FARCHI Fast Arch Linux Installer

This started as just a personal script, very very simple way to install Arch Linux after booting the archiso ISO image.

Installation

You can download the script to your booted archiso image like this:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/deepbsd/farchi/master/farchi.sh

If you open the farchi script and start filling in the variables carefully, you'll be ready to install Arch linux! Good luck!

You'll need to customize settings for your installation.

Here's What You'll Want to Change:

1. HOSTNAME=effie1 Your hostname

2. IN_DEVICE=/dev/sda Your installation drive

3. Partitions and sizes. EFI_SIZE=512M or BOOT_SIZE=512M (depending on whether you have an EFI or Bios system) SWAP_SIZE=4G ROOT_SIZE=12G HOME_SIZE= If you're installing to a VM, these sizes should work. However if you're installing to actual hardware, these sizes may vary dramatically. Currently, the HOME partition or LV (logical volume) will occupy whatever space is left over after the ROOT and SWAP and EFI/BOOT partitions are created. On regular hardware, I like 100G for root. Many people enjoy smaller 50-75G partitions however. If you hibernate your system, a good rule of thumb is 2xRAM size for SWAP.

4. use_lvm(){ return 0; } use_crypt(){ return 0; } Return 0 for yes, 1 for no. Whether you want LVM or not. I prefer LVM and LUKS (encrypted filesystem) since I'm just used to it.

5. use_bcm4360(){ return 0; } Return 0 for yes, 1 for no. Whether you want BCM4360 Wifi Drivers or not (or some other drivers of your choosing). This is a chipset I often use in my PCI wifi devices. It's a good one. But you should install the driver for your wifi device. The wl driver is used for this and many other recent Broadcom wifi chipsets.

6. install_x(){ return 0; } Return 0 for yes, 1 for no. Do you want to install X11 or not (faster if you don't, but you'll probably want to install it anyway). If you're just experimenting in a VM and testing your script, perhaps you just want to install a bare bones installation to test with.

7. VIDEO_DRIVER=xf86-video-vmware install_x(){ return 0; } You must be installing X (or else why would you care about a accelerated video driver?) This is your Video chipset driver to run X11. This will be one of the xf86-video-* drivers for different video chipsets, such as Radeon, Nvidia, Intel, and so forth. I install xf86-video-vmware by default. declare -A DISPLAY_MGR=( [dm]='lightdm' [service]='lightdm.service' ) This line sets your display manager. This is an associative array in BASH, because the service name can often be different from the file name in the Arch repo. So the display manager contained in ${DISPLAY_MGR[dm]} while the service name is contained in ${DISPLAY_MGR[service]}

8. DESKTOP=(cinnamon nemo-fileroller) Your choice. Many options are available. What desktop environment to you want (or what Window Manager)? I chose lightdm for display manager and Cinnamon for desktop environment by default. XFCE and Mate and i3gaps are also some favorites of mine and are ready to be installed also. Feel free to alter your choices in EXTRA_X and the other arrays as you see fit.

9. Your LOCALE and TIME_ZONE: en_US-UTF-8 and America/New York by default. Keyboard is also us by default. FILESYSTEM=ext4 by default.

10. What packages you want. I chose some default X11 goodies, printing utilities, multimedia packages, and some programming utilities. I don't install Nano by default, because I'm a Vim guy. But you should install what you want.

The variables are set in the early part of the script. Sometimes a value is set by whether a function returns a truthy value or not (0 for true, 1 for false). Sometimes you just set the variable equal to the name of the package that you want.

Basic BASH Syntax

Variables are set as VARIABLE_NAME=value

Array names are

ARRAY=( pkg1 pkg2 pkg3 )

Associative arrays are

ASSOC_ARRAY=( [key1]=value1 [key2]=value2 [key3]=value3 )

Functions are

func_name(){
    do something
    returns 0 if successful or non-zero if unsuccessful
}

You'll notice I do loops and if/then branching routinely throughout the script. Also, I try to follow DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) by having functions do redundant tasks.

And about a million other little tiny rules that still bite me in the butt every day. Hope you have fun!

simplest.sh

Currently this only works on a non-UEFI bios. I will have to change this. Time marches on and conditions were different when I first wrote this script.

This is a starter script for your own script. It has the bare essentials for installing your own MBR-based installation. The same "you'll need to change" fules apply. But this is a simpler script to start with. The purpose here is to build out your own script as your knowledge grows. Figure out how to do a GPT disktable, then try LVM with each of those. Then RAID or LUKS if you like. Or maybe you want to try out some other customizations for your own needs. Hopefully simplest.sh can help with your early steps! I never have found RAID very useful for my needs, but many people have. But you'll have to add that feature yourself, since I don't have it by default.

I think I should just change this over to a UEFI BIOS and GPT disk scheme. Have to work on this.

install_x.sh

If you decide to NOT install X11, there is an additional install_x.sh script. The commands for installing X can be executed after a basic Arch install is running using this script.

post_install.sh

There is a post_install.sh script. On my home network, I always have hosts that contain folders I need on my fresh new installation. The names of the directories I need to recursively copy are installed in here. (Such as my music library or my frequently used scripts of files.) Also, I install the AUR helper yay or paru in this script. I also install google-chrome and a few other things. Hopefully this script will give you ideas for your installations.

farchi_target.sh

This is in case you want to keep farchi.sh pristine as an example only, and then you can customize farchi_target.sh just for your specific installation.

arch_linux_install.txt

This is a basic summary of the tasks needed to install an Arch system. It's my step by step process to do from the Archiso image and a root terminal when you're not running this script.
This is what I used to do before I wrote any scripts.

SUDO Problems

I noticed on a recent install that I was getting a lot of strange errors with sudo. I would type the sudo password and would be told that my password was wrong. It wasn't wrong. But for some reason it wasn't being accepted. I was certain that my username was added to /etc/sudoers and that I was typing my password correctly, without a capslock problem or any such keyboard-related mishap. My password was not getting recognized with my account, apparently. I started googling, and I found out that there were two problem that could cause this. I wasn't sure which to try first, so I did them both, and the problem went away instantly. I installed pambase and I enabled systemd-homed. As a consequence, I added these lines to the end of the farchi scripts and the simplest.sh script. I even started checking for the service in post_install.sh. The lines are

pacman -S pambase systemd-homed
systemctl enable sysstemd-homed

Wait! I just took out the systemd-homed service! For some reason, a pacman search no longer returns it as a package. Not sure what's going on there! Probably they deleted the package!

Obviously, you want to start that service as well, but at least the service should be started when the machine starts up.

I'm not sure what change made this addition necessary. It used to be that I never had to think about any of this. Perhaps pambase was already installed? Perhaps homed was already started somewhere? I don't know. But adding these lines fixed my problem.

Latest note! I just took out the pambase and systemd-homed lines (except for checking for whether the service is running). This could all be some kind of mistake. I don't know what's going on with pambase and systemd-homed. Not even sure if I need to change anything at all.

On LUKS

Just a reminder that this is simply for when you turn off your PC, if someone tries to access your files, they will be encrypted. There is no encryption protecting your files while the system is running.