I'll preface the motivations/end results for this install. I was using Manjaro for the past year and was a happy camper, but then I added an SSD to my laptop and wondered if I could have some more. Greed, eh.
Here's my dream setup:
/ #root and /home partitions but optimize the space use.I hunted around for a while, EndeavourOS sounded nice at a glance but nothing in the docs implied it could support a tricky partitioning scheme like I wanted. In the end I decided to go with the following setup:
/ #root and /homeThe final kicker is that I was using my existing Manjaro install and was feeling extra lazy while enjoying my music. I didn't want to boot into the cli-only Arch install iso and stay there for hours reading the wiki/internet while I set up my system. If you're treating this as an install guide for Arch, here's the first step:
Step 1: Install Manjaro
I did the whole install below from inside Manjaro while using my existing web browser, music player, desktop environment, shell, etc. Basically, I never left my comfort zone and with a downtime of 5 minutes, booted into the new comfort zone. I'd say that's pretty dang cool and an example of how flexible the tools we have are.
Enjoy the install-notes that I made while doing the install. This post is an after thought, really.
I'm on Manjaro and its, well, mostly Arch, so I'm attempting a setup where I install Arch from the current Manjaro install itself.
Let's install the latest arch install scripts that the arch iso uses.
sudo pacman -S arch-install-scripts
Now, the fiddly bits. pacstrap script depends on a valid pacman mirrorlist being available. we don't want Arch to install Manjaro packages by accident (OUCH!).
sudo cp /etc/pacman.d /etc/pacman.d.bak -r
sudo cp /etc/pacman.conf /etc/pacman.conf.bak
Head over to https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/ and generate a mirrors list Let's automate most of it, eh?
curl https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/?country=IN&protocol=http&protocol=https&ip_version=4 > /tmp/mirrors-commented
sed 's/^.//' /tmp/mirrors-commented > /tmp/mirrors
Paste that list over to the actual location
sudo cp /tmp/mirrors /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
Remove Manjaro's certs and generate new keyring for Arch
sudo rm /etc/pacman.d/gnupg -r
sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux
Update the packagelist
sudo pacman -Syy
The disk has two partitions, both unformatted.
Make the efi partition
sudo mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
make btrfs partition
sudo mkfs.btrfs -L main /dev/nvme0n1p2
mount it and go there
sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
cd /mnt
create subvolumes
sudo btrfs subvolume create root # of course
sudo btrfs subvolume create snapshots # to store snapshots
sudo btrfs subvolume create home # basic files
sudo btrfs subvolume create etc # for easy backup of config files
unmount
cd ..
sudo umount /mnt
make the filesystem structure
handle /
sudo mount -o subvol=root /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
handle /home
sudo mkdir /mnt/home
sudo mount -o subvol=home /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/home
handle /etc
sudo mkdir /mnt/etc
sudo mount -o subvol=etc /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/etc
handle efi partition
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi
mount the whole btrfs volume at /main this is a cool easy way to access all the subvolumes later.
sudo mkdir /mnt/main
sudo mount -o subvol=/ /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/main
Final state after all this (warning, some recursion):
tree /mnt
/mnt
├── boot
│ └── efi
├── etc
├── home
└── main
├── etc
├── home
├── root
│ ├── boot
│ │ └── efi
│ ├── etc
│ ├── home
│ └── main
└── snapshots
We're now going to follow the install guide for a change
Run genfstab (from arch-install-scripts)
genfstab -U /mnt | sudo tee /mnt/etc/fstab
Read it to see if it matches your expectations. Note: it picked up my swap from /dev/sda6. I think I'm fine with that for now. We could remove the UUIDs from here since they aren't exactly needed; let's let it be for now.
We can skip the mirror selection part; we did it in prep phase.
Install important packages.
sudo pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware btrfs-progs
This refreshed the packagelist (presumably from the actual arch mirrors instead of manjaro's) and proceeded to install the packages after importing a hell of a lot of pgp keys. Cool!
ls
> bin boot dev etc home lib lib64 main mnt opt proc root run sbin srv sys tmp usr var
Hmm, looks good.
sudo arch-chroot /mnt
Now, we're inside the chroot
Do pacman voodoo again (not doing this gave cert verifiction errors, so I just did it)
rm /etc/pacman.d/gnupg -r
pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate archlinux
I didn't install vim during pacstrap, so let' do it now. This serves the additional purpose of checking that pacman is able to install stuff properly.
pacman -Syu vim
hilariously, checking 'which vim' fails with 'bash: which: command not found'.
set timezone
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kolkata /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
set locale
locale-gen
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf
set networking stuff
echo "rohitt-arch" > /etc/hostname
cat << EOF >> /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.1.1 rohitt-arch.localdomain rohitt-arch
EOF
personal pref, nmcli and nmtui are awesome.
