This is a guide and a set of ansible roles to provision an Archlinux installation, please be aware this is made just for personal use, use it at your own risk.
I like to install Archlinux using SSH, you can use this guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_via_SSH
Basically it is just systemctl enable sshd && passwd.
In order to use the provisioner we need to install ansible git and make, as we are going
to use the provisioner to bootstrap the entire system.
mount -o remount,size=1G /run/archiso/cowspace
pacman -Sy --noconfirm ansible git make
The first command is needed because the root partition from live USB is just 256M which is not enough to install other dependencies.
Let me start by mentioning this guide: https://github.com/egara/arch-btrfs-installation which is definetely my main source of truth for the following steps.
I want to use a BTRFS filesystem with the following layout:
nvme0n1 (Volume)
|
|
- @ (Subvolume - It will be the current /)
- @home (Subvolume - it will be the current /home)
- @snapshots (Subvolume - It will contain the root snaphosts)
- @home.snapshots (Subvolume - It will contain the home directories snaphosts)
I don't know if this layout is the best choice, but AFAIK this is the simplest way to start and most compatible layout with tools like snapper or timeshift.
What i've used as a reference:
- https://forum.manjaro.org/t/default-btrfs-mount-options-and-subvolume-layout/43250/33
- https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/fkcamq/noob_btrfs_subvolume_layout_help/fks5mph/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
- https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/SysadminGuide#Layout
- https://www.jwillikers.com/btrfs-layout
- https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:BTRFS#Default_Subvolumes
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/User:M0p/LUKS_Root_on_Btrfs
This is the most flexible way to keep the things well separated and giving me the chance
to automatically snapshot the root or home volumes separately and using grub-btrfs
to automatically from snapshots (TO BE TESTED).
This is my current disk layout (using cfdisk):
Disk: /dev/nvme0n1
Size: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Label: gpt, identifier: 4BAEBBEA-64DB-4DE6-A7F2-04E8972BF153
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
>> /dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 487423 485376 237M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 487424 1139156991 1138669568 543G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3 1139156992 1206265855 67108864 32G Linux swap
/dev/nvme0n1p4 1206265856 1881548799 675282944 322G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p5 1881548800 1953525134 71976335 34.3G Linux swap
I will use /dev/nvme0n1p4 and /dev/nvme0n1p5 respectively for / and swap partitions.
The rest is a Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installation. I'll share the EFI partition too between the two distros.
We are going to create btrfs volumes and subvolumes:
mkfs.btrfs -L arch /dev/nvme0n1p4
mount /dev/nvme0n1p4 /mnt
# This is a layout made to be compatible with timeshift and similare to the Manjaro one (https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/fkcamq/comment/fks5mph/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@snapshots
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home.snapshots
Next, create all the directories needed and mount all the partitions (/boot/efi included) in order to start the installation:
umount /mnt
# Mount root and create default directories.
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@ /dev/nvme0n1p4 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/{home,boot}
mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
mkdir -p /mnt/mnt/allvolumes
# Mount efi partition.
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi
# Mount the subvolumes
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=@home /dev/nvme0n1p4 /mnt/home
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,subvol=/ /dev/nvme0n1p4 /mnt/mnt/allvolumes
Please note that we are mounting btrfs with compression enabled to reduce writes (and ssd lifespan) and performance here and here some refs.
Done, we can now run the provisioner.
Start by cloning the repo:
git clone https://github.com/paolomainardi/archlinux-ansible-provisioner.git provisioner
cd provisionerNow we run the first part of the installation, which will run pacstrap
and some other installations tasks:
make boostrap install-packagesNow that the process if finished you can setup the password for the created user:
arch-chroot /mnt passwd <your-user>