Thursday, July 23, 2026

Calamares graphical installer of pure Arch Linux and nested BTRFS Setup on Arch Linux

 Calam-Arch-Installer-2026-07.iso is a live ISO image featuring Linux Kernel 7.0.14 and the Calamares graphical installer, designed to simplify the installation of pure Arch Linux. You can download it directly from the https://sourceforge.net/projects/blue-arch-installer/files/arch-installer/Calam-Arch-Installer-2026-07.iso/download

Original disk layout

                  -`                     boris@devs-TDS8664
                .o+`                    ------------------
               `ooo/                    OS: Arch Linux x86_64
              `+oooo:                   Host: KVM/QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009) (pc-q35-11.0)
             `+oooooo:                  Kernel: Linux 7.1.4-1-cachyos
             -+oooooo+:                 Uptime: 15 mins
           `/:-:++oooo+:                Packages: 1549 (pacman)
          `/++++/+++++++:               Shell: bash 5.3.15
         `/++++++++++++++:              Display (QEMU Monitor): 1920x1080 in 15", 60 Hz
        `/+++ooooooooooooo/`            DE: KDE Plasma 6.7.3
       ./ooosssso++osssssso+`           WM: KWin (Wayland)
      .oossssso-````/ossssss+`          WM Theme: Breeze
     -osssssso.      :ssssssso.         Theme: Breeze (Light) [Qt], Breeze [GTK2/3]
    :osssssss/        osssso+++.        Icons: Breeze [Qt], breeze [GTK2/3/4]
   /ossssssss/        +ssssooo/-        Font: Noto Sans (12pt) [Qt], Noto Sans (12pt) [GTK2/3/4]
 `/ossssso+/:-        -:/+osssso+-      Terminal: /dev/pts/1 10.4p1
`+sso+:-`                 `.-/+oso:     CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) E5-2690 v3 (10) @ 2.59 GHz
`++:.                           `-/+/    GPU: RedHat Virtio 1.0 GPU
.`                                 `/    Memory: 2.03 GiB / 15.24 GiB (13%)
                                        Swap: Disabled
                                        Disk (/): 11.10 GiB / 74.50 GiB (15%) - btrfs
                                        Local IP (enp1s0): 192.168.0.82/24
                                        Locale: en_US.UTF-8
                                         
                                                                 
                                                                 
 

[boris@devs-TDS8664 ~]$ lsblk -f
NAME   FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sr0                                                                            
vda                                                                            
├─vda1 vfat   FAT32       8FD4-D237                               510M     0% /boot/efi
└─vda2 btrfs              78b04a2b-616e-45e4-93f4-fe263ae7b072   62.2G    15% /run/BtrfsAssistant/78b04a2b-616e-45e4-93f4-fe263ae7b072
                                                                             /home
                                                                             /var/cache
                                                                             /var/log
                                                                             /

Phase 1 follows exactly https://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/358937/index.html 

Phase 2 differs Phase 2 from https://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/366171/index.html  

$ sudo pacman -S btrfs-assistant grub-btrfs grub-btrfs-support

$ sudo pacman -S inotify-tools

Systemd, sd-vconsole switches the initramfs boot environment from a classic BusyBox script setup over to a systemd-managed process.

The systemd hook completely replaces both base and udev. It builds an initramfs that starts a mini-systemd instance to handle device discovery and orchestration instead of relying on older BusyBox shell scripts. Without base, you drop the traditional BusyBox emergency recovery shell. If the system undergoes a catastrophic boot failure, you will instead drop into a systemd-managed emergency shell. Because microcode is listed after autodetect in your configuration,
mkinitcpio will only pack the microcode matching your specific local processor model. If you had placed it before autodetect, it would build a universal image containing every Intel and AMD microcode patch available. This permits you to completely strip out any initrd=...-ucode.img references out of your bootloader configuration (like systemd-boot or GRUB) because the microcode is safely nested directly inside the unified image. HOOKS below represents a modern, optimized, pure systemd-based initramfs layout that strips away legacy configuration defaults

