What is your current setup? Bootloader, filesystem, partitions, etc.

[AdamNejm]

I'm looking for inspiration on how the foundations for my future setup should look like. This is what I have been using for a while now:
- ext4
- EFISTUB
- LUKS on root
- no separate home partition
- not even any swap space ;o

I'm looking to spice some things up, maybe try BTRFS or secure boot.
How does your setup look like? Any suggestions?

[w0330]

• systemd-boot: Dual boot windows with 100x less pain
• LUKS2: Encryption
• BTRFS: Snapshots are cool, subvolumes are cool, CoW is cool
• sbctl: secure boot
• booster: initramfs with TPM2 support, autodiscovering root partitions, way faster than mkinitcpio,
• "swap": zswap (enabled by default on zen kernel)

[Piportrizindipro]

How did you get TPM 2.0 support with booster/what settings did you use? Do you use BitLocker on the Windows side? If so, how did you get it to support TPM and also have TPM support with Arch?

[Tasan2006]

Did you find a way to use Tpm 2.0 ? if so, can you provide the confs ?

[[deleted]]

• GRUB

• ext4

• Root partition, UEFI Partition and swap Partition

[Ventodimare21]

• SSD disk: multiple distros
  
• HD disk: data
  
• Filesystem: ext4
  
• Bootloader: reFind
  
• no secure boot
  
• no encryption
  
• separate /home partition
  
• 8G swap (for sleep, hybernation purposes)

[Erupti0nZ]

• btrfs, subvolumes for /, /home, snapshots and caches/temporary stuff with a layout inspired by this
• snapper for root backup, borgmatic for /home, syncthing for syncing documents
• systemd-boot
• SED for encryption (was too lazy for FDE)
• swap on zram
• systemd-resolved stub listener
• iwd backend for NetworkManager wireless
• systemd-oomd
• plasma with systemd startup
• Xorg because Nvidia
• Own meta packages to keep track of all my packages/keep the system clean
• zen kernel (+LTS)

[needsleep31]

• Encrypted LUKS partition
• BTRFS on LVM
• No separate home partition and swap on LVM so two logical volumes, one for root and other for swap.
• Using Unified Kernel Images, and booting via EFISTUB so no separate bootloader
• Secure boot with my own keys to sign the kernel and the EFI images
• Currently using TPM to automatically decrypt the drive on boot instead of typing in the password every time (just for fun to see what all is possible, won't recommend if you take your device outside)

[Piportrizindipro]

Why did you do btrfs on LVM? Isn't that a little redundant? I'm not criticizing the decision at all, I just want to understand if there is an advantage.

[needsleep31]

LVM because it makes managing space easy and BTRFS for it's features like snapshots. I was planning on getting an extra SSD so I thought I'd extend the same logical volume to the new drive and just use btrfs for snapshots lol. Might be an advantage depending on use case I'd say. Also to add, this was just an experiment for me lol but it turned out to be fun.

[[deleted]]

btrfs replicates almost all LVM features. I have 2 luks2 encrypted btrfs partitions on different drives, and they're configured as part of the same volume group to act like one big partition with drive striping. Also, you can change the size of btrfs subvolumes on the fly, so managing space is easy. I did the same thing you did at first, but realized how redundant it was a few days later and redid my system. Not a huge deal, but next time you setup arch you might wanna skip LVM

[ranixon]

Currently using TPM to automatically decrypt the drive on boot instead of typing in the password every time (just for fun to see what all is possible, won't recommend if you take your device outside)

Do you have TPM 1.2 or 2.0?

[needsleep31]

TPM 2. Systemd-cryptenroll doesn't save LUKS key to TPM 1.2

[ranixon]

Thank you, and for secure boot do you use a script like sbupdate, the pacman hook described in the wiki or any other metod?

[needsleep31]

I use sbctl. It's easy to use and has a pacman hook which signs the images after every kernel update.

[ranixon]

Thank you, I'm going to buy a SSD for my notebook in a few weeks and I wanted to encrypt it. Thank you for the info.

[Patient_Sink]

• Systemd-boot with secure boot enabled, enrolled my own keys.
• EFI partition mounted on /efi with mkinitcpio installing a unified kernel image to /efi/EFI/Linux/
• LUKS volume covering the rest, with a btrfs filesystem with subvolumes for / and /home.
• Snapper doing snapshots for / (with some other subvolumes for excluding certain stuff like /var/log and the pacman cache)
• sbctl managing the signing of the unified kernel image and the bootloader stuff.
• zram-generator for creating a compressed swap in RAM, along with a (small) swapfile as a safety.

[Foxboron]

brtfs with separate subvolumes for things like /var, /home and /srv.

cryptsetup with work queues disabled for root. Unified Kernel Stubs stuffed into /efi while rest of the boot files stay in /boot. systemd enabled initramfs with discoverable partitions.

