2-Install-with-Btrfs.md

🧩 Partition Setup (pre-install)

You’ll manually partition like this:

Partition	Size	Format	Mount Point	Notes
EFI	500 MB	FAT32	/boot/efi	Use a dedicated EFI partition (separate from the Windows EFI). Mark this partition with the esp and boot flags.
Boot	1 GB	ext4	/boot	Used for GRUB + kernels
Btrfs	~2 TB	btrfs	/ (with subvols)	Root and subvolumes go here
Swapfile	36 GB	—	/swap/swapfile	Nested swapfile inside subvolume

✅ No swap partition — we will use a swap file (not a swap partition) inside a Btrfs subvolume. This gives the advantage of easily resizing the swap and won't mess with the snapshots system later on.

⚠️ Warning: If your archinstall doesn’t allow you to set a partition as esp, use the suggested layout instead or create the scheme manually with fdisk. The suggested layout combines the EFI and Boot partitions into one, which will be marked as esp automatically. If you plan to dual boot with Windows or use full-disk encryption, it’s recommended to keep separate EFI and Boot partitions.

---

🧱 Install Arch Linux (no Secure Boot yet)

1. Do the Steps from 1. PreSetup.

2. **Run archinstall.

   Use custom partitioning with the layout above.

   Under mount options, enable Btrfs subvolumes:

   @           → /
   @home       → /home
   @log        → /var/log
   @pkg        → /var/cache/pacman/pkg
   @snapshots  → /.snapshots
   @swap       → /swap
   

   • Choose GRUB as the bootloader.

   • Set your timezone, locale, hostname, and user.

   • Set the networking to use NetworkManager.

3. Complete the install and reboot into Arch.

---

💾 Create & Enable Swapfile (inside @swap subvolume)

sudo mkdir -p /swap
sudo chattr +C /swap
sudo fallocate -l 36G /swap/swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swap/swapfile
sudo mkswap /swap/swapfile
sudo swapon /swap/swapfile

Add to /etc/fstab:

⚠️ Make sure COW (Copy-on-Write) is disabled on the swap file directory (/swap) by using chattr +C before creating the file.

/swap/swapfile none swap defaults 0 0

Next 3. SecureBoot on Arch using SBCTL