Great stuff Stephen! Wow, had to watch it in stages. Like seeing a 'live' Arch-wiki for Fedora, with all specs included. Really appreciate these in depth video's, they provide great learning material. And certainly a lot to think about ;-) Thanks a lot!
This is incredible. Although anaconda can do custom subvolume layouts too. I'm pretty sure you just need to create the volumes first and then manually map them in the GUI. It's been a while now but one tweak I did was to use 4K blocks for encryption instead of 512 bytes. This led to 2x speedup of i/o.
@@stephenstechtalks5377 Hehe, I really liked seeing how to do this. I am pretty sure you're the first to do it, or at least to have video evidence of the insanity! 😅
I've been on Fedora "37" for four days. I had several years of Ubuntu prior to trying Fedora, since 8.04. Your video is great and I look forward to trying it in a VM soon. Thank you.
Really nice tutorial, and doing this on your own allows you to have a drive performance that actually meets your specifications. Whereas the graphical installer might set up the disks with settings that aren't exactly appropriate for specific hardware.
Impressive video, with a lot of research and work behind it. Indeed, it is not easy to find all this information on the internet. I have tried myself to find it sometimes, and it is not put all together in one place, less in official sources of Fedora itself. Subscribing instantly to your channel, thank you very much! 👍
since you installed the arch-install-scripts you can also use arch-chroot to chroot into the fedora instalation which will automount devices for you so theres no need to mount /prot or /dev
Wow very nice ! I was wondering if this was possible. Food for thought, will stick to my home cooked kickstarts for now, but maybe I will try once for experimenting 😂
This looks more like installing Fedora the right/Linux way. The Arch install install is much less complicated than this, at it's worst. I've been riffing on installing systems this way for 25 years. It pays to be able to do this because you can install pretty much every distro the same way, this way. This is actually a very standard way to install Linux and a fundamental skill.
Hi Stephen, I follwed the install as directed until I got to mounting efivarfs and received this error msg: mount: /sys/firmware/efi/efivars: mount point does not exist. I've checked firmare folder nad found acpi dmi and memmap folders but efi folder is not there. What to do now?
Hi Richard, the only thing I can think of is making sure you are on a UEFI machine for the efivars directory to exist - this crazy tutorial is for entertainment purposes only and won't work on BIOS/Legacy machines... :)
@@stephenstechtalks5377 Thanks Steephen, it is a UEFI machine, but never mind, I was only playing, I loved your tutorial so I've decided to give it a go for the fun of it :), keep what you are doing, I'm sure many people enyoy your work :)
Awesome video and great job you have done producing it! Many thanks for sharing it with us. Your videos are always a treasure trove and so inspiring that I can hardly stifle the urge giving it a try immediately. Although I have been working so many years with Unix/Linux I am constantly discovering so much new cool stuff and I am continuously learning. At one point in the video where you installed a package called something like _arch-util-scripts_ or similar you remarked, I told you we are going to install Fedora the Arch way. Was this merely a pun, for the "arch" in the package's name refers to architecture rather than Arch? After you installed that package you issued a command (whose name I have forgotten; must rewatch the video while sitting at my computer not like now on the tiny smartphone screen) it was like automagically you got generated an fstab with commented UUID mount sources from all currently mounted filesystems which was pretty nifty. Also all your UEFI Boot wizardry with shims for Secure Boot was somewhat mind-blowing to me as I have never really cared about SB on my private installations and eschewed it to avoid any hassle. Since at work we run RHEL which automatically installs UEFI boot with SB shims and certs, at least on our bare metal, and with the plethora of VMs that run on ESXi hosts I never have cared how our virt admins fend off malware infiltration thereon, I am piqued to maybe reconsider my lax attitude in this respect.
Hey, thanks for sharing! Yes, the sane approach to install is of course Anaconda/Kickstart where UEFI boot is automatic. It's crazy, but here's the output of dnf info arch-install-scripts - which I use in this video for the genfstab utility for UUID fstabs: Name : arch-install-scripts Version : 27 Release : 1.fc37 Architecture : noarch Size : 29 k Source : arch-install-scripts-27-1.fc37.src.rpm Repository : updates Summary : Scripts to bootstrap Arch Linux distribution URL : github.com/archlinux/arch-install-scripts License : GPLv2 Description : A small suite of scripts aimed at automating some menial tasks when installing : Arch Linux, most notably including actually performing the installation. : : To install and launch Arch in a container: : pacman-key --init : pacman-key --populate archlinux : mkdir -p /var/lib/machines/arch : pacstrap -G -M -i -c /var/lib/machines/arch base : systemd-nspawn -bD /var/lib/machines/arch Cheers!
