Last time I riced my desktop linux install (sheesh… 8ish years ago now?) I didn’t take any notes, which was a bit annoying a few times. This time I’ve decided to write up the process and put them here. This is part 1: setting up the filesystem.

Filesystem choice

Based on this comparison, I’m going with btrfs. I’m OK with not using data deduplication for now, and I’ll use dmcrypt for disk encryption.

Partitioning

I like to keep my partition scheme simple, just an EFI partition and a main partition. I’ll encrypt the main partition with dmcrypt/LUKS. I’m also leaving some extra space (1TB) on the drive for future use, since I can’t easily grow/shrink the encrypted partition.

Oh also: Before partitioning I double checked that the drive was using the optimal sector size with `smartctl -a /dev/nvme0n1 | grep -E ‘(Sector|LBA)\sSize\b’ (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Talk:Advanced_Format)

Encryption

Following the arch wiki:

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cryptsetup -v luksFormat /dev/nvme1n1p2
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cryptsetup open /dev/nvme1n1p2 root

Filesystem(s)

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mkfs.btrfs -L linux-root /dev/mapper/root
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mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt
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mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/nvme1n1p1
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mount --mkdir /dev/nvme1n1p1 /mnt/boot

Install the OS!

Mostly following these instructions

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# bootstrap the system
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pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware
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# gen fstab
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genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
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# chroot
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arch-chroot /mnt
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# install iwd so I can connect to wifi when I'm logged in, and neovim so I can edit things
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pacman -S iwd neovim
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# set the timezone
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ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Pacific /etc/localtime
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hwclock --systohc
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# set a root password
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passwd

Manually edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment en_us.UTF-8 UTF-8. I don’t “think” I need any other locales for now.

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# generate/configure locale
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locale-gen
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echo 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' > /etc/locale.conf
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# Set the system hostname
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echo -n 'shadowfax' > /etc/hostname

Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and update the hooks, adding encrypt (see docs):

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HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont block encrypt filesystems fsck)

Then regenerate the intramfs

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mkinitcpio -P

Bootloader setup

I’m using grub, of course. Following these docs. For future reference:

• I’m not using a separate partitions for boot/EFI (I trust my maid)
• The EFI partition is nvme1n1p1 (1GB)
• I mount ESP to /boot

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# install packages
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pacman -S grub efibootmgr
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# Install grub
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grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=esp --bootloader-id=GRUB

I like using a generated grub config file. To set that up, edit /etc/default/grub and then run grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg to generate the actual config file. The main change I made to the grub config was setting:

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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="cryptdevice=UUID=9cb6d1bc-c868-486d-c871bb6e0094:root root=/dev/mapper/root"
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GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

Brief asside:

Sooo… my old linux drive actually died yesterday while I was trying to do a secure delete of all the data on my old linux partition. I thought this wasn’t an issue since I was reinstalling linux anyway, but it turns out I think my windows EFI partition was on there. I don’t feel like dealing with windows right now so I’m going to just ignore it, but at some point I’m gonna have to go back and recover windows… For now it’s kaput (I don’t think any of the partitions on the other drive look like there’s the windows EFI). I set GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false though so it’s ready to go when I do fix windows.

Then generate the actual grub config with grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg