Automated ArchLinux

This ansible playbook automates my personal Arch Linux installation. The goal is a fully encrypted and secure desktop system. All dotfiles are kept in an independent repository. They are managed using by a simple shell script that symlinks them into place and will only get installed if the dotfiles variable is defined.

Main features of this installation

• Full disk encryption
• LVM on LUKS partitioning scheme
• A desktop environment consisting of i3gaps, i3status-rust, rofi and picom
• Simple configuration using group_vars/all

Additional security features

• Minimalism, no bullshit installed
• Restrictive and comprehensive iptables rules
• Automatic mac address spoofer for wireless network devices

Install base system

You can eighter install your own minimal system or you follow the instructions provided in the two installation guides below.

• INSTALL_EFI to setup a LVM on LUKS system using grub2 in GPT EFI boot mode.
• INSTALL_BIOS to setup a LVM on LUKS system using syslinux in MBR BIOS boot mode.

The Ansible playbook does not depend on any specific installation method. If you are unsure which BIOS mode to chose, go for UEFI as this is how it's done on modern systems.

How to run the ansible playbook after the initial installtion

First install ansible

$ sudo pacman -S ansible

then download the playbook and make sure you adjust the values of the global config in group_vars/all to match your system stats. Then run it.

$ git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/id101010/ansible-archlinux.git
$ cd ansible-archlinux/ansible
$ ansible-playbook -i inventory/localhost playbook.yml [--tags $LIMIT_TO_TAG]

Lean back and watch the installation.

Testing and development (local vagrant machine)

Warning, this is kind of buggy. Vagrant looks quite abandoned. Hashicorp does not react to issues. I might remove this section soon.

Assuming you've already installed vagrant you can set up a vritual machine with just these steps

$ git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/id101010/ansible-archlinux.git
$ cd ansible-archlinux/vagrant
$ vagrant up --provision

Now reboot the machine and start a graphical session using virtualbox. The default credentials are user:vagrant pw:vagrant. Alternativly you can log into your machine using the command vagrant ssh.

Hint: To reload the configuration into the vagrant box you can eighter reload (issues a graceful shutdown) the machine using vagrant reload or you can update and apply the configuration changes using vagrant rsync && vagrant provision. This way you don't need to wait for the machine to boot when testing changes.