archsetup

On how to do the full encryption setup check here https://blog.bespinian.io/posts/installing-arch-linux-on-uefi-with-full-disk-encryption/ But use GRUB like recommended in Arch wiki.

Description of all steps during Archlinux installation. This is personal guide, I just documented all the steps that I did. It's lacking some details (maybe I will update it latter, maybe not). If you, for some reason, decided to follow it, it's up to you, but I personally will recommend you to follow https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

Increasing font in virtual console

Since I have fhd screen all font are tiny so I had to make it bigger to read: /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts contain all the available fonts. I choose setfont iso02-12x22.psfu.gz since it's the biggest one.

Wifi

Run wifi-menu. We are using netctl here. It is a CLI and profile-based network manager and an Arch project. Verify by ping google.com

Update the system clock

This is important step because clock setup will be referenced in the future during our progress. timedatectl set-timezone <your_timezone_country/your_timezone_city>

timedatectl may be used to query and change the system clock and its settings, and enable or disable time synchronization services.

Validate by timedatectl status

Partitioning and formatting

The process of dividing a disk into logical areas that can be worked with separately is called partitioning. Disk partitioning is done to subdivide the disk into pieces with broadly different purposes.

In our case we need two partitions on our disk:

1. EFI System

The EFI system partition (ESP) is a partition on a data storage device (usually a hard disk drive or solid-state drive) that is used by computers adhering to the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).

What that means is that the EFI Partition is an interface for the computer to boot linux off of. its like a step taken before it runs the Linux filesystem partition. its really small but basically without that partition your computer wouldn't know how to boot linux.

2. Linux filesystem

This is where our linux will be installed.

All the steps are perfectly described here. The only thing you can omit the creation of swap partition. Swap can be created as a file after system is installed check here.

All about formatting is here

Mount the partitions

Mounting is the attaching of an additional filesystem to the currently accessible filesystem of a computer. A filesystem is a hierarchy of directories (also referred to as a directory tree) that is used to organize files on a computer or storage media (e.g., a CDROM or floppy disk). More on subject here

We should do:

1. Mount our Linux filesystem by mount /dev/<linux_partition_name> /mnt.
2. Create directory for EFI System -> mkdir /mnt/efi
3. Mount our EFI System -> mount /dev/<efi_partition_name> /mnt/efi. And that's how we make EFI System partition visible inside mounted linux partition (which will be our operable linux OS quite soon).

Installation

We have to install all the main stuff to make linux work. pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware netctl wpa_supplicant dhclient dhcpcd dialog ppp neovim redshift i3-wm scrot xorg-server xorg-xinit wget unzip terminus-font (provide the links to each program description)

Configuration

Linux is installed but not yet configured. Let's do so.

Fstab

Generate an fstab file genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Here the fstab file is used to define how disk partitions, various other block devices, or remote filesystems should be mounted into the filesystem. It's needed because before we did it manually, and now we have to make it during the boot automatically.

Chroot

arch-chroot /mnt

A chroot is an operation that changes the apparent root directory for the current running process and their children. A program that is run in such a modified environment cannot access files and commands outside that environmental directory tree. This modified environment is called a chroot jail. More on this here

From now on we are inside our of newly created linux OS already to progress with our configuration.

Set the time zone

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime

The ln command is a standard Unix command utility used to create a hard link or a symbolic link (symlink) to an existing file.

A hard link allows multiple filenames to be associated with the same file since a hard link points to the inode of a given file, the data of which is stored on disk.

A symbolic link refers to a symbolic path indicating the location of the source file. You can see it as a link to a path (itself refering to an inode). A symbolic link is less limited. It can refer to a directory and can cross file system boundaries. That's our case here.

-f, --force remove existing destination files.

Run hwclock to generate /etc/adjtime:

hwclock --systohc

hwclock is an administration tool for the time clocks. It can: display the Hardware Clock time; set the Hardware Clock to a specified time; set the Hardware Clock from the System Clock; set the System Clock from the Hardware Clock; compensate for Hardware Clock drift; correct the System Clock timescale; set the kernel's timezone, NTP timescale, and epoch (Alpha only); and predict future Hardware Clock values based on its drift rate.

This command assumes the hardware clock is set to UTC. You can check it by hwclock and see that the time is different from the actual time. In our case the "right" time is local time. More info is here Let's make it "right".

timedatectl set-local-rtc 1

Localization

Read more about localization here

Network configuration

Read more here

Password

passwd

Boot loader

Now exit and install pacstrap /mnt grub efibootmgr

Login again arch-chroot /mnt and grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=esp --bootloader-id=GRUB

Generate_the_main_configuration_file

(explain here what it's and why)

exit, reboot

Setup hibernation with swap file

Since I decided to use swap file, I will describe here steps how to setup hibernation with it. I primary interested in automatically enabling hibernation when I closing my laptop. Here is how to do it.

Check if you have swapfile: swapon --show

If output nothing it means no swap file exist. To know how big file should be you can consult table here Let's create it (4GB in my case): sudo fallocate -l 4G /swapfile

Give it needed permissions: sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

Format file to swap: sudo mkswap /swapfile

Activate it: sudo swapon /swapfile

Check that you now have swap: swapon --show

To ensure that the swap is enabled at boot add etry to fstab: sudo bash -c "echo /swapfile none swap defaults 0 0 >> /etc/fstab"

Reboot and check that swap is active: swapon --show

Configure the initramfs

Now edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf like this: HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode kms modconf block keyboard keymap consolefont filesystems resume fsck)

Remember to regenerate the initramfs for these changes to take effect: mkinitcpio -P

Acquire swap file offset

When using a swap file for hibernation, the block device on which the file system lies should be specified in resume=, and additionally the physical offset of swap file must be specified through resume_offset=<kernel parameter>.

The following command may be used to identify the backing device of the swap file: findmnt -no UUID -T /swapfile

Get the offset: filefrag -v /swapfile | awk '$1=="0:" {print substr($4, 1, length($4)-2)}'

Edit /etc/default/grub and append your kernel options between the quotes in the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="... resume=UUID=1234dad7-fwe7-4as3-11da-ab47512a2123 resume_offset=15166490"

And then automatically re-generate the grub.cfg file with: grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Time to hibernate

I want my laptop to hibernate after 5 min when laptop is closed.

In /etc/systemd/logind.conf uncomment and set: HandleLidSwitch=suspend-then-hibernate

In /etc/systemd/sleep.conf uncomment and set: HibernateDelaySec=5min

Then restart service: systemctl restart systemd-logind

Reboot and check that all is working.