bitterteriyaki/dotfiles

Howdy! This repository contains my personal dotfiles, which I use to rice my system and configure tools and applications for my environment in a consistent way. I currently use chezmoi tool to manage my dotfiles, which allows me to keep my configurations in a single repository and apply them to different machines with ease.

Important

This is not a community-driven repository. It's a private configuration for my particular cases. I make no guarantees that it will work out of the bot for anyone. It may also change drastically and without any warning.

📚 Table of Contents

• 🏷 Secure Boot
• 📼 BTRFS, Timeshift and GRUB
• 🖥️ Dual boot with Windows
• 💻 NVIDIA

🏷 Secure Boot

Note

This section is a personal note about enabling Secure Boot on Arch Linux. If you are not interested in this topic, you can skip this section, as this section is not related to the dotfiles themselves. This also assumes you are using Arch Linux as your distro and GRUB as your bootloader.

There is many ways to enable Secure Boot on Arch Linux. This section will show the most straightforward and simplest way. First of all, you may make use of CA Keys on GRUB, you can do that by running this following command, assuming that /boot is your EFI system partition (ESP):

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB --modules="tpm" --disable-shim-lock

Now, you may put the firmware in Setup Mode. This can be achieved by removing the Platform Key of your firmware. Reboot your machine, access the BIOS and remove the Platform Key under the "Security" tab. If you ran my automatic installation scripts, the sbctl tool should be already be installed on your system. If you didn't run my scripts, you can install this tool manually by running:

# yay -S sbctl

Once you log back in, check the secure boot status:

$ sbctl status

You should see that sbctl is not installed and Secure Boot is disabled. Now, create your custom Secure Boot keys and enroll them with Microsoft's keys to the UEFI:

# sbctl create-keys
# sbctl enroll-keys -m

Check the secure boot status again:

$ sbctl status

The sbctl should be installed now, but Secure Boot will not work until the boot files have been signed with the keys you just created. Check what files need to be signed for secure boot to work:

# sbctl verify

Verify all the unsigned files with this:

# sbctl verify | sed 's/✗ /sbctl sign -s /e'

Reboot your system and turn secure boot back on in the firmware settings. If the boot loader and OS load, secure boot should be working. Check with sbctl status. For more information or troubleshooting, check the references below.

• GRUB - ArchWiki
• Unified Extensible Firmware Interface/Secure Boot - ArchWiki

📼 BTRFS, Timeshift and GRUB

Note

This section is a personal note about how I use BTRFS, Timeshift and GRUB to create snapshots of my system and avoid breaking it after an update. If you are not interested in this topic, you can skip this section, as this section is not related to the dotfiles themselves. This also assumes you are using Arch Linux as your distro and GRUB as your bootloader.

I use BTRFS as my filesystem on my Linux machines, Timeshift to create periodic snapshots of the system, and grub-btrfs to access these snapshots during the system boot, and timeshift-autosnap to create a snapshot every time I update the system. This way, I can recover deleted or corrupted files and avoid breaking the system after an update. If you ran my automatic installation scripts, all these tools should already be installed and the services should be enabled and running, but you still need to configure grub-btrfs to work with Timeshift. If you didn't run my scripts, you can install these tools by running the following commands:

# yay -S timeshift cronie grub-btrfs timeshift-autosnap inotify-tools
# systemctl enable --now cronie
# systemctl enable --now grub-btrfsd

Open Timeshift and configure it to create snapshots of your system. I recommend creating snapshots every day, but you can choose the frequency that best suits your needs. After configuring Timeshift, we can configure grub-btrfs to work with Timeshift. By default, grub-btrfs looks for snapshots in the /.snapshots directory, however, Timeshift uses a different directory, so we have to update the daemon configuration. Run the following command to configure the grub-btrfs service:

# systemctl edit --full grub-btrfsd

Now change the execution command:

- ExecStart=/usr/bin/grub-btrfsd --syslog /.snapshots
+ ExecStart=/usr/bin/grub-btrfsd --syslog --timeshift-auto

Save the file, restart the service and update the GRUB configuration:

# systemctl restart grub-btrfsd 
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Everything should be working now. Try to create a snapshot manually, upgrade your system or wait for a periodic snapshot to be created to check if everything is going right. Restart your computer to check if the GRUB menu is showing the snapshots created by Timeshift during the boot process. For more information or troubleshooting, check the references below.

• BTRFS - ArchWiki
• Timeshift - ArchWiki
• cron - ArchWiki
• grub-btrfs repository
• timeshift-autosnap repository
• An awesome blog post by Lorenzo Bettini

🖥️ Dual boot with Windows

Note

This section is a personal note about how I do dual boot with Windows. If you are not interested in this topic, you can skip this section, as this section is not related to the dotfiles themselves. This also assumes you are using Arch Linux as your distro and GRUB as your bootloader.

I usually create an new entry on GRUB to boot on GRUB to boot on Windows easily. I do not use os-prober because it seems to bug a lot when messing with timeshift-autosnap.

To create a new entry on GRUB, you need first get the UUID of the Windows boot partition. You can do that by running this command:

# blkid /dev/sdX

Where X is the Windows boot partition. After that, edit the file /etc/grub.d/40_custom and add the following entry:

menuentry 'Windows 11' {
    search --fs-uuid --no-floppy --set=root <UUID>
    chainloader (${root})/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}

After that, the Windows 11 entry must be appearing the GRUB screen.

💻 NVIDIA

Note

This section is a personal note about NVIDIA drivers. If you are not interested in this topic, you can skip this section, as this section is not related to the dotfiles themselves. This also assumes you are using Arch Linux as your distro and GRUB as your bootloader.

To use the NVIDIA drivers, edit the /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file and do the following steps:

1. Remove kms from HOOKS array
2. Add nvidia, nvidia_modeset, nvidia_uvm, nvidia_drm to MODULES array

Exit the file and regenerate the initramfs using:

# mkinitcpio -P