Dotfiles

From installer to desktop in 15 minutes!

This repository provides my dotfiles and two main scripts:

• arch-installer.sh - An installation script for Arch Linux. See the instructions below for it's use.
• bootstrap.sh - Takes an existing Arch, or Debian based system and installs my dotfiles.

Both of these scripts aim to be idempotent - if there is an error, or you want to re-run bootstrap.sh, there will be no ill-effects.

Machine Types

There are three main classes of machine that the scripts can configure:

• Laptop - Identified by the FQDN of Bens-Laptop-Arch.local.
• Server - Identified by the FQDN of ArchServ.local.
• Pi - Identified by PiTV, PiRemote or raspberrypi host-names.

You can modify the hosts file in order to add other host-names into these classes.

If none of the above strings are found in the target machine's host-name then a generic install is performed. This includes minimal programs and only dotfiles for command-line programs installed.

Installing

Before using the bootstrap script you must have a boot-able Linux install. To quickly get an Arch install with British locale you can use the arch-installer.sh script

Using the arch-installer.sh Script

1. This installer requires UEFI boot. To begin ensure that your target disk has the following partitions:

   • FAT32 partition with esp and boot flags (ideally 500MB).
   • ext4 partition for the root.

   I prefer to use fdisk to do this. You can find more information on the Arch installation guide under the parition disks section.

   Any partitions you don't mount in the installer will not be touched. Additionally, systemd-boot will not overwrite bootloaders from Windows or other Linux distributions if you are reusing the same boot partition.

2. Boot from the Arch Installer and connect to a network - if you have Ethernet this will be done automatically, if you have WiFi you should run iwctl.

3. Mount the partitions that you want to install Arch to in the following hierarchy:

   Partition	Installer File-system
   root	/mnt
   boot	/mnt/boot

   Where boot is /dev/sda1 and root is /dev/sda2, you would use the following commands:

   mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
   mkdir /mnt/boot
   mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
   

4. Clone this repository to the installer USB so that you have access to the scripts:

   pacman -Sy git
   git clone https://github.com/bweston6/dotfiles
   

5. Enter the dotfiles directory you have cloned and run ./arch-installer.sh. The scripts will prompt you with more instructions:

   • Ensure to enter a host-name that matches your desired machine type from above.
   • There are several checks in place to ensure that there is internet when required and that partitions are mounted.
   • Messages generated by the script are in pink text.

6. After booting into the installation you will have a minimal set of programs as bootstrap.sh is intended to configure the system. To connect to the internet you can use nmtui - this is a fairly intuitive ncurses interface for NetworkManager.

Using the bootstrap.sh Script

You should note that, for convenience, my personal ssh keys are included and encrypted with Ansible Vault. If you have your own keys you would like to install, then you can place them in the roles/common/files/user/keys/.ssh folder and delete the existing files.

The script won't try to overwrite keys if they already exist in your .ssh folder. Therefore, you can create an empty file, to avoid the password prompt, with the following command:

touch ~/.ssh/ed25519