Kerem's Notes

My Arch Installation Settings

Jan 18, 20253 min read

Set a password and start ssh daemon

Set password

passwd

Start ssh daemon

systemctl start sshd.service
  • I’ll suppose to you’re connected to internet.

Partitioning

cfdisk /dev/nvme0n1

Formatting Partition

mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
mkfs.btrfs /dev/nvme0n1p2

Create and Mount Subvolumes

mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
cd /mnt
btrfs sub cr /mnt/@ && \
btrfs sub cr /mnt/@/home && \
mkdir -p @/var
btrfs sub cr /mnt/@/var/log && \
btrfs sub cr /mnt/@/var/cache && \
cd
umount /mnt

Mount Subvols

mount -t btrfs -o rw,noatime,subvol=@,compress=zstd /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
mount -t btrfs -o rw,noatime,subvol=@/home,compress=zstd /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/home && \
mount -t btrfs -o rw,noatime,subvol=@/var/cache,compress=zstd /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/var/cache && \
mount -t btrfs -o rw,noatime,subvol=@/var/log,compress=zstd /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/var/log

Mount EFI Partition

mount --mkdir /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot

Installing Base System and /etc/fstab

Editing /etc/pacman.conf

sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf
Enable Max Parallel Downloads, Multilib repo and Color, then add ILoveCandy

Install kernel and essential packages

pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware linux-headers intel-ucode or amd-ucode

Create /etc/fstab

genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Enter Chroot and Configure System

Enter Chroot

arch-chroot /mnt

Set time zone

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime

Run hwclock to generate /etc/adjtime

hwclock --systohc

Localization

Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and other needed UTF-8 locales.

locale-gen

Create locale.conf and set LANG variable accordingly:

/etc/locale.conf
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Create /etc/hostname file and setting hostname:

valentinus

Recreate initramfs:

mkinitcpio -P

Set the root password:

passwd

I leave it to you create a user, installing Bootloader and setting your Desktop Environment.

Add and Use CachyOS Repositories with CachyOS’s Configs

  • CachyOS is an performance orianted Operating System and has repositories are including flags for performance, stability and security.

  • If you want more information for Cachyos Repositories take a look: What is the CachyOS Repositories

Get and Add CachyOS Repositories:

wget https://mirror.cachyos.org/cachyos-repo.tar.xz
tar xvf cachyos-repo.tar.xz && cd cachyos-repo
sudo ./cachyos-repo.sh
  • When it reinstall the packages, we’ll continue.

Installing yay (aur helper) and linux-cachyos kernel.

  • CachyOS kernel includes EEVDF and BORE CPU SCHEDULERS.
  • BORE CPU Scheduler gives us to maximum responsiveness. I’m personally using this.
sudo pacman -S yay
  • Now installing kernel and nvidia drivers. (Because I have nvidia right now)
yay -S linux-cachyos linux-cachyos-headers nvidia-dkms nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils

Nvidia DRM Backend

You must add nvidia-drm.modeset=1 kernel parameter in your bootloader config.

  • Now download CachyOS Settings and use on our machine.
cd Downloads
git clone https://github.com/CachyOS/CachyOS-Settings
cd CachyOS-Settings
cd etc
sudo cp -r * /etc

CachyOS using zstd compression algorithm with zram, we’ll change it with lz4 and using all ram size.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf
[zram0] 
compression-algorithm = lz4
zram-size = ram

Optional Kernel Parameter

  • zswap functions as a swap cache in front of zram, intercepting and compressing evicted memory pages before they can reach zram.
  • Becouse of this reason we’ll disable zswap as a result zram will work better.
  • If we disable zswap, suspend to disk (hibernate) wont work.
  • Add this kernel parameter your bootloader config disables zswap on your system. zswap.enable=0
  • Now installing zram generator and enabling it.
yay -S zram-generator
systemctl enable systemd-zram-setup@.service
  • Reboot now, and enjoy system :)

Extras

uksmd libva-nvidia-driver btrfs-assistant ccache

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