Would it be a fair assumption that everything here is applicable to Arch save for the items that are specific to Fedora? Trying to select a distro I can completely protect from myself. Seems Arch and Fedora have the most comprehensive rollback capability because all of the integration comes from installable and configurable packages assuming GRUB is the bootloader.
@@stephenstechtalks5377 Thanks, I'm just using qemu-system-x86_64 to start the VMs. I think if I start Shell.efi, I'll get the efi shell, but need to test later today
On the customization side, I'd say being able to properly situate your mounts on a BTRFS system is far more flexible this way, and far more transparent.
Finally a somewhat sane method of installing Fedora, at least compared to Anaconda
At least it seems to be an option!
The genfstab thing blew my mind. I had no idea you could do that on Fedora. Thank you for that. Great video
You bet!
I do it on Debian bullseye everytime I make a chroot install.
Great stuff Stephen! Wow, had to watch it in stages. Like seeing a 'live' Arch-wiki for Fedora, with all specs included. Really appreciate these in depth video's, they provide great learning material. And certainly a lot to think about ;-) Thanks a lot!
Glad it was helpful! Yeah you can tell Fedora just wasn't designed to be installed in this way... ;)
This is incredible. Although anaconda can do custom subvolume layouts too. I'm pretty sure you just need to create the volumes first and then manually map them in the GUI. It's been a while now but one tweak I did was to use 4K blocks for encryption instead of 512 bytes. This led to 2x speedup of i/o.
Anaconda/Kickstart is of course the sane choice - this video was done in the name of Science(tm) :)
@@stephenstechtalks5377 Hehe, I really liked seeing how to do this. I am pretty sure you're the first to do it, or at least to have video evidence of the insanity! 😅
I've been on Fedora "37" for four days. I had several years of Ubuntu prior to trying Fedora, since 8.04. Your video is great and I look forward to trying it in a VM soon. Thank you.
Excellent, thanks for sharing!
Really nice tutorial, and doing this on your own allows you to have a drive performance that actually meets your specifications. Whereas the graphical installer might set up the disks with settings that aren't exactly appropriate for specific hardware.
Thanks for the feedback, and agreed!
Great video! This will probably become very handy when rescuing a broken fedora Installation
Indeed, thanks for watching!:)
Excellent work! I appreciate your professional research and the way you present it. 🙏👏👏👏👍
My pleasure!
Nice Video. I used your video for a chroot installation. Went smooth. Thanks for the explanation!
Awesome, thank you!
Love your videos, useful and to the point, great to learn from. This video is no different, well thought out and presented, excellent stuff!
Thank you!
Great video Stephen, thanks for all the hard work👍
Glad you enjoyed it!
Impressive video, with a lot of research and work behind it. Indeed, it is not easy to find all this information on the internet. I have tried myself to find it sometimes, and it is not put all together in one place, less in official sources of Fedora itself. Subscribing instantly to your channel, thank you very much! 👍
Thanks for your support! :)
This is The Best on TH-cam by far!
Glad you liked it! :)
Great video on custom Fedora install. Have a small suggestion, please use a larger font size in terminal.
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!
since you installed the arch-install-scripts you can also use arch-chroot to chroot into the fedora instalation which will automount devices for you so theres no need to mount /prot or /dev
True story, thanks for sharing!
Wow very nice ! I was wondering if this was possible. Food for thought, will stick to my home cooked kickstarts for now, but maybe I will try once for experimenting 😂
You chose wisely! :)
Really nice tut, thank you Stephen!
Glad you like this crazy tutorial! :)
Thanks for your research. Is it possible to change GRUB to systemd-boot, with secure boot and everything in this video?
As far as I know Fedora only can use GRUB. It's not nearly as flexible as Arch Linux. :( Thanks for watching!
The only thing that could have made this better would be to go with systemd-boot instead of grub. But it's easy enough to adapt :)
Go for it! :)
This looks more like installing Fedora the right/Linux way. The Arch install install is much less complicated than this, at it's worst. I've been riffing on installing systems this way for 25 years. It pays to be able to do this because you can install pretty much every distro the same way, this way. This is actually a very standard way to install Linux and a fundamental skill.
Deepens your knowledge, for sure!
Hi Stephen, I follwed the install as directed until I got to mounting efivarfs and received this error msg: mount: /sys/firmware/efi/efivars: mount point does not exist.