pacman -S networkmanager
systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
Set a root password
passwd
We need to enable btrfs on the initramfs image. #MANUAL INTERVENTION: add 'btrfs' to the hooks in /mnt/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
vim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
mkinitcpio -P
Install grub: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Installation_2
pacman -S grub efibootmgr
And now configure it
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Enable other OSes to detect Arch
sudo pacman -S lsb-release
pacman -S sudo
EDITOR=vim visudo # Uncomment the first line that has 'wheel' in it; enables the wheel group
sudo useradd -m rohitt
sudo passwd rohitt
usermod -aG wheel rohit
test it:
su - rohitt
sudo ls
yay, didn't get reported to Santa. :)
make common directories
sudo pacman -S xdg-user-dirs
xdg-user-dirs-update
ls
> Desktop Documents Downloads Music Pictures Public Templates Videos tmp
Time for the complex setup. Let's auto mount the current home directory.
mkdir ~/data-drive
cat << EOF | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
/dev/sda6
UUID=b841a4c4-9978-47c9-8d1c-134dabbbc3f6 /home/rohitt/data-drive ext4 defaults,user,noatime 0 2
EOF
let's reapply fstab rules
sudo mount -a
Let's link up some directories.
rm -r ~/Music
ln -s ~/data-drive/rohitt/Music ~/Music
rm -r ~/Pictures
ln -s ~/data-drive/rohitt/Pictures ~/Pictures
rm -r ~/Downloads
ln -s ~/data-drive/rohitt/Downloads ~/Downloads
rm -r ~/Videos
ln -s ~/data-drive/rohitt/Videos ~/Videos
rm -r ~/Desktop
ln -s ~/data-drive/rohitt/Downloads ~/Downloads
ln -s ~/data-drive/rohitt/Documents ~/Parchments
We're now using the user account. Hello again, sudo.
Let's install an AUR helper
cd ~
sudo pacman -S git base-devel
mkdir tmp
cd tmp
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si
cd ~
rm tmp -rf
finally, check it.
which yay
Microcode for intel
sudo pacman -S intel-ucode
Driver for integrated GPU
sudo pacman -S mesa
Driver for nvidia stuff... ugh, might get messy.
sudo pacman -S nvidia
Looks promising, haha. Famous last words.
Install KDE
sudo pacman -S plasma-desktop
Install X server and other things using the meta package group
sudo pacman -S xorg
Make x config
sudo nvidia-xconfig
Install display manager
sudo pacman -S sddm sddm-kcm
Install pipewire. It's a new media server, both for video and audio streams. It's supposed to phase out pulseaudio and jack as well we take part in the webcam and screen recording game. This is a total experiment; I have no clue how pipewire works.
sudo pacman -S pipewire pipewire-pulse pipewire-alsa
Let's mount our current home directory.
cd ~
mkdir mnt
sudo mount /dev/sda5 mnt
sudo chown rohitt mnt
Time to loop over my ~/.config and copy over the good bits.
ln -s ~/mnt/rohitt/.config conf
beets
sudo pacman -S beets
cp -r {conf,.config}/beets
cmus
sudo pacman -S cmus
yay -S cmusfm
cp -r {conf,.config}/cmus
dolphin file browser
cp -r {conf,.config}/dolphinrc
firefox
sudo pacman -S firefox
cp -r mnt/rohitt/.mozilla .mozilla
git
cp mnt/rohitt/.gitconfig .gitconfig
htop
sudo pacman -S htop
cp -r {conf,.config}/htop
kdeconnect
sudo pacman -S kdeconnect
latte-dock
sudo pacman -S latte-dock
cp -r {conf,.config}/latte
cp -r {conf,.config}/lattedockrc
neovim
sudo pacman -R vim
sudo pacman -S neovim
cp -r {conf,.config}/nvim
ssh
sudo pacman -S openssh
cp ~/mnt/rohitt/.ssh . -r
tmux
sudo pacman -S tmux
cp mnt/rohitt/.tmux.conf .tmux.conf
watson
yay -S watson
cp -r {conf,.config}/watson
yakuake
cp -r {conf,.config}/yakuakerc
cp -r {conf,.config}/konsolerc
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/konsole
cp -r ~/mnt/rohitt/.local/share/konsole ~/.local/share/konsole
zsh
sudo pacman -S zsh
cp mnt/rohitt/.zshrc .zshrc
cp mnt/rohitt/.zsh_history .zsh_history
cp -r mnt/rohitt/.oh-my-zsh .oh-my-zsh
chsh rohitt -s /usr/bin/zsh
sudo pacman -S docker vagrant nodejs atom diff-so-fancy
sudo systemctl enable docker.service
make a clones folder
mkdir -p ~/Documents/clones
cd ~/Documents/clones
clone zulip
git clone git@github.com:aero31aero/zulip.git
cd zulip
git remote add upstream https://github.com/zulip/zulip
pull in the zuliprc
cd ~
cp ~/data-drive/rohitt/zuliprc ~/zuliprc
Bring pacman stuff back to normal
sudo rm /etc/pacman.d -r
sudo cp /etc/pacman.d.bak /etc/pacman.d -r
sudo cp /etc/pacman.conf.bak /etc/pacman.conf
Add Arch to Manjaro's GRUB
sudo update-grub
Reboot to our new Arch install
sudo reboot now
First, we boot and realize something is off because our booted up system doesn't have any /etc or /home etc. Turns out keeping fstab in /etc and making the fstab mount itself was a bad idea. xD
Reboot into manjaro and mount /etc somewhere else, then copy the contents into Arch's /etc and remove the mounting instructions for /etc from fstab. While we're at it, let's also remove that /etc subvolume.