=============================================
sudo sed -i 's/^HOOKS=(.*/HOOKS=(systemd autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard sd-vconsole block filesystems fsck)/' /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
sudo vim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
sudo mkinitcpio -P
=============================================
Now --efi-diretory points to /boot/efi rather then /boot which is default  config provided by archinstall, what results critical files for booting to be located on fat32 FS out of btrfs volume on which "/" is mounted. 
=============================================
$ sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi  --bootloader-id=grub --recheck
$ sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi  --removable --recheck
=============================================
sudo systemctl edit --full grub-btrfsd.service
sudo systemctl enable --now grub-btrfsd.service
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
 

[boris@devs-TDS8664 ~]$ df -Th
Filesystem     Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda2      btrfs      75G   12G   63G  16% /
devtmpfs       devtmpfs  7.6G     0  7.6G   0% /dev
tmpfs          tmpfs     7.7G     0  7.7G   0% /dev/shm
efivarfs       efivarfs  256K   73K  179K  29% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
tmpfs          tmpfs     3.1G  1.3M  3.1G   1% /run
tmpfs          tmpfs     7.7G  320K  7.7G   1% /tmp
none           tmpfs     1.0M     0  1.0M   0% /run/credentials/systemd-journald.service
/dev/vda2      btrfs      75G   12G   63G  16% /var/log
/dev/vda2      btrfs      75G   12G   63G  16% /var/cache
/dev/vda2      btrfs      75G   12G   63G  16% /home
/dev/vda1      vfat      511M  992K  511M   1% /boot/efi
tmpfs          tmpfs     1.6G  100K  1.6G   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/vda2      btrfs      75G   12G   63G  16% /run/BtrfsAssistant/78b04a2b-616e-45e4-93f4-fe263ae7b072
 
[boris@devs-TDS8664 ~]$ findmnt /
TARGET SOURCE        FSTYPE OPTIONS
/      /dev/vda2[/@] btrfs  rw,noatime,compress=lzo,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvolid=270,subvol=/@
[boris@devs-TDS8664 ~]$ findmnt /home
TARGET SOURCE            FSTYPE OPTIONS
/home  /dev/vda2[/@home] btrfs  rw,noatime,compress=lzo,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvolid=257,subvol=/@home
[boris@devs-TDS8664 ~]$ findmnt /var/log
TARGET   SOURCE           FSTYPE OPTIONS
/var/log /dev/vda2[/@log] btrfs  rw,noatime,compress=lzo,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvolid=259,subvol=/@log
[boris@devs-TDS8664 ~]$ findmnt /var/cache
TARGET     SOURCE             FSTYPE OPTIONS
/var/cache /dev/vda2[/@cache] btrfs  rw,noatime,compress=lzo,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvolid=258,subvol=/@cache
[boris@devs-TDS8664 ~]$ sudo btrfs subvolume list /
[sudo] password for boris:  
ID 256 gen 251 top level 5 path @_backup_2026-07-23T08:00:11.159Z
ID 257 gen 398 top level 5 path @home
ID 258 gen 330 top level 5 path @cache
ID 259 gen 398 top level 5 path @log
ID 260 gen 23 top level 270 path var/lib/portables
ID 261 gen 23 top level 270 path var/lib/machines
ID 262 gen 342 top level 270 path .snapshots
ID 263 gen 174 top level 262 path .snapshots/1/snapshot
ID 264 gen 189 top level 262 path .snapshots/2/snapshot
ID 265 gen 193 top level 262 path .snapshots/3/snapshot
ID 266 gen 206 top level 262 path .snapshots/4/snapshot
ID 267 gen 210 top level 262 path .snapshots/5/snapshot
ID 268 gen 215 top level 262 path .snapshots/6/snapshot
ID 269 gen 248 top level 262 path .snapshots/7/snapshot
ID 270 gen 398 top level 5 path @
ID 271 gen 259 top level 262 path .snapshots/8/snapshot
ID 272 gen 284 top level 262 path .snapshots/9/snapshot
ID 273 gen 296 top level 262 path .snapshots/10/snapshot
ID 274 gen 326 top level 262 path .snapshots/11/snapshot
ID 275 gen 330 top level 262 path .snapshots/12/snapshot

 

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