Arch-Setup-Script/README.md

Introduction

This is my fork of easy-arch,a script made in order to boostrap a basic Arch Linux environment with snapshots and encryption by using a fully automated process.

How does it work?

1. Download an Arch Linux ISO from here
2. Flash the ISO onto an USB Flash Drive.
3. Boot the live environment.
4. Connect to the internet.
5. git clone https://github.com/tommytran732/easy-arch/edit/main/README.md
6. cd easy-arch
7. ./easy-arch.sh

Changes from the original project

1. /boot is now encrypted
2. Added option to select your own kernel flavor
3. Removed unnecessary mkinitpcio config and packages
4. Improved BTRFS flags

Partitions layout

Partition Number	Label	Size	Mountpoint	Filesystem
1	ESP	512 MiB	/boot/efi	FAT32
2	Cryptroot	Rest of the disk	/	BTRFS Encrypted (LUKS)

The partitions layout is pretty straightforward, it's inspired by this section of the Arch Wiki. As you can see there's just a couple of partitions:

1. A FAT32, 512MiB sized, mounted at /boot for the ESP.
2. A LUKS encrypted container, which takes the rest of the disk space, mounted at / for the rootfs.
3. /boot is encrypted.

BTRFS subvolumes layout

Subvolume Number	Subvolume Name	Mountpoint
1	@	/
2	@home	/home
3	@snapshots	/.snapshots
4	@var_log	/var/log
5	@swap	/swap (optional)

The BTRFS subvolumes layout follows the traditional and suggested layout used by Snapper, you can find it here. I only added a swap subvolume in case you need a swapfile, but it's totally optional. You'll be asked if you want it or not during the script execution. Here's a brief explanation of the BTRFS layout I chose:

1. @ mounted as /.
2. @home mounted as /home.
3. @snapshots mounted as /.snapshots.
4. @var_log mounted as /var/log.
5. @swap mounted as /swap (optional).