL
(Assuming you have a thumbdrive ready and working)
- Use F12 on Fatitude to get to the Choose Your Boot Media at startup
- Load correct keymap :
# loadkeys fr-latin1
- Network interface probably gonna be wlan0 ; in doubt, do ip link
- Use iwctl to connect to the wireless network
[iwd]# station wlan0 scan [iwd]# station device get-networks [iwd]# station device connect SSID [iwd]# exit # ping archlinux.org
# timedatectl
- Check partitions architecture :
# fdisk -l
- Only format your root partition to install a fresh system on it. Add swap if you have swap:
# mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/sda6 (the -f option is to override former btrfs subvolumes) # mkswap /dev/sda8
- Mount the filesystems you're going to use on the /mnt folder of your live system:
# mount --mkdir /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot/efi # mount --mkdir /dev/sda7 /mnt/home # mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/ # swapon /dev/swap_partition
- Now start reading Yes, but
Yes, but
- No need to partition if there's no need to! (esp EFI) You'll run into a permissions nightmare on your /home, but that's better than loosing data :
When the /home partition is mounted to /mnt/home at 'pacstrap' time, just chmod -r 777 the entire contents of the previous /home folder ; when you make your new user, be sure to give it another name.
- Only format your system / partition (or root partition) with makefs.<type of filesystem>.
- It's ok to mount the EFI partition to /boot/efi and not simply /boot so as to not fill that small partition with everything in /boot, especially numerous kernels
On my fresh install, the EFI partition is 260MB which is a factory default - and my /boot partition is already 268MB ; ergo, it wouldn't fit, with just 4 kernels + the windows stub
Default install through pacstrap needs a lot more stuff, you'll probably want
- base-devel linux-lts os-prober pacman-contrib git grub efibootmgr
- grep rsync nano tar git iwd less - snapper ?
- gdm gnome networkmamager gedit - or any of your login manager and desktop environment of choice
- bluez bluez-utils usbutils git go zip wget
- firefox vlc smplayer gimp calibre
When you chroot in, it's normal for os-prober to not see the M$ partition, even if it is mounted ; you should re-run os-prober, and re-run grub-mkconfig, when you did reboot into the actual, fresh system.
don't forget to enable some systemd services, duh
- gdm.service
- NetworkManager.service
- bluetooth.service
with
systemctl enable <name of unit>.service
If you are already in your graphic environment and instead need it to be enabled and start immediately (like for network), run
systemctl enable --now <name of unit>.service
And make a basic user
Then create a basic user with
useradd -m -G %wheel <name of user>
Add it to sudoers with
EDITOR=nano visudo
Now you can reboot. Have you installed some network software? Have you enabled a graphic shell ? That's the core needs for a functional, fresh install to be tuned further as needed.
Set up aur or install flatpak for dropbox and ungoogled-chromium ; add python-gpgme for dropbox.
Other Housechores
Uncheck the os-prober-false at the bottom of /etc/default/grub ; generally speaking, tweak the grub file to your liking and re-run grub-mkconfig Add the user to sudo with EDITOR=nano visudo setup keyboard in gnome setup keyboard in GDM with localectl set-x11-keymap fr Enable tap to click in gnome setup wiregard
Good luck with btrfs, and snapper, and snap-pac, and grub-btrfs, and don't forget to hack mkinitcpio as described. Then try your luck with
# snapper rollback --ambit classic <snapshot number to rollback to>
The pyhton script snapper-rollback doesn't work for me, asks for some cquota definition that is said to be damageable to performance on the root partition ; note that I nevertheless blindly imputed some commands to enable quota, rescan them and such. sources suse and oracle.
AND IF YOU FAIL...
Just re-do the whole install thing ; it is better to loose 20 minutes re-doing it than spending 20 days fixing it
For reference, and in memoriam of failing to remember one of the basics of building a Linux system, my current fstab (mysteriously auto-generated somehow) :
# Static information about the filesystems. # See fstab(5) for details. # <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> # /dev/sda6 UUID=38472571-3738-42e4-9561-47facca89d00 / btrfs rw,relatime,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/ 0 0 # /dev/sda7 UUID=05d5954f-f948-4d21-9813-aa687a8d4cf4 /home btrfs rw,relatime,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/ 0 0 # /dev/sda2 LABEL=SYSTEM UUID=B651-2AC6 /boot/efi vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 2 # /dev/sda8 UUID=3845f812-ba5d-4113-8dbe-635448119669 none swap defaults 0 0
