djjlewis / easy-arch

Script for boostrapping Arch Linux with BTRFS, snapshots and LUKS encryption (UEFI only).

Introduction

easy-arch is a script made in order to boostrap a basic Arch Linux environment with snapshots and encryption by using a fully automated process (UEFI only).

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. Set the keyboard layout by using loadkeys.
5. Connect to the internet.
6. Run this bash <(curl -sL git.io/JtRu2).

Partitions layout

Partition Number	Label	Size	Mountpoint	Filesystem
1	ESP	512 MiB	/boot/	FAT32
2	Cryptroot	Rest of the disk	/	BTRFS Encrypted (LUKS2)

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/efi for the ESP.
2. A LUKS2 encrypted container, which takes the rest of the disk space, mounted at / for the rootfs.

BTRFS subvolumes layout

Subvolume Number	Subvolume Name	Mountpoint
1	@	/
2	@home	/home
3	@snapshots	/.snapshots
4	@var_log	/var/log

The BTRFS subvolumes layout follows the traditional and suggested layout used by Snapper, you can find it here. Here's a brief explanation of the BTRFS layout I chose:

1. @ mounted at /.
2. @home mounted at /home.
3. @snapshots mounted at /.snapshots.
4. @var_log mounted at /var/log.