User:0xMrRobot/Portable SSD
This article describes how I configure my portable Arch Linux system in a 1TB Crucial BX500 SATA SSD. The idea of this system is to boot and work well on anything and everything, so I don't have to carry a laptop everywhere.
The system will have the following characteristics:
- File system: Btrfs (with full drive encryption configured);
- Kernel: linux-zen;
- Desktop environment: KDE Plasma;
- Swap: 16GiB file (with hibernation configured);
- Bootloaders: systemd-boot for UEFI and GRUB for BIOS;
- Firmware support: UEFI and Legacy BIOS;
- Multimedia framework (for audio and video): PipeWire;
- Shell: Bash;
- Secure Boot: Configured with shim and MOK;
- Display/login manager: none, the login will be directly from the tty.
In between the EFI system partition and the root partition, I create a 2MiB partition with no file system, as per these instructions. The ESP is 256 MiB rather than 128 MiB.
I keep the generation of the initramfs-*.img file enabled, as this is used by GRUB on BIOS booting.
I move the block and keyboard hooks before the autodetect hook, and I also remove the kms hook.
Moreover, the kernel's command line (defined by the files in /etc/cmdline.d for the UKI) is manually copied to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT inside /etc/default/grub.
Place the microcode hook before the autodetect hook in Mkinitcpio#HOOKS and then install both amd-ucode and intel-ucode.
After setting systemd-boot, I install GRUB following these instructions, add some commands, install memtest86+ - for BIOS systems - and install the Fallout theme.
I disable probing for other OS'es and enable booting from an encrypted device (not exactly necessary for my setup but I do it anyways).
The only thing I don't do here is set the image size. It might also be interesting to check the main troubleshooting page.
Instead of installing the different vendor packages individually, I install the default set, with the linux-firmware package.
Follow everything listed here, but don't delete the certificates copied to the ESP. This way, you enroll them in any system with Secure Boot enabled.
Install stuff for AMD as well.
Do not do it.
I do everything listed here, except for installing a tablature editor and a DAW.