Boot off the CD or USB Drive
Obtain Internets
Use the regular installer through the network setup... or...
# ip link set wlan0 up
# iwconfig wlan0 essid "[SSID Name]"
# dhcpcd wlan0
... or if there's encryption...
# ip link set wlan0 up
# wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c <(wpa_passphrase ARPANET sw0rdfish)
# dhcpcd wlan0
Initial Steps and Hard Drive Setup
# pacman -Sy gptfdisk btrfs-progs
# gdisk /dev/sda
Konami Code: o, y, n, enter, enter, +512M, ef00, n, enter, enter, enter, enter, w, y.
Adjust as necessary, but this will leave you with a 512Mb formatted EFI partition. Be sure to use the right device located in dev. This could be something like /dev/nvme0n1 if you're using an NVME type SSD.
For the rest of the document, pay attention to partitions. This guide utilizes two partitions. They may be identified like /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 or they could be identified like /dev/nvme0n1p1 and /dev/nvme0n1p2.
BTRFS Setup
#!/bin/sh
mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1
mkfs.btrfs -L Arch /dev/sda2
mkdir /btrfs
mount -o defaults,noatime /dev/sda2 /btrfs
btrfs sub create /btrfs/__active
## btrfs subvolume create /btrfs/__active/home
## btrfs subvolume create /btrfs/__active/usr
## btrfs subvolume create /btrfs/__active/var
mount -o subvol=__active /dev/sda2 /mnt
mkdir /btrfs/boot /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /btrfs/boot
mount --bind /btrfs/boot /mnt/boot
mkdir -p /mnt/var/lib/Arch /btrfs/__snapshot
chmod -R 0755 /btrfs/__active
The above commented sections are because BTRFS is yet to support recursive snapshots, meaning if you took a snapshot of __active and tried to boot off of it, arch would not be able to see home, usr, or var because they are snapshots on their own. You could snapshot just those directories and replace those at will manually if you choose to, but without the necessity of a separate home partition, there is no real point. I'll just snapshot the whole thing.
System Preparation and Installation
Packages in the pacstrap command can be modified, but you must have base, base-devel, btrfs-progs, linux, and go. It is strongly recommended to install all of the ones listed in order to get up to speed quickly.
#!/bin/sh
mkdir /mnt/{proc,dev,sys,var/lib/pacman}
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-headers linux-api-headers linux-firmware intel-ucode btrfs-progs zsh vim git networkmanager go
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -t sysfs none /mnt/sys
mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
EFI System Partition
Check "/sys/firmware/efi" to see if it exists. If this directory does not exist, you're not booted with EFI. You must be on EFI for this to work. Additionally, run efibootmgr to ensure that you do not have any garbage entries from previous installs. If you do, you can remove them with efibootmgr -B -b 001A. Replace the hex as appropriate. You can view old entries with efibootmgr -v.
# echo "initrd=\initramfs-linux-fallback.img root=/dev/sda2 rootflags=subvol=__active ro" | iconv -f ascii -t ucs2 > bootfallback
# efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/sda --part 1 --label "Arch Linux Fallback" --loader '\vmlinuz-linux' --append-binary-args bootfallback
# echo "initrd=\initramfs-linux.img root=/dev/sda2 rootflags=subvol=__active ro" | iconv -f ascii -t ucs2 > boot
# efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/sda --part 1 --label "Arch Linux" --loader '\vmlinuz-linux' --append-binary-args boot
Or if you're on an NVME storage device:
# echo "initrd=\initramfs-linux-fallback.img root=/dev/nvme0n1p2 rootflags=subvol=__active ro" | iconv -f ascii -t ucs2 > bootfallback
# efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 1 --label "Arch Linux Fallback" --loader '\vmlinuz-linux' --append-binary-args bootfallback
# echo "initrd=\initramfs-linux.img root=/dev/nvme0n1p2 rootflags=subvol=__active ro" | iconv -f ascii -t ucs2 > boot
# efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 1 --label "Arch Linux" --loader '\vmlinuz-linux' --append-binary-args boot
If you have multiple drives, it is recommended to use UUIDs to identify the drives:
echo "initrd=\initramfs-linux-fallback.img root=PARTUUID=a2b86018-7aa7-488c-a349-04532bcff7c3 rootflags=subvol=__active ro" | iconv -f ascii -t ucs2 > bootfallback
efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/nvme1n1 --part 1 --label "Arch Linux Fallback" --loader '\vmlinuz-linux' --append-binary-args bootfallback
echo "initrd=\initramfs-linux.img root=PARTUUID=a2b86018-7aa7-488c-a349-04532bcff7c3 rootflags=subvol=__active ro" | iconv -f ascii -t ucs2 > boot
efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/nvme1n1 --part 1 --label "Arch Linux" --loader '\vmlinuz-linux' --append-binary-args boot
Install Yay and mkinitcpio Hook
# pacman-key --init --gpgdir /mnt/etc/pacman.d/gnupg
# pacman-key --populate archlinux --gpgdir /mnt/etc/pacman.d/gnupg
# cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/resolv.conf
# chroot /mnt
Create your standard user so we can use Yay without root. Replace username with your user. Set the root password.
# useradd -m -g users -G wheel username
# passwd
# visudo
Edit the sudoers file to allow wheel group users to use sudo.
Set the user password and change to the new user. Replace username with your user.
# passwd username
# su username
Install Yay and then the btrfs hooks for early init:
# git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
# cd yay
# makepkg -si
# yay -S mkinitcpio-btrfs
# exit
# vim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
Add crc32c to the MODULES section. Add btrfs_advanced to the end of the HOOKS section and remove the fsck hook. Save the file and regenerate the initial ramdisk.
# mkinitcpio -p linux
Edit The fstab File
# vim /etc/fstab
Should look like this... mostly...
/dev/sda2 / btrfs defaults,noatime 0 0
/dev/sda2 /var/lib/Arch btrfs defaults,noatime,subvol=/__active 0 0
/dev/sda1 /boot vfat defaults 0 0
Or, if you have multiple drives, it is recommended to use UUIDs to identify the drives. You can get the drive UUIDs by running blkid or ls -l /dev/disk/by-partuuid . This looks like this:
PARTUUID=a2b86018-7aa7-488c-a349-04532bcff7c3 / btrfs defaults,noatime 0 0
PARTUUID=a2b86018-7aa7-488c-a349-04532bcff7c3 /var/lib/Arch btrfs defaults,noatime,subvol=/__active 0 0
PARTUUID=0bedc9bf-fe60-4125-91b4-7ba7f0ec756f /boot vfat defaults 0 0
Set the proper locale information:
# sed -i '/^#en_US.UTF/s/^#//' /etc/locale.gen
# locale-gen
Prepare for System Reboot
# exit
# cd /
# umount /mnt/{dev,proc,sys,boot}
# umount /mnt
# reboot
After the first boot, login as root, set locale and hostname:
# localectl set-locale LANG="en_US.utf8"
# hostnamectl set-hostname MilosThinkPad
# reboot