author

date

title

Simone Ruffini

March 2020

Arch install for DELL XPS 9570

Read everitying while keeping an eye to Arch installation Guide and GloriusEggroll

Pre-Installation

Create Bootable Media

Create a bootable device with RUFUS with dd method () or by using dd.

Windows: RUFUS with dd
*nix:

sudo dd bs=4M if=<path/to/input>.iso of=/dev/sd<?> conv=fdatasync  status=progress

Boot in arch linux. Remember to disable Secure Boot and RAID intel otherwise nvme devices wont be shown.

Verify the boot mode

If UEFI mode is enabled on an UEFI motherboard, Archiso will boot Arch Linux accordingly via systemd-boot. To verify this, list the efivars directory:

ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

Connect to the internet

To set up a network connection, go through the following steps: Ensure your network interface is listed and enabled, for example with ip-link(8):

ip link

Connect to the wireless LAN. Try with wifi-menu of netctl package:

wifi-menu

If somethig goes wrong you can modify the network profile with
vim /etc/netctl/<profile_name>

The connection may be verified with ping:

ping archlinux.org

Update the system clock

Use timedatectl(1) to ensure the system clock is accurate:

timedatectl set-ntp true

Partition the disks

When recognized by the live system, disks are assigned to a block device such as /dev/sda or /dev/nvme0n1. To identify these devices, use lsblk or fdisk.

lsblk

Results ending in rom, loop or airoot may be ignored. The following partitions are required for a chosen device:

One partition for the root directory /.
If UEFI is enabled, an EFI system partition.

Using LVM and with a graphical interface to partiton disk use cfdisk.

cfdisk /dev/<device>

Inside cfdisk:

Make a GPT partition table if not already exisiting
New 512M partition for EFI, change partition type with EFI System
Remaining of disk size (no option) with default type Linux filesystem
write and quit

LVM partitions

Visit LVM ita. In this section the storage device will be sda!

Create physical volume and check with pvdisplay
```
pvcreate /dev/sda2 
```
Create Volume Group and check with vgdisplay
```
vgcreate VolGrp0 /dev/sda2
```

Create Logical Volumes and check with lvldisplay

lvcreate -L 20G VolGrp0 -n root
lvcreate -C y -L 8G VolGrp0 -n swap
lvcreate -l 100%FREE VolGrp0 -n home

Format the partitions

Once the partitions have been created, each must be formatted with an appropriate file system.

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/<boot_partition> 
mkfs.f2fs -l root /dev/VolGrp00/root
mkfs.f2fs -l home /dev/VolGrp0/home

Initialize the swap

mkswap /dev/VolGrp0/swap
swapon /dev/VolGrp0/swap

The partitioning scheme and mount point of the EFI Sytem Partition (ESB) are tided to the type of booloader used. In this guide systemd-boot will be used (look at installation section). The mount point of the ESB partition in Systemd-boot needs to contain kernel and initramfs files. So boot is effectively the ESP.

Mount the file systems

Non existen directories must be created first

mount /dev/VolGrp0/root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/home
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/VolGrp0/home /mnt/home
mount /dev/<boot_partition> /mnt/boot

Installation

Select mirrors

Packages to be installed must be downloaded from mirror servers, which are defined in
/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. The higher a mirror is placed in the list, the more priority it is given when downloading a package. This file will later be copied to the new system by pacstrap, so it is worth getting right.
Make a backup of the mirror list:

cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup

Install pacman-contrib package containing the rankmirrors script.

pacman -Sy
pacman -S pacman-contrib

If pacman is not working then probably all servers in the mirror list are commented. Uncomment one by modyfing mirrorlist and after the install recomment it.

To be shure that all servers are availble for ranking run tht command to uncomment all the lines in mirrorlist: |sed -i 's/^#Server/Server/' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup| Now we will run mirrors, it can take a wile and no output is made in the process so just wait and monitor on another tty with top. The script will rank the first 6 best mirrors delting the other ones.

rankmirrors -n 6 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Copy the remaining mirrors in the file.

Install essential packages

Use the pacstrap script to install the base package, Linux kernel and firmware for common hardware. The base package does not include all tools from the live installation, so installing other packages may be necessary for a fully functional base system. In particular, consider installing:

userspace utilities for the management of file systems that will be used on the system,
utilities for accessing RAID or LVM partitions,
specific firmware for other devices not included in linux-firmware,
software necessary for networking,
a text editor,
packages for accessing documentation in man and info pages: man-db, man-pages and texinfo.

To install other packages or package groups, append the names to the pacstrap command above (space separated) or use pacman while chrooted into the new system. For comparison, packages available in the live system can be found in packages.x86_64.

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware vim man-db man-pages lvm2

Configure the system

Generate Fstab

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

Check if there is a entry for every partition and the one for swap too with vim.

Chroot

Now we are going to chroot into our newly installed system and begin to configure its booting, time, and language:

arch-chroot /mnt

Time zone

Set the time zone:

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

Run hwclock(8) to generate /etc/adjtime:

hwclock --systohc --utc

Localization

Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and other needed locale in /etc/locale.gen, and generate them with:

locale-gen

Create the locale.conf(5) file, set the LANG variable as your language:

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

Network configuration

Hostname

Create the hostname file:

echo DellXPS > /etc/hostname

Add matching entries to hosts(5):

vim /etc/hosts
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
127.0.0.1   localhost
::1         localhost
127.0.1.1   DellXPS.localdomain DellXPS

Network Manager

Install NetworkManager as our network manager. NetworkMangaer has and internal dhcp service, so if DHCPCD is installed remove berforehand.
Install networkmanager and enable it as service:

pacman -S NetworkManager
systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

Enable trim support

For safe, weekly TRIM service on SSDs and all other devices that enable TRIM support:

systemctl enable fstrim.timer

Enabling multilib and Arch AUR

If you are running a 64bit system then you need to enable the multilib repository.
Uncomment in /etc/pacman.conf:

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Update the sistem with pacman.

