arch-zbm

Helper script to install Arch Linux with ZFSBootMenu from within a running Arch Linux live CD ISO image

Prep

We expect minimal prep on your end. Please make sure that before execution the following conditions are met.

• Arch Linux live CD ISO image sees exactly one partition with partition type code BF00 ("Solaris root")
• Arch Linux live CD ISO image sees exactly one partition with partition type code EF00 ("EFI system partition")
• No ZFS zpool exists

The script will create a single ZFS zpool zpool on the BF00 partition with dataset child zpool/root which itself has one child zpool/root/archlinux, that's where Arch Linux gets installed. Parallel to zpool/root it'll create zpool/data with a zpool/data/home child dataset that gets mounted at /home.

The script will use the EF00 partition to install a ZFSBootMenu EFI executable if efibootmgr says that no such ZFSBootMenu entry exists. If ZFSBootMenu gets added to the EFI partition it'll become primary boot option.

How to run this?

• Boot an Arch Linux live CD ISO image
• Run:

  export SCRIPT_URL='https://quico.space/quico-os-setup/arch-zbm/raw/branch/main/setup.sh'
  curl -s "${SCRIPT_URL}" | bash
  

  During execution the script will call itself when it changes into its chroot, that's why we export SCRIPT_URL. Feel free to update "${SCRIPT_URL}" with whatever branch or revision you want to use from quico.space/quico-os-setup/arch-zbm. Typically .../branch/main/setup.sh as shown above is what you want.

Steps

The scripts takes the following installation steps.

1. Install ZFS tools and kernel module with github.com/eoli3n/archiso-zfs
2. Create one encrypted ZFS zpool on top of BF00 partition, password password
3. Create dataset for Arch Linux and /home
4. Install Arch Linux into pool
5. Add ZFSBootMenu to EF00 partition if it doesn't exist already
6. Exit into Arch Linux live CD ISO image shell for you to reboot and frolick

Flavor choices

We make the following opinionated flavor choices. Feel free to change them to your liking.

• Arch Linux locale is set to en_US.UTF-8
• Keymap is de-latin1
  • Consult /etc/vconsole.conf
  • Change zfs set org.zfsbootmenu:commandline=...
• No X.Org Server, Wayland compositors or other GUI elements get installed
• Timezone is Etc/UTC
  • Check timedatectl set-timezone <tzdata-zone>

Post-run manual steps

After installation you're going to want to at least touch these points in your new Arch Linux install:

• Package manager hook: pacman does not have a hook to do ZFS snapshots
  • See this GitHub gist and zfs-snapshotter.bash for inspiration
• Hostname: Installation chose a pseudo-randomly generated 8-character string with pwgen
• Unprivileged user accounts: The OS was installed with root and unprivileged build users
• Passwords
  • ZFS: The password for all datasets underneath zpool is password.
  • Local root account: The local root account's password is password.
• Arch User Repository (AUR) helper: We installed paru as our AUR helper, we installed from GitHub via makepkg -si.

Development

Conventional commits

This project uses Conventional Commits for its commit messages.

Commit types

Commit types besides fix and feat are:

• build: Project structure, directory layout, build instructions for roll-out
• refactor: Keeping functionality while streamlining or otherwise improving function flow
• test: Working on test coverage
• docs: Documentation for project or components

Commit scopes

The following scopes are known for this project. A Conventional Commits commit message may optionally use one of the following scopes or none:

• iso: Changing Arch Linux ISO CD
• zbm: Adjusting ZFSBootMenu's behavior
• zfs: A change to how ZFS interacts with the system, either a pool or a dataset
• os: Getting an perating system set up to correctly work in a ZFS boot environment
• meta: Affects the project's repo layout, readme content, file names etc.

Credits

Most of what's here was shamelessly copied and slightly adapted for personal use from Jonathan Kirszling at GitHub.

Thanks to:

• Jonathan Kirszling:
  • github.com/eoli3n/arch-config/tree/master/scripts/zfs/install
  • github.com/eoli3n/archiso-zfs
• Maurizio Oliveri:
  • github.com/Soulsuke/arch-zfs-tools
  • gist.github.com/Soulsuke/6a7d1f09f7fef968a2f32e0ff32a5c4c
• Zach Dykstra, Andrew J. Hesford and all other ZFSBootMenu contributors:
  • Their ZFSBootMenu testing helper scripts (chroot-arch.sh, install-arch.sh)
• github.com/kongkrit:
  • gist.github.com/kongkrit/a0585e179e33c2adf92db4050ec5171d