My dot files and setup guide 2025

Optionally changing key maps and font:

loadkeys dvorak         # us is the default
setfont LatArCyrHeb-16  # better fonts for big monitors

Multi boot is a thing of the past, check legacy for information.

Use gdisk to partition, ${diskN} could be sdX or nvme0n1 or something else. Here we create a few variables to make the rest more generic and maybe later do an automatic installation script.

export disk1=nvme01n1
export disk2=sda
export part1=nvme01n1p1
export part2=nvme01n1p2
export part3=sda1
export part4=sda2

gdisk /dev/$disk1

Swap is a file, instead of a partition, so it can be resized easily. It should be contained in the SSD. But should only be created or activated when there are RAM issues.

Format partitions, for example:

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/$part1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/$part2

In case we have extra storage, we can use btrfs or plain old ext4s

mkfs.btrfs -f -L Storage /dev/$disk2
btrfs subvolume create var
btrfs subvolume create Documents

It's recommended to have the efi partition on /boot to allow systemd-boot to work

mount /dev/$part2 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount -t vfat /dev/$part1 /mnt/boot

mount -o subvol=var /dev/$disk2 /mnt/var
mount -o subvol=Documents /dev/$disk2 /mnt/home/lmcs/Documents

pacstrap helps us install the base, check -h to confirm the flags.

In case we are installing using arch-install-scripts from an existing installation it might be recommended to create /mnt/etc and copy the local copy of vconsole.conf and cozette12x26 there.

pacstrap -KP /mnt base linux linux-firmware

chroot into the new system:

arch-chroot /mnt

Installing base-devel and the microcode depending on the processor:

pacman -S base-devel {amd or intel}-ucode

Installing some bare bones stuff:

pacman -S efibootmgr git github-cli neovim zsh

Making swap a file lets us resize it later if needed, but need to use UUID + offset for stuff like hibernation.

fallocate -l 32G /swapfile
chmod 600 /swapfile
mkswap /swapfile
swapon /swapfile

Now we can generate the fstab. Make sure to fix any unintended values, for example, the UEFI must be mounted on /boot for and have {f,d}mask=0077.

The <ctrl+d> part means we exit the chroot environment.

<ctrl-d>
genfstab -pU /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Afterwards maybe change to defaults,noatime,discard all ssd partitions to reduce input output operations from frequent disk checks.

We create the user, clone a couple repos and fire aconfmgr, to start make sure to chroot back in.

arch-chroot /mnt

We create the normal user:

useradd -m -s $(which zsh) lmcs
chfn lmcs
passwd lmcs

Make the user owner of the ~/Documents if it's a mounted partition.

chown -R lmcs:users /home/lmcs/Documents

Now we add the user to sudoers

EDITOR=nvim visudo

Add lmcs ALL= ALL somewhere and exit :wq.

suing as the normal user and authenticating:

su - lmcs
gh auth login

Clone and checkout the bare repository with the dot files.

git clone --bare https://github.com/lmcanavals/dotfiles.git .dotfiles.git
rm .gitconfig .config/gh/config.yml .bash*
git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles.git --work-tree=$HOME checkout

Clone aconfmgr link it and run it.

mkdir -p Apps/repos/
cd Apps/repos/
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CyberShadow/aconfmgr.git
<ctrl-d>
ln -s /home/lmcs/Apps/repos/aconfmgr/aconfmgr /usr/bin/
ln -s /home/lmcs/Apps/repos/aconfmgr/src/ /usr/lib/aconfmgr
su - lmcs
# cha cha chaaaan
aconfmgr apply

Making sure the system can boot

Set it like this

passwd