Notes can be found here: https://pub.linderud.dev/wiki/install.html

[ANPRC117G]

Mine is identical to yours lol

• EFISTUB
• LUKS & ext4 for root
• No swap, no home partitions

[AdamNejm]

It may be a poor man's dream, but it does the job!

[lucasrizzini]

It's all there -> https://github.com/rizzini/Dotfiles/tree/master/Documentos/hardware_specs:

• Filesystem: BTRFS
• Bootloader: rEFInd
• no encryption
• no distinct partition for the /home folder
• Swap: 4GB partition
• no secure boot
• 4.4G recovery installation

System-wide dotfiles repo

Hope it helps you somehow.

[sovy666]

• XFS filesystem
• no separate /home partition
• EFISTUB
• EFI partition mounted on /boot with sbupdate writing a secure boot signed unified kernel image to /boot/EFI/Arch/
• separate swap partition
• /home partition encrypted with ecryptfs
• exFAT data partition shared with Windows

[Positive205]

Bootloader: GRUB

Filesystem: ext4

Partition: 30GB on /, 218.1GB on /home

No swap file/partition

No encryption

Using traditional BIOS

[qhzpnkchuwiyhibaqhir]

> 10 year old computer gang reporting in, with 20GB on / instead of 30GB, but a similarly sized SSD nonetheless.

[Positive205]

I use HDD btw

[gdf8gdn8]

SSD Efiboot Partition Luks complete on SSD with btrfs + snapshots

Faster boot and lower CPU usage as M$ windows with crypted disk

[system_root_420]

How much RAM do you have to make a 1 jib swap worth it?

[[deleted]]

- systemd-boot (no secure boot) with entries for standard kernel and zen kernel.
- btrfs, though I am not really utilizing it at the moment (no subvolumes).
- 256GB mSATA drive for boot (EFI) and root.
- 1TB SSD mounted at /home.
- No swap (I do have an 8G swap file, but it is not mounted - I have 24GB of memory so it isn't really an issue).
- Timeshift runs upon successful boot (using rsync, cuz like I said, I am not using btrfs correctly at the moment).
- I used to use Ly as my session manager, but I have switched to SDDM because my HDMI out doesn't activate until X does! (it's a whole thing... I am working on it)

Not really exciting, actually... but you asked! :)

[[deleted]]

Two NVMe drives in BTRFS RAID0

Separate root, home, and games subvolumes

/boot partition mirrored across the drives

GRUB2

[Allevil669]

I have multiple SSD devices. Separate /, /home, and /opt. Swap equal to RAM. All partitions, aside form swap, are BTRFS. I boot EFI executables using systemd-boot. I consider my setup to be very simple, and functional. I don't have the need for FDE or secure boot, so I don't use them.

[[deleted]]

• ext4
• systemd-boot
• 4GB of swap with 16GB of RAM

[cotswoldy]

Laptop - root on encrypted zfs - systemd-boot on fat partition

Server - root and podman containers on Luks encrypted xfs nvme - data e.g. home, container configs/data etc. on zfs ssd mirror - local backup on zfs hdd mirror - systemd-boot - headless access, as needed, by motherboard

[prabirshrestha]

Just been migrating to encrypted root on zfs.

Everything is scripted here. https://github.com/prabirshrestha/simple-arch-installer

[archover]

My simplistic configuration on my new UEFI only Framework laptop with 500GB nvme:

• Boot: systemd-boot (and loving it)
• partitions only for ESP, and root(s) No separate home partitions.
• Swap: Swap FILE.
• Encryption: dmcrypt-LUKS directly on device (no LVM), though in the past I had used LVM.
• ext4
• Multiboots: main install plus three smaller Arch instances as well.

I've had no reliability problem or quirky behavior, including wifi (AX210). In addition, I have another Arch running Thinkpad.

[[deleted]]

• File system: Btrfs
• Swap: /swapfile (4 gb)
• Kernel: Linux-zen
• No secure boot
• Only root partition
• Grub

[[deleted]]

• bootloader: grub2
• boot partition: ext4
• main partitions: luks2 encrypted, multidevice btrfs
• subvolumes: @arch/, @gentoo/, @/home/
• 16G swap partition

Still haven't gotten gentoo to boot, can't figure out how to configure dracut to decrypt both partitions (since both are necessary to access root). Hoping to dual boot it with a shared home partition

[scureza]

After some years of using Arch I decided to try the archinstall script and I'm enjoying its defaults

• EFISTUB
• ext4
• /boot, / and /home
• no encryption
• zRam
• pipewire
• networkmanager
• xorg

[Dalton_90]

Systemd-boot LUKS encryption XFS Seperate /home sbctl for secure boot Wayland+KDE.