site/content/posts/parabola-install-guide.md

+++ title = 'Parabola Installation Guide' date = 2024-02-07T21:34:34+01:00 draft = false +++

Parabola Installation Guide

This is a guide on how to install parabola that i created to have a reference for my eventual future installations on a librebooted system. I decided to write this because I found that following the original guide in the Parabola wiki was not sufficent if you want to have an encrypted disk and no systemd in your system. Still, this is to be considered just a recap of what you will need to to if you want to install Parabola this way, do not consider this official (or even unofficial) documentation at all.

some info on Parabola GNU/Linux-libre

I will assume that you already created a bootable drive of some kind with an image of Parabola CLI Edition: download I won't cover how to do so beacuse there are already hundreds of guides that perfectly teach you how to do it on every system with every image using every technique available.

Check if you have a UEFI machine or not

Type the following command to check if you have a UEFI machine or not, and keep that in mind, we will use this information later

ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

Format your drive

The choice of partitions and filesystems is a matter of preference, and beyond the scope of this install guide. You can look at the Parabola wiki to know more. If you already know what do you want and how you want it, you can skip this part.

Proceed to format the drive you be installing Parabola on. I use fdisk, the most basic things you need to know about it are: type d to delete a partition (will ask number), type n to create a partition (will ask usual info), type w to confirm the changes.

Lets target the drive:

fdisk /dev/sdX

Assuming you deleted any existing partition, the next is to create two partitions, the first one will be a 1Gb partition and the second one will be the rest of the disk (or anyhow how much space yo want on your system) This is just the way i do it, you might find your needs are different.

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
   p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p):

Using default response p.
Partition number (1-4, default 1):
First sector (2048-30277631, default 2048):
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-30277631, default 30277631): +1G

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 1 GiB.

Then we are gonna create the second partition, you can press enter and use the default values for every option, you will have something similar to this:

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
   p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p):

Using default response p.
Partition number (1-4, default 1):
First sector (2048-30277631, default 2048):
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-30277631, default 30277631):

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size X.XX GiB.

Modify the last sector if you need a specific amount of memory or leave it blank to take the entire free space of your drive. It might ask you to remote an already present signature, in that case just remote it by pressing Y when asked to.

Filesystem of boot partition

We are now gonna put a filesystem on the first parition, I use FAT partitioning beacuse it is versatile since it's compatibile with both legacy boot and UEFI.

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdX1

Encrypt the second partition

To encrypt out partition we run the command:

cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdX2

You be ask to confirm the choice by typing YES and you will be asked to insert the passphrase for the partition.

Decrypt sdX2

cryptsetup open /dev/sdX2 partition-name

We now decrypt the partition and assign a name to it (the name can be a random string, it will change later anyhow) If we now run lsblk we should see something like this: `` NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS nvme0n1 259:0 0 476.9G 0 disk ├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 1G 0 part
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 475.9G 0 part └─partition-name 254:0 0 475.9G 0 crypt

Create filesystem for partition-name

Create a btrfs partition on the decrypted partition

mkfs.btrfs dev/mapper/partition-name

Mount both partition

Mount the two partitions starting with partition-name:

mount /dev/mapper/partition-name /mnt

Then create a directory called boot:

mkdir /mnt/boot

And then mount the boot partition in the boot folder:

mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/boot

If you now run lsblk again you should see the partition correctly mounted:

NAME                MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINTS
nvme0n1             259:0    0 476.9G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1         259:1    0     1G  0 part  /mnt/boot
└─nvme0n1p2         259:2    0 475.9G  0 part
  └─partition-name  254:0    0 475.9G  0 crypt /mnt