Arch Linux Installation

LVM on LUKS on MDADM Arch installation with systemd-boot

Partitioning

Create software raid using mdadm:

mdadm --create /dev/md0 --metadata=1.0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda /dev/sdb

Create two partitions:

• /dev/md0p1 - 1GiB - boot partition,
• /dev/md0p2 - 100% free - system partition.

Format the boot partition:

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/md0p1

Encryption

Encrypt the disk:

cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/md0p2

Open the disk with the password set above:

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/md0p2 cryptlvm

LVM

Create a physical volume:

pvcreate /dev/mapper/cryptlvm

Create a volume group:

vgcreate vg01 /dev/mapper/cryptlvm

Create logical partitions:

lvcreate -L<SIZE_OF_RAM> vg01 -n lvswap
lvcreate -L<40-120G> vg01 -n lvroot
lvcreate -L<LEFT_FREE_SPACE - ~50G> vg01 -n lvhome

Format file system on logical partitions:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg01/lvroot
mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg01/lvhome
mkswap /dev/vg01/lvswap

Mount the volumes and file systems:

mount /dev/vg01/lvroot /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/home /mnt/boot
mount /dev/vg01/lvhome /mnt/home
mount /dev/md0p1 /mnt/boot
swapon /dev/vg01/lvswap

Installation

If using Wi-Fi, connect to it via iwctl:

iwctl
station <DEVICE> connect <SSID>

Device name is usually wlan0, but you can always check with the ip command:

ip a

Install base packages, linux firmware, lvm2 and other utilities:

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux-lts linux-firmware lvm2 mdadm efibootmgr networkmanager modemmanager vim \
  usb_modeswitch usbutils dosfstools fuse sshfs nfs-utils wget curl inetutils iftop nmap tcpdump swaks s-nail \
  bind net-tools iw mtr samba mc lsof ffmpeg imagemagick yt-dlp git atop htop openssh autossh dd_rescue postfix \
  cups cups-filters cups-pdf ghostscript gsfonts foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db foomatic-db-ppds foomatic-db-nonfree \
  foomatic-db-nonfree-ppds gutenprint foomatic-db-gutenprint-ppds hplip podman podman-compose prometheus-node-exporter \
  tigervnc libvncserver tree logrotate lsscsi pigz zip unzip 7zip unrar sysstat rlwrap enca recode xmlstarlet smartmontools nvme-cli

Generate fstab:

genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Generate mdadm config:

mdadm --detail --scan >> /mnt/etc/mdadm.conf

chroot into system:

arch-chroot /mnt

Set time locale:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Warsaw /etc/localtime

Set clock:

hwclock --systohc

Set your hostname:

echo 'HOST_NAME' > /etc/hostname

Uncomment your prefered locales in /etc/locale.gen and generate them:

sed -i 's/#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/' /etc/locale.gen
sed -i 's/#pl_PL.UTF-8 UTF-8/pl_PL.UTF-8 UTF-8/' /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen

Set system language:

echo 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' > /etc/locale.conf

Set your keymap:

echo 'KEYMAP=pl' > /etc/vconsole.conf
cat <<EOF > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "system-keyboard"
        MatchIsKeyboard "on"
        Option "XkbLayout" "pl"
EndSection
EOF

Enable NetworkManager and ntp:

systemctl enable NetworkManager
systemctl enable systemd-timesyncd

Because our filesystem is on LVM we will need to enable the correct mkinitcpio hooks.

Edit the /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. Look for the HOOKS variable and update it to look like:

MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)
HOOKS=( ... block mdadm_udev encrypt lvm2 filesystems ... )

Regenerate the initramfs:

mkinitcpio -p linux-lts

Bootloader

Install a bootloader:

mkdir -p /boot/EFI/BOOT /boot/EFI/systemd
cp /usr/lib/systemd/boot/efi/systemd-bootx64.efi /boot/EFI/systemd/
cp /usr/lib/systemd/boot/efi/systemd-bootx64.efi /boot/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI

Create loader directories:

mkdir -p /boot/loader/entries

Edit loader configuration /boot/loader/loader.conf:

default arch.conf
timeout 0
editor no

Create a bootloader entry /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf:

title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux-lts
initrd /initramfs-linux-lts.img
options cryptdevice=UUID={UUID}:cryptlvm root=/dev/vg01/lvroot quiet rw

Replace {UUID} with the UUID of /dev/md0p2.

Add UEFI boot entries:

efibootmgr -c -L Linux\ Boot\ Manager -l \\EFI\\systemd\\systemd-bootx64.efi -d /dev/md0 -p 1
efibootmgr -c -L Linux\ Boot\ Manager -l \\EFI\\BOOT\\BOOTX64.EFI -d /dev/md0 -p 1

Complete

Set a password for root user:

passwd

Add user:

useradd -mG uucp,storage,sys -s /bin/bash user_name
passwd user

Exit chroot, unmount everything and reboot:

exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot now

Other packages:

GPU drivers (nvidia):

pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils nvidia-settings

Fonts:

pacman -S noto-fonts noto-fonts-emoji noto-fonts-cjk

Audio:

pacman -S pipewire pipewire-jack pipewire-pulse pipewire-alsa wireplumber

Bluetooth:

pacman -S bluez bluez-utils
systemctl enable --now bluetooth.service

Make sure to install the above packages before the ones below.

Desktop environment (minimal):

pacman -S xorg xorg-xinit xorg-xrdb xsecurelock ly bspwm sxhkd polybar
systemctl enable --now ly.service

Desktop environment (kde):

pacman -S xorg xorg-xinit xorg-xrdb sddm plasma konsole dolphin
systemctl enable --now sddm.service