sudo btrfs subvolume delete /main/etc
Then, we find out that nvidia's XConfig is broken and we get no graphics. So, we run:
sudo Xorg :0 -configure
sudo systemctl restart sddm.service
This gets us a shitty looking sddm, and we login to our KDE session. Its shitty, but definitely fast.
Eh, I'd like my familiar pulseaudio back.
sudo pacman -S pulseaudio
sudo pacman -R pipewire-alsa
Install some more tools. Really important.
sudo pacman -S cowsay neofetch
Finally, enable prime:
sudo pacman -S nvidia-prime
This wasn't that big a headache.
Some minor annoyances: set locale; I'm not sure why my last attempt didn't work.
echo en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 > /etc/locale.gen && locale-gen
Restore my KDE config: Latte, plasma themes, icons, lockscreen, splash, keybindings, dolphin settings and plugins, etc etc etc. Basically, KDE's configs are so all over the place I got fed up and wrote a tool to copy it for me: kde-sane-conf.
git clone https://gitlab.com/aero31aero/kde-sane-conf
cd kde-sane-conf
tweak the scripts
./backup.sh # backups from my previous partition, here, ~/data-drive which was my last home drive.
./restore.sh # restore to my current home partition.
We know we'll mess this install up eventually, let's futureproof ourselves against it. The current strategy is to create snapshots (and lots of them) automatically and keep them around for a reasonable amount of time.
We could do this manually, or as is the idea with this install, automate it. We have several choices here, but if I were to write a tool out myself, I'd go towards Snapper. Snapper is written by OpenSUSE and allows taking brtfs snapshots automatically based on time/system events.
Install snapper
sudo pacman -S snapper
Create configs for it: format: sudo snapper -c <config-name> create-config <path-to-btrfs-subvolume>
sudo snapper -c root create-config /main/root
sudo snapper -c home create-config /main/home
We just created default configs. Here's what my tweaked version looks like:
sudoedit /etc/snapper/configs/home
sudoedit /etc/snapper/configs/root
My final settings:
limits for timeline cleanup
TIMELINE_MIN_AGE="1800"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_HOURLY="24"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_DAILY="7"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_WEEKLY="2"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_MONTHLY="1"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_YEARLY="0"
I've configured it to keep at max 50 snapshots. This means that if I don't do anything else, I'd have 24 hourly backups, 7 daily, 2 weekly, 1 monthly and 14 pacman related backups.
Let's enable these things.
sudo systemctl enable snapper-timeline.timer
sudo systemctl start snapper-timeline.timer
sudo systemctl enable snapper-cleanup.timer
sudo systemctl start snapper-cleanup.timer
Let's do more with these. Install pacman hooks so snapper automatically takes 2 snapshots (1 before and 1 after) for each run of pacman.
sudo pacman -S snap-pac
Now, let's make it so these snapshots are automatically picked up by grub so I can boot from them in case something bad happens.
yay -S snap-pac-grub
Note: aur packages also trigger these hooks, which is amazing. aur is said to be the riskiest thingy in the arch universe and I'm now somewhat protected against aur packages breaking my install accidentally. Malicious actors are still a risk, though.
Finally, let's list our snapshots so far:
sudo snapper -c root list
sudo snapper -c home list
BTW, I now use Arch. Finally.
$ neofetch
rohitt@rohitt-arch
------------------
OS: Arch Linux x86_64
Host: HP Pavilion Laptop 15-cc1xx
Kernel: 5.4.94-1-lts
Uptime: 6 hours, 16 mins
Packages: 1244 (pacman)
Shell: zsh 5.8
Resolution: 1920x1080, 1920x1080
DE: Plasma 5.20.5
WM: KWin
WM Theme: ChromeOS-dark
Theme: ChromeOSDark [Plasma], Breeze [GTK2/3]
Icons: Tela-circle [Plasma], Tela-circle [GTK2/3]
CPU: Intel i7-8550U (8) @ 4.000GHz
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce MX130
Memory: 10168MiB / 15901MiB
Thanks for reading, if you made it so far. I hope this inspires you to customize your setup to your heart's extent. This was a fun ride for me and a friend encouraged me to post it here. I learned a lot while doing this experiment, and I hope you got some cool ideas reading my setup.