Boot loader

Install systemd-boot bootloader Recheck if the EFI variables are mounted

mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

With the ESP mounted to /boot, use bootctl(1) to install systemd-boot into the EFI system partition by running:

bootctl --path=/boot install

This will copy the systemd-boot boot loader to the EFI partition, it will then set systemd-boot as the default EFI application (default boot entry) loaded by the EFI Boot Manager.
Create configuration file to add an entry for Arch Linux:

vim /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options root=/dev/mapper/VolGrp0-root rw

The option tag is the command line options to pass to the EFI program or kernel parameters. The parameter root tells ther kernel where the root file system partition is to be found. root accepts persistent block device naming but in our case since we are using LVM, all device blocks are persitent.

If root is not set properly the kernel will load but not finding the root partition it will create a temporary one and put you in an emergency shell.

If at reboot the bootloader is not shown you can either press space at boot or change the boot/loader/loader.conf file adding timeout 3.

Add pacamn Hook to update the boot manager

Whenever there is a new version of systemd-boot, the boot manager can be optionally reinstalled by the user. The update can be automatically triggered using pacman hooks.

sudo vim /etc/pacman.d/hooks/systemd-boot.hook
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Trigger]
Type = Package
Operation = Upgrade
Target = systemd

[Action]
Description = Updating systemd-boot
When = PostTransaction
Exec = /usr/bin/bootctl update

Add Intel microcode

Install microcode:

pacman -S intel-ucode

Update the arch systemd-boot loader file to load microcode:

vim /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...
initrd /intel-ucode.img
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
...

Root password

Set the root password:

passwd

User setup

Add a default user with:

useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power -s /bin/bash simone

set a password for that user:

passwd simone

Setting up sudoers

Edit the sudoers file to give this user sudo privileges. The configuration file for sudo is in /etc/sudoers. It should always be edited with the visudo(8) command. visudo locks the sudoers file, saves edits to a temporary file, and checks that file's grammar before copying it to /etc/sudoers.
Uncomment:

visudo
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Make sudoers require typing the root password instead of their own password by adding:

visudo
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Defaults rootpw

LVM checks

Create lvm2, udev hooks and enable dm_mod module in mkinitcpio:

vim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOOKS="base udev ... lvm2 filesystems"
...
MODULES="dm_mod..."

This is needed otherwise the kernel is unable to find the lvm partitions. Pay attention to the order in HOOKS, this is ther order in which the kernel loads the modules so any wrong changes could dtop the loading of the kernel.
If changes to the file are made, initramfs has to be rebuilt with:

mkminitcpio -p linux

Instatiante Xdg-Users dir

Xdg-users-dir s a tool to help manage "well known" user directories like the desktop folder and the music folder. It also handles localization (i.e. translation) of the filenames.

pacman -Sy xdg-users-dir
#then run the package
xdg-user-dirs-update

The user service xdg-user-dirs-update.service will also be installed and enabled by default.

Install additional Packages

pacman -S bash-completion vi neovim

Install the Window Manager

sudo pacman sway

If video drivers are requested use Mesa since nvidia is not supported. To run sway just type it in terminal

Apply scaling

Get information about the current display and copy the display name.

swaymsg -t get_outputs
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Output eDP-1 'Sharp Corporation 0x148D 0x00000000' (focused)
  Current mode: 3840x2160 @ 59.997002 Hz
  Position: 0,0
  Scale factor: 2.000000
  Scale filter: nearest
  Subpixel hinting: unknown
  Transform: normal
  Workspace: 1
  Max render time: off
  Available modes:
    3840x2160 @ 59.997002 Hz
...

Here the display name is eDP-1, so now this value will be used in the config file of sway. If there is no config file/.config folder run:

mkdir ~/.config
mkdir ~/.config/sway
cp /etc/sway/config ~/.config/sway/config

Then add the following line to add scaling

.config/sway/config
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...
output eDP-1 scale 2
...

From now on .config aka dotfiles will be available on github so just copy the entire folder and keep it under version controll

Install other usefull packages

Install yay

yay is an AUR helper. Before beeing able to download yay we need to add another repository to pacman that allows us to download it:

sudo vim /etc/pacman.conf
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...
[archlinuxcn]
Server = http://repo.archlinuxcn.org/$arch
## or install archlinuxcn-mirrorlist-git and use the mirrorlist
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/archlinuxcn-mirrorlist
...

Now we can update pacman repos and install a keyring that will let us use them. After that we can simply install yay via pacman.

pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S archlinuxcn-keyring
sudo pacman -S yay

Install a menu to launch applications from sway

The normal choiche is to use dmenu but it uses X-Wayland and so I preferred to install bemenu that uses natively wayland.

yay bemenu bemeneu-wlroots

After that we need to assign bemenu as the default menu to sway and pipe its output to sway so that it can execute the selected application.

vim .config/sway/config
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...
set $menu bemenu-run -b -l 10 --scrollbar=always -H 25 -m all | xargs 
swaymsg exec --
...

The default key-binding to execute this line is [super]+D you can change it by searching for $menu. The paramenters passed to bemenu-run all visible through man bemenu.

Install X-Wayalnd for Xorg app support

X-Wayland lets run X.org apps in emulated mod thorugh wayland compositor.

yay xorg-server-xwayland

Files

README.md

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