Skip to content

rpuntaie/rollarch

BranchesTags

Repository files navigation

Rollarch

Purpose

Automates ArchLinux installation using

  • dotfiles install script and offering
  • custom packages

All parameters are provided at call time, as an automation should not bombard you with questions.

Look into rollarch to see what is done during installation.

Usage

Make a boot media. Here an USB memory stick:

lsblk # verify that sdg is the usb memory stick
sudo dd bs=4M if=/home/roland/myd/sw/linux/archlinux-2022.10.01-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdg conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress
# the archlinux iso should be new, else problems with keys

For wireless-only devices you will need to connect to an access point manually at the archiso prompt:

iwctl
> device list
> station wlan0 scan
> station wlan0 get-networks
> station wlan0 connect TP-LINK_C25554
> quit

Then

curl -OLs https://git.io/installarch #inspect, modify
DSK=/dev/sda USR=u PW=p HST=u106 IP2=1.106 ZONE=Berlin bash installarch

https://git.io/installarch is short for https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rpuntaie/rollarch/master/rollarch.

Alternatively you can clone rollarch to another LAN box (e.g. 1.108) and add the path to NFS

/etc/exports:

# Use `exportfs -arv` to reload.
/path/to/rollarch        192.168.1.0/24(rw,sync,subtree_check)

Then at the archiso prompt:

mkdir rollarch
mount -t nfs 192.168.1.108:</path/to/rollarch> rollarch
cd rollarch
DSK=/dev/sda USR=u PW=p HST=u106 IP2=1.106 ZONE=Berlin DOTS=mydots bash rollarch

If mydots is a dots install script available locally, https://git.io/mydots is not tried. Here an example for a mydots script.

# notebook with just WLAN, no ethernet
SSID=x WK=y WIP2=1.111 USR=u PW=p HST=u111 DSK=/dev/nvme0n1 SWAP=off ZONE=Vienna DOTS=fjVcp bash installarch

Without further arguments after rollarch (=``installarch``), the packages default to arch-install-scripts base base-devel devtools dialog wpa_supplicant ntp nfs-utils samba sudo git python vim zsh.

For systems supporting UEFI systemd-boot is used, else grub. systemd-init is not used.

Parameters

DSK:disk on which to install (not partition)
USR:main user of the system
PW:password of main user (will ask if omitted)
HST:host name of the system
ZONE:a city name ending that can be found in /usr/shar/zoneinfo

Optional:

SWAP:

[on|off] (on), set to 'off' e.g. for SSD and if you don't need swap
LVM:

[e.g. /dev/sdb], disks additional to $ROOT to form new LVM $ROOT /dev/vg0/lv0 Use dummy if only the root partition of $DSK should become LVM.
IP2:

(192.168.)x.y, [e.g. 1.106], else dhcp
AIP2:

[e.g. 1.199 | yes, to create Arch Proxy]. The x.y of another arch linux machine (the local proxy)
DOTS:

Full URL or https://git.io/SHORT to a bash installation script for dot files. It can provide defines, packages and repos via #DFN:, #PKG: and #REPO: comments.
LA_NG:

Space separated list of xx_YY used in addition to en_US [e.g. "de_DE ru_RU"] Don't include en_US.
KM:

(us) one of localectl list-keymaps.
CL:

If given, Escape is mapped to Caps_Lock and Caps_Lock to this key for VConsole. 99 is [Print], 125 is [Win] aka Super_L. For X, execute these either through ~/.Xmodmap or directly with xmodmap -e:

clear Lock
keycode 0x42 = Escape
keysym Print = Caps_Lock
WIP2:

for static IP2 and separate wl NIC, else bonding en+wl with IP2
SSID:

name of WLAN access point
WK:

password of WLAN access point

The AIP2 and DOTS defines are very useful and will be addressed below.

Status

Tested for VirtualBox (EFI and BIOS) and BIOS PC.

VirtualBox needs Bridged Adapter to enable access to LAN.

