Introduction

ArchInstaller is a bash script to automate the installation and initial configuration of Arch Linux. arch-install.sh should be run from the Arch Linux install ISO.

Features

• It works for me.
• Automated installation of base Arch Linux.
• Extensive filesystem support. Auto detects and configure SSDs and TRIM:
  • bfs
  • btrfs
  • ext{2,3,4}
  • f2fs
  • jfs
  • nilfs2
  • ntfs
  • reiserfs
  • xfs
• Works on PCs (x86 and x86_64) and Raspberry Pi (no filesystem options on the Pi).
• On x86_64 desktops the multi-lib repository is automatically enabled and multilib-devel automatically installed.
• Automated installation of your preferred desktop environment, or none at all.
  • Cinnamon
  • GNOME
  • KDE
  • LXDE
  • MATE
  • XFCE
• Automated hardware detection and driver installation. See below.
• Installations can be sped up via the use of an NFS cache. See below.
• Power management "out of the box".
• Swap is provided via ZSWAP only.
• Adheres to the Arch principle of K.I.S.S.

Limitations

• Heavily biased toward my own preferences and may not suit your needs.
• Does not support UEFI. I don't have any UEFI hardware to test on.
• Only simple partition recipes are available.

Install Arch Linux

Boot the Arch Linux install ISO and clone ArchInstaller.

loadkeys uk
wifi-menu
dhcpcd
pacman -Syy --noconfirm git
git clone https://github.com/flexiondotorg/ArchInstaller.git
cd ArchInstaller

Edit the users.csv file to suite your requirements, see users.example for reference. Run the install script, for example.

PC

./arch-install.sh -d sda -p bsrh -w pA55w0rd -n myhost.example.org

Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi mode doesn't do any disk partitioning so the partition options are redundant on the Pi.

./arch-install.sh -w pA55w0rd -n myhost.example.org

You can get help with the following.

./arch-install.sh -h

Hardware Detection

arch-install.sh will probe the PCI and USB bus for vendor and device codes and then automatically execute the corresponding scripts in hardware/{pci,usb}.

arch-install.sh will also use dmidecode to probe your computer for the fields below and automatically execute the corresponding scripts in hardware/system.

• Product Name
• Version
• Serial Number
• UUID
• SKU Number

The facilities to customise the install any given hardware requirements, right down to a specific tweak for a unique computer. See the scripts I've already created, they are good references to get you started.

NFS Cache

arch-install.sh can use an existing pacman cache on an existing host to speed up the installation time. If you already have a host running Arch Linux this is how you can share your pacman cache via NFS.

sudo pacman -S nfs-utils

Add the following to /etc/exports.

/var/cache/pacman/pkg   *(rw,no_root_squash)

To start the NFS server, use:

systemctl start rpc-idmapd.service rpc-mountd.service

To start NFS automatically on every boot, use:

systemctl enable rpc-idmapd.service rpc-mountd.service

When you execute arch-install.sh pass in the -c argument, for example:

./arch-install.sh -d sda -p bsrh -w pA55w0rd -n myhost.example.org -c myexistinghost:/var/cache/pacman/pkg

If you provide arch-install.sh an NFS cache it will add that cache to /etc/fstab on the installed system.

Power Management

Power management is fairly complete right now, although SATA ALPM is disabled due to the risk of data corruption.

* <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/539467>
* <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerManagementALPM>

I've opted to use cpupower and TLP for CPU frequency and power management.

The following are useful sources of reference.

• http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~cking/power-benchmarking/
• http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=11954
• http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=23456
• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=134109
• http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_reduce_power_consumption
• http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-faq.html

FONT and FONT_MAP

Read the following to understand how to tweak the FONT and FONT_MAP settings in arch-install.sh.

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts#Console_fonts
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859
• http://alexandre.deverteuil.net/consolefonts/consolefonts.html

TODO

• Add automated root partition resizing magic to arch-install.sh for Raspberry Pi.
  • http://michael.otacoo.com/manuals/raspberry-pi/
• Detect locale for dictionaries in desktop environment installs.
• Fix Thinkpad T43p hotkeys keys.
  • Run one of the following on system start up.
  • echo enable,0x00ffffff > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey
  • cp /sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/hotkey_all_mask /sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/hotkey_mask
  • http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Thinkpad-acpi
  • https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/laptops/thinkpad-acpi.txt
  • http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1328016
  • https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=147160
• Review the links below, see if there is anything I can re-use.
  • https://github.com/helmuthdu/aui
  • https://github.com/Antergos/Cnchi
  • http://www.winpe.com/page04.html
  • http://blog.burntsushi.net/lenovo-thinkpad-t430-archlinux
  • http://worldofgnome.org/speed-up-gnome-in-systemd-distributions/
• UEFI support - waiting for more complete UEFI support in SYSLINUX.
• Maybe allow locating /home on a different disk.
• Maybe add LVM and LUKS capability to disk partitioning.
• Maybe add ZFS support.P.

Power Management TODO

The following still needs attention.

• Suspend hook for /dev/mmcblk0

Video drivers TODO

• Unichrome or OpenChrome?
  • https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Via_Unichrome
  • https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1104036
  • https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1201986
  • http://www.openchrome.org/
  • http://unichrome.sourceforge.net/