I've checked firmare folder nad found acpi dmi and memmap folders but efi folder is not there. What to do now?
Hi Richard, the only thing I can think of is making sure you are on a UEFI machine for the efivars directory to exist - this crazy tutorial is for entertainment purposes only and won't work on BIOS/Legacy machines... :)
@@stephenstechtalks5377 Thanks Steephen, it is a UEFI machine, but never mind, I was only playing, I loved your tutorial so I've decided to give it a go for the fun of it :), keep what you are doing, I'm sure many people enyoy your work :)
Awesome video and great job you have done producing it!
Many thanks for sharing it with us.
Your videos are always a treasure trove and so inspiring that I can hardly stifle the urge giving it a try immediately.
Although I have been working so many years with Unix/Linux I am constantly discovering so much new cool stuff and I am continuously learning.
At one point in the video where you installed a package called something like _arch-util-scripts_ or similar you remarked, I told you we are going to install Fedora the Arch way.
Was this merely a pun, for the "arch" in the package's name refers to architecture rather than Arch?
After you installed that package you issued a command (whose name I have forgotten; must rewatch the video while sitting at my computer not like now on the tiny smartphone screen) it was like automagically you got generated an fstab with commented UUID mount sources from all currently mounted filesystems which was pretty nifty.
Also all your UEFI Boot wizardry with shims for Secure Boot was somewhat mind-blowing to me as I have never really cared about SB on my private installations and eschewed it to avoid any hassle.
Since at work we run RHEL which automatically installs UEFI boot with SB shims and certs, at least on our bare metal, and with the plethora of VMs that run on ESXi hosts I never have cared how our virt admins fend off malware infiltration thereon, I am piqued to maybe reconsider my lax attitude in this respect.
Hey, thanks for sharing! Yes, the sane approach to install is of course Anaconda/Kickstart where UEFI boot is automatic. It's crazy, but here's the output of dnf info arch-install-scripts - which I use in this video for the genfstab utility for UUID fstabs:
Name : arch-install-scripts
Version : 27
Release : 1.fc37
Architecture : noarch
Size : 29 k
Source : arch-install-scripts-27-1.fc37.src.rpm
Repository : updates
Summary : Scripts to bootstrap Arch Linux distribution
URL : github.com/archlinux/arch-install-scripts
License : GPLv2
Description : A small suite of scripts aimed at automating some menial tasks when installing
: Arch Linux, most notably including actually performing the installation.
:
: To install and launch Arch in a container:
: pacman-key --init
: pacman-key --populate archlinux
: mkdir -p /var/lib/machines/arch
: pacstrap -G -M -i -c /var/lib/machines/arch base
: systemd-nspawn -bD /var/lib/machines/arch
Cheers!
Would it be a fair assumption that everything here is applicable to Arch save for the items that are specific to Fedora? Trying to select a distro I can completely protect from myself. Seems Arch and Fedora have the most comprehensive rollback capability because all of the integration comes from installable and configurable packages assuming GRUB is the bootloader.
The title is mostly tongue-and-cheek ;) imho Arch and Fedora are fundamentally different. Try both in a VM and see which one you like the most! :)
How did you make Qemu boot into the EFI shell? If I run Qemu VM in UEFI mode, it just boots the EFI file from ESP automatically.
I typically use virt-manager as a front end and then in this video "Enable boot menu" under "Boot Options", "Boot device order".
@@stephenstechtalks5377 Thanks, I'm just using qemu-system-x86_64 to start the VMs. I think if I start Shell.efi, I'll get the efi shell, but need to test later today
Good luck!
Will xfs also work in this method?
Don't see why not as they use xfs for RHEL. :) Simpler too!
Could you give Mageia 9 a try when it comes out?
Thanks for the suggestion!
@@stephenstechtalks5377 Another suggestion in case you care: Nutyx.
I'm pretty much a guy that toys with Linux on VMs. Not a command line guy.
Thanks again!
What are your thoughts on "Universal blue linux"? Suppose to be like silverblue
I'm very excited about it, and I'm using the same principles for my own image builds. Definitely a great project people should check out! :)
ublue.it/
W for stephen !!!
Cheers!
Impressive!
Glad you like it! :)
Just curious, is there an advantage to that kind of installation over anaconda?
More customizable and scriptable. And, crazier! :)
On the customization side, I'd say being able to properly situate your mounts on a BTRFS system is far more flexible this way, and far more transparent.
Agreed!
your intro remind me of mr.ballen
;-)
First :)
Yes you are!
WOW...
Cheers!