Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆
The bare necessity
The aim of this topic is to show how to lay the bare foundation for a custom Manjaro system. The target can be a removable media and the result tested using qemu.
In the beginning …
Open a terminal and list your current storage devices
lsblk
Insert your device, wait a moment for the device to recognized and repeat the command. Depending on you device you should get something like
mmcblk0 179:0 0 15G 0 disk
Switch to root - input your root passwd when asked for password
su
Either assign your device path to a variable named $work or substitute $work with your device path. When you come to targeting partitions they are slightly different depending on the media. E.g. mmc devices usually uses pX and sata devices use a number e.g. mmcblk9p1 or sdy1.
Partitioning disk
Assign your device path to the $work variable
work=/dev/mmcblck0
First step is clearing the disk for previous filesystem info.
sgdisk --zap-all $work
Create a new GPT partition table
sg-disk --mbrtogpt $work
Create $esp partition
sgdisk --new 1::+512M --typecode 1:ef00 --change-name 1:"EFI System" $work
Create root partition
sgdisk --new 2::: --typecode 2:8304 --change-name 2:"Linux x86-64 root" $work
Wipe the partitions
wipefs -f "$work"1
wipefs -f "$work"2
Format and mount partitions
mkfs.vfat -vF32 "$work"1
mkfs.f2fs "$work"2
Mount the root partition
mount "$work"2 /mnt
Create the EFI mount point and mount the $esp
mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
mount "$work"1 /mnt/boot/efi
Basic Installation and configuration
Install a base system into the mounted root. Add the kernel, initram generator, grub boot loader and the micro editor.
basestrap /mnt base linux510 mkinitcpio grub micro
To save a file in micro use CtrlS and to exit use CtrlQ.
Chroot into the new filesystem
manjaro-chroot /mnt /bin/bash
Keyboard and locale
Keyboard lists are found in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps.
Set console keyboard in /etc/vconsole.conf - example for Denmark
micro /etc/vconsole.conf
KEYMAP=dk
FONT=
FONT_MAP=
TIP: uncomment the locale en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 as a fallback locale.
Edit /etc/locale.gen and remove the comment for locale(s) to be generated (UTF-8 is the recommend choice). Example for a system in Denmark using english messages
micro /etc/locale.gen
en_DK.UTF-8 UTF-8
locale-gen
Edit your locale configuration in /etc/locale.conf to match above choice - example for Denmark
micro /etc/locale.conf
LANG=en_DK.UTF8
Timezone and clock
Available zones is listed in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ using the Continent/Capitol format.
Symlink the relevant time zone as /etc/localtime - example for Denmark
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Copenhagen /etc/localtime
Linux clock runs using the timezone info and UTC time.
hwclock --systohc --utc
Hostname and hosts configuration
Set hostname to manjaro
echo manjaro > /etc/hostname
micro /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.1.1 manjaro.localdomain manjaro
Root password
Set a password the root user
passwd
Booting
Build the initramfs
mkinitcpio -P
Setup grub for EFI system
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=Manjaro
Generate grub configuration
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Cleaning up
exit
umount -R /mnt
Test using qemu
To test if your install works as intended install qemu and run this command
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -rtc base=localtime -m 2G -vga std -drive file=$work,readonly,cache=none,format=raw,if=virtio
Conclusion
Have fun …
Intentionally created as the bare foundation for a working Manjaro system.