Custom Packages

How local proxy and custom packages is used by rollarch:

  • The repo for the (meta = dependencies only) custom packages is named custom.

  • An optional AIP2=yes makes the install a local proxy. You can do this after installation with:

    . rollarch
setup_arch_proxy

  • To make/update custom packages in the proxy, do

    #git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/rpuntaie/rollarch
#git submodule foreach git pull origin master
## or
#make update
cd rollarch
sudo -E bash ./build
## or
#make
##result in pkg/xyz/rollarch.log

    Before doing so, you can add some packages from AUR into the pkg subfolder, e.g.

    git submodule add https://aur.archlinux.org/discord pkg/discord
#add "ignore = dirty" to .gitmodules
#when removing, note, that modules are listed also in .git/config
#see Makefile

    The build script

    • needs clean-chroot-manager installed, with pull graysky2/clean-chroot-manager#77:

      yay -S clean-chroot-manager
###### add to /etc/fstab
#tmpfs /scratch tmpfs nodev,size=4G 0 0
###### new /etc/tmpfiles.d/ccm_dir.conf
#d /scratch/.buildroot 0750 root users -

    • builds all packages or THOSE PROVIDED (e.g. pkg/yay)

    • adds the packages to custom packages

    build may need additional packages in its chroot environment for building certain AUR packages.

  • Make a new install with on another machine with

    DSK=/dev/sda USR=u PW=p HST=u106 IP2=1.106 AIP2=1.108 ZONE=Vienna bash installarch <your-packages>

    The optional your-packages are either provided by the ArchLinux repos or by a local proxy (AIP2) of yours. The optional AIP2=x.y, e.g. 1.108, uses 192.168.1.108 as local proxy. mirrorlist gets a Server = 191.168.1.108 at the top. If the install script finds a repo there named custom, pacman.conf is changed to use it.

  • For packages ending in -meta, at the end of installation, the dependencies are made --asexplicit and the resulting orphaned your-meta package is removed. To make this work, meta packages must not depend on each other.

    -meta packages are not used any more, as include dotfiles better lists the packages directly.

    To build only the one package do, e.g.:

    sudo -E bash ./build pkg/yay

Include dotfiles

The Archlinux dotfiles wiki shows different methods to install dot files. A shell script can be wrapped over all of these methods.

This install script can be communicated to rollarch with a DOTS define.

  • DOTS specifies the URL to your installation script:

    DOTS=https://...
DOTS=file:///...
DOTS=SHORT ... meaning https://git.io/SHORT

    For other shorteners use http://....

The installation script is forwarded to bash within arch-chroot, after cd /home/$USR. It

  • downloads/clones the dotfiles
  • installs them
  • does some additional setup

The #DFN: ``, ``#PKG: and #REPO: comments are used by rollarch. The packages provided as arguments to rollarch are combined with #PKG: comments in the DOTS file.

As an example see my dotfiles install script. It can be reached via the github short https://git.io/fjVcp. In my example I use only rpuntaie-meta served from a LAN machine prepared with sudo -E ./build, which also builds the AUR submodules that are part of rollarch, e.g. yay.

You don't need to clone rollarch and run sudo -E bash ./build and use AIP2. You can just list all the official packages directly in your install script:

#PKG: bash
#PKG: bzip2
#PKG: coreutils
#...

#REPO: lines work with server addresses that don't need a Key-ID. E.g. to also install yay you could have these two lines:

#REPO: arcanisrepo
#PKG: yay

The following installs my system with dotfiles and packages wanted by it.

curl -OLs https://git.io/installarch
DSK=/dev/sda USR=u PW=p HST=u106 IP2=1.106 AIP2=1.108 ZONE=Vienna DOTS=fjVcp bash installarch

About

Automate My Arch Linux Installation

Resources

Readme

License

MIT license
Activity

Stars

0 stars

Watchers

2 watching

Forks

0 forks
Report repository

Releases

No releases published

Packages

No packages published

Languages