arch

Ansible playbook for automating the installation and configuration of an Arch Linux workstation/laptop.

The playbook should be run locally after a fresh install or remotely, if networking and SSH has already been setup. Ensure that all variables have been appropriately set before running the playbook. You may also choose to skip certain tasks/roles via the use of tags.

Prerequisites

Run prepare.sh to install a base Arch Linux system on a chosen disk. It requires the following dependencies:

sgdisk mkfs.fat mkfs.btrfs pacstrap pacman genfstab arch-chroot btrfs

On an existing Arch system, they can be installed with:

$ pacman -S gdisk dosfstools arch-install-scripts btrfs-progs
$ sudo ./prepare.sh

The script:

• Formats and partitions a chosen disk into a boot and root partition.
• Creates btrfs subvolumes within the root partition and mounts them at the chosen mount point.
• Installs the base Arch system in the chosen mount point.
• chroot into the new base system and runs ./post-install.sh.

Running the playbook

Running locally:

$ ansible-playbook -i inventory --limit local main.yml

Running remotely:

# add remote machine to inventory
$ cat <<EOF >> inventory
[workstation]
10.10.10.100 ansible_user=username
EOF

$ ansible-playbook -i inventory --limit workstation main.yml

Running on non-laptop host:

$ ansible-playbook main.yml --skip-tags="laptop"

Base configuration (only base, networking and security):

$ ansible-playbook main.yml --tags="untagged"

Pick and choose:

$ ansible-playbook main.yml --tags="untagged,dev" --skip-tags="qemu"

See ROLES for all tags or use list-tags:

$ ansible-playbook main.yml --list-tags

Installing Packages from AUR

All AUR packages are installed via a custom repository and will be tagged with the aur tag. This requires a local or remote custom repository with added AUR packages. It must be included as an additional server in the aur role:

# set to $USER
aur_user: arch
aur_custom_repo_name: "custom"
aur_custom_repo_dir: "/var/cache/pacman/{{ aur_custom_repo_name }}"
aur_custom_repo_sig_level: "Optional TrustAll"

# local repo
aur_custom_repo_url: "file://{{ aur_custom_repo_dir }}"

# remote repo
aur_custom_repo_url: "https://aur.example.xyz/aur"

along with tag aur when running the playbook:

$ ansible-playbook main.yml --tags="aur"

Remote Repository

A remote repository can be hosted on any remote file server or S3 bucket. This repository can be managed with a custom script that assumes it is located in an Minio S3 bucket.

References

• spark