Scripts to install my config of Arch Linux DWM

Note: this is a project in test phase. Therefore, some features may not yet work.

Scripts

This repo contains 2 scripts: base.sh and dwm.sh. The idea is to first follow perform some premilinary steps until you have chrooted into the install. After that, run base.sh, reboot, login as the non-root user and run dwm.sh.

Preliminary steps

Before running the scripts, you should follow the following steps.

• Boot from a usb stick with the Arch Linux iso on it.

• Set your console keyboard layout. This only applies to non-US layouts. For Belgian layout type: loadkeys be-latin1

• If the font is to small type: setfont ter-132n

• Check your internet connection with e.g. ping archlinux.org. You can quit out of that with Ctrl+c. Use ethernet if possible to avoid problems.

• Run timedatectl set-ntp true (not sure if really needed though)

• Create partitions, format and mount them. There are many ways of doing this (MBR or GPT, swap or no swap, separate home partition or not, ...) using gdisk, cgdisk, fdisk or cfdisk. For the rest of the process, we assume that you mount the root filesystem to /mnt. Some usefull guidelines for formatting the partitions:

  • Swap

  mkswap /dev/sdxn
  swapon /dev/sdxn
  

  • Boot partition for uefi

  mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdxm
  mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
  mount /dev/sdxm /mnt/boot/efi
  

  • Root partition

  mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdxp
  mount /dev/sdxp /mnt
  

  • Root partition removable

  mkfs.ext4 -0 "^has_journal" /dev/sdxp
  mount /dev/sdxp /mnt
  

  If you later specify that you are installing on a removable device in the base.sh script, journalling will be configured to use RAM instead of the drive itself.

  • Home partition

  mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdxq
  mkdir /mnt/home
  mount /dev/sdxq /mnt/home
  

• Run the following commands to install linux, create the fstab file and change root into the installed system:

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware vim git
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Git clone this repo

Once chrooted into the install. Run the following commands.

git clone https://github.com/PieterCoremans/arch-install-scripts.git
cd arch-install-scripts

Base.sh

If necessary, make base.sh executable by typing:

chmod +x base.sh

Than run the script by typing:

./base.sh

Follow the instruction when prompted.

Dwm.sh

When logged in as the non-root user, go again into the arch-install-scripts directory and if necessary, make dwm.sh executable by typing:

sudo chmod +x dwm.sh

Than run the script by typing:

./dwm.sh

Follow the instruction when prompted.

Notes

Keyboard layout

These script have been written for a French Azerty keyboard layout with the option to switch to a Belgian Azerty layout. If you do not have either of these layouts, you will need to change some settings within these scripts, the xinitrc file as well as in the dwm config.h file, most notably regarding the tags hotkeys.

VirtualBox full screen

If you install on VirtualBox, perform the following steps after install and login to get full screen:

sudo pacman -S virtualbox-guest-utils
systemctl enable vboxservice.service

After rebooting, select View -> Auto-resize Guest Display

Installation on USB stick: disable KMS

If installing on a removable drive, and after rebooting after running base.sh, you get stuck during boot (i.e. you do not get to the point where you can login) an additional step might be neccesary. Boot back into the Arch iso, mount the intall boot partition to /mnt and arch-chroot into the install like you did before. Then:

vim /etc/default/grub

and add nomodeset after quiet within the quotation mark. After that, regeneration the grub configuration file:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg