Modern ArchLinux on Dell T20

All what we need is:
  • Server - in my case it is underpowered Dell T20
  • USB 3.0 stick
  • Some hard drive
We are going to install base OS in following setup:
  • The hard disk will receive partitionless BTRFS file system
  • The USB stick will have GRUB plus boot partition plus some "future use partition".
Setup log:
  1. After booting USB installer, fix keyboard layout: loadkeys uk
  2. It is good to know haw devices were mapped (later fstab can use labels, but for now we need to know device names): lsblk -f
  3. Create BTFRS filesystem on main hard drive: mkfs.btrfs -L ARCH_ROOT /dev/sda
  4. Use gdisk to create GPT partitions for Grub - 1M of type ef02 and 512M of type ef00, rest of the disk will be used as spare partition gdisk /dev/sdb
  5. We shall format boot partition: mkfs.fat -F32 -n ARCH_BOOT /dev/sdb2
  6. After sync we can reboot.
  7. Now we shall mount our partitions:
    mount /dev/sda /mnt
    mkdir /mnt/boot
    mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/boot
  8. Install the basic system: pacstrap /mnt base
  9. Generate fstab: genfstab -L /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
  10. Change root to newly created filesystem: arch-chroot /mnt
  11. Set hostname: nano /etc/hostname
  12. Set timezone ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Belfast /etc/localtime
  13. Uncomment en_GB.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen
  14. Run locale-gen
  15. Put LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.conf
  16. Put KEYMAP=uk in /etc/vconsole.conf
  17. Run mkinitcpio -p linux
  18. Install grub: pacman -S grub
  19. Install boolader: grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sdb
  20. Configure bootloader: grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
  21. Finally set password passwd
  22. You're done. exit chroot and reboot.

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