ThirtySix's Website

Spring Cleaning $HOME

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 16:37:49 +0300

Introduction

Files, which name begins with a dot are called ‘dotfiles’ or ‘hidden files’ and usually are used for programs configuration. The fun fact is that they never meant to exist and originally was a bug, which was introduced in ls rewrite from Assembly to C. There was a feature to hide . and .. dirs, because they are current and up ones and are in every dir anyway. But this was done with poor check if filename starts with a dot or not, making a dozen of other files “hidden”.

Later this started tendency of every program dumping hidden (or sometimes not!) files in users home dirs without a way to remove them, which is very messy way to do configuration. This post will demonstrate how I got rid of the most dotfiles in my $HOME dir.

Clean-up

First step is to (re)move all files and dirs, which does not need to be in home to respective xdg locations such as documents or pictures. I prefer to have only documents, pictures and music dirs, because it’s all I need. Aside from that I keep all source code in ~/.local/src/ and scripts in ~/.local/bin/. Also I have ~/ set as downloads dir, which helps with putting files to appropriate places (or delete them) instead of having them laying forever in a place where they don’t belong.

Next step is moving dotfiles. Some programs support xdg out of the box and their configs simply can be moved, others have support via environmental variables, and for others you will have to create alias to start them with config in xdg location. Very useful resources for that are:

ArchWiki’s xdg specification page
xdg-ninja (aur) which will automatically detect unwanted dotfiles and give instructions to move them

After all of this, you will still have some dotfiles, that are hardcoded and ‘won’t get fixed’. It probably will be browser dir be it .mozilla or .librewolf for gecko-based or .pki for chromium-based ones. Ssh and dbus dirs are also hardcoded but this is not a big deal, because I cleaned all that was possible and at the end I have 9 directories and 0 files in my ~/.

Unusual tips

I use zsh as my shell and it allows to set $ZDOTDIR to move all it’s files to that dir, but these variable need to be set either in ~/.zshenv or ~/.zprofile or system-wide. I have it set in ~/.config/shell/profile and sourced from /etc/zsh/zprofile line that:

[ -f "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/shell/profile" ] &&
	. "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/shell/profile"

Another annoyance with zsh is interactive helper, which rans on every shell startup if there is no ~/.z* file(s) in ~/ (even if $ZDOTDIR is set). To disable it you will need to redefine it in /etc/zsh/zshenv:

zsh-newuser-install() { :; }

Another one that needed some work was ~/.git/. I have it, because I use git to track my dotfiles, but this method has some pitfalls, so I killed two birds with one stone. I moved ~/.git/ to ~/.local/src/dotfiles/ and wrote git wrapper to have all my git aliases work with normal repos and dotfiles one.

git() {
	command git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree >/dev/null 2>&1 ||
		set -- --git-dir="$HOME/.local/src/dotfiles" --work-tree="$HOME" "$@"
	command git "$@"
}

Artix Install Guide

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 16:57:55 +0300

Overview

Quick installation guide (not really) of Artix Linux with runit init system, which will also work for Arch. I wrote this as a reference for myself in the future and others and also to proof that installation is very easy and usually takes about 10 minutes.

Encryption

I prefer installing system on an encrypted partition, because as of time of writing this I keep my main system on an external ssd for portability. Encryption is also necessary on laptops because anyone can load to it from live usb of any linux distro and do whatever they want with filesystem. Which can be done for windows to, but getting encryption on that is hard and pointless, because microsoyft will put your key on their servers.

One unconvinience that comes with using encryption is the need to put two passwords to unlock your system: one for disk and one for user, so I will show you how to setup autologin to user account and enter only encryption password.

Disk preparation

Use lsblk to view available partitions and disks. Find one that you will be installing on by it's size. Later it will be called /dev/sdX.

Partition disk with fdisk. Use p, d, n, w, to print current partition table, delete partition, create partition, write changes to disk respectively. I usually create 1G boot partition, 8G swap partition and use the rest space for an actual system.

# boot
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdX1
# swap
mkswap /dev/sdX2
swapon /dev/sdX2
# encrypted root
cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdX3
cryptsetup open /dev/sdX3 root
mkfs.btrfs /dev/mapper/root

# mount
mount --mkdir /dev/sdX1 /mnt/boot
mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt

# actual intall (use `pacstrap` on arch)
basestrap /mnt linux linux-firmware base base-devel runit elogind-runit \
	networkmanager networkmanager-runit cryptsetup lvm2 lvm2-runit grub vim

Basic settings

# fstab
fstabgen -U /mnt >>/mnt/etc/fstab
# chroot (use `arch-chroot` on arch)
artix-chroot /mnt bash

# timezone
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/<Region>/<City> /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc

# locale
echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" >/etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" >/etc/locale.conf

# hostname and hosts
echo "artix" >/etc/hostname
# 127.0.0.1		localhost
# ::1			localhost
# 127.0.1.1		artix.localdomain artix
vim /etc/hosts

# NetworkManager
ln -s /etc/runit/sv/NetworkManager /etc/runit/runsvdir/current

# root password
passwd
# create your user
useradd -G wheel -m thsx
passwd thsx

# uncomment '%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL' to enable root access
visudo

Grub encryption

# add '--autologin thsx' to GETTY_ARGS variable
vim /etc/runit/sv/agetty-tty1/conf

# add 'encrypt lvm2' after 'block' to HOOKS array
vim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
mkinitcpio -p linux

exit
lsblk -f >>/mnt/etc/default/grub
artix-chroot /mnt bash # use `arch-chroot` on arch
vim /etc/default/grub

Change GRUB_TIMEOUT to 0. After that go to the end of the file and delete all output from lsblk -f but the two lines with luksCrypt (1) and btrfs (2) filesystems. Add their UUIDs in the next format to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT variable:

`cryptdevice=UUID=<uuid of (1)>:cryptlvm root=UUID=<uuid of (2)>`

After thar remove all lsblk -f output or it will mess up your grub config.

# install grub and reboot into new system
grub-install /dev/sdX
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
exit
reboot

Done! After following instructions above you will be able to install one of the best arch-based distro.