Void Linux installation and configuration
We write a series of scripts to install a Void Linux session from another Linux distribution.
Dependencies
To run the scripts, you need:
* sfdisk: A scriptable version of fdisk.
* cryptsetup and lvm2: To configure the encrypted LVM LUKS partition.
* wget
* mkfs.fat, mkswap and mkfs.ext4.
Usage
Just run:
./void-install.sh /dev/sdx voidvm host bootlabel
Replacing:
* /dev/sdx with the device on which Void Linux must be installed.
* voidvm with the name of the volume group you want to use. Must not already
be present on the machine you are using to perform the installation.
* host hostname to use for the new machine.
* bootlabel with a locally unique LABEL used in /etc/fstab. Must be
11 bytes or shorter.
You end up with a fully functional Void Linux installation. This of course is pretty minimal in itself (at least compared with bloated Linux distributions). You can refer to [2] if you have no idea what to do next.
Issues
- Somehow, you still need to run the following (replacing
X.XXby the installed version of the kernel) at the first boot for all the configuration to fall into place:
xbps-reconfigure -f linuxX.XX
Running it while chrooted doesn't seem to take into account the noatime in
fstab for example.
Partioning
We use an encrypted root. We do not have the need for encrypted boot
currently. The template we use on the disk is:
* Boot: 512M
* LVM LUKS
* Swap: 16G
* Root: The rest of disk space.
GRUB
We use grub2 as the bootloader. The newly configured disk is treated as
removable to avoid interactions with existing setups on the machine. Please
use your motherboard settings to switch between systems.
I find configuring grub2 very awkward. I am not sure the configuration
included here is taken into account. If not then the default is and works well
enough.
References
- https://wiki.voidlinux.org/Install_LVM_LUKS_on_UEFI_GPT
- https://wiki.voidlinux.org/Post_Installation