TurboArch - Seamlessly Replace Your Current OS with Arch Linux NOW!

This script allows you to replace any Linux distribution with Arch Linux, preserving user data and some system configuration.

Video demonstration on YouTube

Quick start

Download and run required scripts:

git clone https://github.com/evgvs/turboarch
cd turboarch
sudo bash turboarch.sh

This will ask some questions and begin Arch Linux installation. Data in /home, disk configuration (even with LVM and LUKS!), user accounts and passwords, sudo/wheel group will be preserved. It is also possible to automatically install the best desktop environment (GNOME) into the new system.

Important

Everything in /bin, /boot, /etc, /lib, /lib64, /sbin, /srv, /usr and /var will be permanently removed. Other directories will not be affected at all, and no partitions will be formatted.

Requirements

Internet connection
x86_64 Linux kernel version suitable for glibc in Arch Linux (3.2+ for glibc version 2.39)
grep, coreutils and util-linux
bash version 4+
wget or curl and to download Arch Linux bootstrap, tar and xz to decompress bootstrap archive. You can also manually download and extract bootstrap archive to /archlinux-bootstrap

Installation process explained

Stage 1 (turboarch.sh)

The script copies needed files to safe place where they will not be removed
Downloads Arch Linux rootfs and extract it to /archlinux-bootstrap
Recursively mounts root to directory host-system inside /archlinux-bootstrap (mount --rbind / /archlinux-bootstrap/host-system)
Mounts /sys, /dev and /proc to corresponding directories inside /archlinux-bootstrap
Copies stage2.sh to /archlinux-bootstrap, chroots and runs the script

Stage 2

Removes everything in /host-system/{bin, boot, etc, lib...}
Installs the base system with pacstrap
Copies fstab and users configuration to new system
Chroots to /host-system and runs stage3.sh

Stage 3

Configures locale, hostname and time
Installs kernel and generate initramfs
Installs and configures GRUB
Installs GNOME and perform post-install configuration

FAQ & Fine tuning

Change mirrors

Edit the mirrorlist.default file to change the mirrors. If reflector is enabled, that mirrors will only be used to download python and reflector.

SSH

Installing via ssh seems like a bad idea. However, it will probably work. Script will detect $SSH_CONNECTION and proceed to installation. If you are running script from some another remote shell, set environment variable FORCE_NO_OPENVT=1.

Preconfigure

To preconfigure the script, create a file called config.default:

GNOME=1
SET_SPACE_PASSWORD=1
SRAKUT=0
NETWORKMANAGER=1
LOCALTIME=Europe/Moscow
NEWHOSTNAME=archlinux
REFLECTOR=1
FORCE_REBOOT_AFTER_INSTALLATION=1

If SET_SPACE_PASSWORD is set to 1, root password will be ' ', i. e. space. Otherwise, script will try to copy user configuration from files wheel_users, passwd_delta, shadow_delta, group_delta, gshadow_delta.

wheel_users contains list of users (one per line) that will be added to wheel group. This implies creation of %wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL rule in sudoers.

passwd_delta, shadow_delta, group_delta, gshadow_delta contains corresponding lines from getent. Example:

$ getent passwd pimp | tee -a passwd_delta
pimp:x:1000:1000::/home/pimp:/usr/bin/bash
$ getent shadow pimp | tee -a shadow_delta
pimp:$y$j9T$LuhFnrcezH0TUA1GaUqwa/$Ptme335MkS61UIlNQ.0jRD1doz7zQFzKIQcP6MXW6O1:19729:0:99999:7:::

Tested distributions

Turboarch will work on almost any Linux system, because it has very few dependencies. It successfully replaced following distributions with Arch Linux:

Manjaro
Debian
Ubuntu
Fedora
ROSA
Astra
Void
Slackware
Gentoo
OpenSUSE
Tiny Core

I have /home, /var, /tmp, /lib, /usr/X11R6... on different partitions!

Turboarch basically just doesn't care about your partition scheme. All mountpoints will be transferred to the new system.

LVM & LUKS

It is supported, but if LVM or HRUKS is detected, turboarch will use SRACUT to generate initramfs. However, hooks for pacman will be installed, so SRACUT shouldn't be a big problem.

ZFS

No, it is currently not supported.

GRUB

On BIOS, GRUB will be installed to device that has partition that is mounted to /boot or /. On UEFI, GRUB will be installed to /boot or /boot/efi. OS-PROBER will be enabled by default.

Why locale is set to en_US.UTF-8?

Because you should never use any language other than English in any interface on any of your devices.

evgvs / turboarch